"[My] theory is moderately conservative…. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments [i.e., the level of public plus private investment,] and the basic rate of reward to those who own them [i.e., the interest rate], it will have accomplished all that is necessary… then there is no objection to be raised against the classical [laissez-faire economic] analysis…. [T]e traditional advantages of individualism will still hold good… advantages of efficiency… decentralisation and of the play of self-interest… individual responsibility… greatly widens the field for the exercise of personal choice. It is also the best safeguard of the variety of life… variety preserves the traditions which embody the most secure and successful choices of former generations… being the handmaid of experiment as well as of tradition and of fancy, it is the most powerful instrument to better the future. Whilst… government,,, adjusting to one another the propensity to consume and the inducement to invest would seem to a nineteenth-century publicist or to a contemporary American financier to be a terrific encroachment on individualism. I defend it… as the condition of the successful functioning of individual initiative. For if effective demand is deficient, not only is the public scandal of wasted resources intolerable, but the individual enterpriser who seeks to bring these resources into action is operating with the odds loaded against him. The game of hazard which he plays is furnished with many zeros, so that the players as a whole will lose if they have the energy and hope to deal all the cards."

John Maynard Keynes: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Chapter 24

Love this quote, must find a home for it. (via Delong)