Thanks to internet bookstores and courier delivery, my existence on this beautiful little tropical island has today been enriched by three brand new books not otherwise available in local bookstores. I just opened Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man: A new history of the great depression, which begins with the following quote:
As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or in the better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X.

- William Graham Sumner, Yale University, 1881
C, not X, is the 'forgotten man' in the book's title. I'll see what the rest of the book brings.