{"id":57363,"date":"2025-06-24T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=57363"},"modified":"2025-06-23T10:10:18","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T14:10:18","slug":"qotd-trade-offs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/06\/24\/qotd-trade-offs\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Trade-offs"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Among the oddments that sometimes appear in opinion polls are questions like, &#8220;Would you accept a lower standard of living in exchange for&#8221; &#8230; whatever policy is currently on offer. That policy might range from a climate-change shutdown of all carbon-based energy production, to reduced levels of immigration and foreign trade.<\/p>\n<p>In principle, I approve this recognition of policy trade-offs, and every acknowledgement that, in the red-pilled world beyond political phantasy, &#8220;you can&#8217;t have your diamond-studded hand-sculptured fondant wedding cake, and eat it, too&#8221;. Or in the more modest, Yorkshire form of this important clich\u00e9: &#8220;You can&#8217;t have the penny and the bun&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Any concession towards what I remember as reality is welcome at the present day, to me. As a non-economist, however, I regret that the trade-offs are only expressed in money. They apply also, and frequently instead, to things the modern world doesn&#8217;t count, because they are intangibles.<\/p>\n<p>David Warren, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2020\/05\/22\/on-juvenile-delinquency\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;On juvenile delinquency&#8221;, <em>Essays in Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2020-05-22.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the oddments that sometimes appear in opinion polls are questions like, &#8220;Would you accept a lower standard of living in exchange for&#8221; &#8230; whatever policy is currently on offer. That policy might range from a climate-change shutdown of all carbon-based energy production, to reduced levels of immigration and foreign trade. In principle, I approve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[1026],"class_list":["post-57363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-microeconomics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eVd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57363"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96217,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57363\/revisions\/96217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}