There’s also a quote, which I don’t remember the provenance of and can’t quickly find, which was something like “the main purpose of think tanks is to generate ideas that are ready to be deployed in times of crisis.”
“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”—Milton Friedman, 1982 preface to Capitalism and Freedom
See A Key Power of the President is to Coordinate the Execution of Existing Concrete Plans.
There’s also a quote, which I don’t remember the provenance of and can’t quickly find, which was something like “the main purpose of think tanks is to generate ideas that are ready to be deployed in times of crisis.”
“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”—Milton Friedman, 1982 preface to Capitalism and Freedom
That’s it, thanks!
There’s a good chance that the last encounter with the quote (Axiomata spells it out) was my post https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZFpA3ZbKndRpNbpXg/in-defense-of-politics which quotes Friedman.