From an interview of John Nye by Tyler Cowen:

I'm much more concerned with the questions of what good states are possible? And once good states are created that are possible, what good states are sustainable? And that, in my view, is a still understudied and very poorly understood issue.

Britain had the fastest-growing tax revenues throughout the 18th century of any country in western Europe. British tax revenues rose 450 percent from the 1700s through to the end of the 18th century, which is remarkable since everybody else was trying to raise revenues and were unsuccessful at doing so.

I went to an elite Jesuit school in the Philippines growing up. One of the things about that school was that there was a very big emphasis on the educated Catholic gentleman that it was supposed to produce. It was not enough to be good in the one subject. You were presumed to be good in all subjects at the very high level.