Daniel Davies wrote:
IIRC they also said that they would rather shovel shit if it paid the same. I have actually shovelled animal excrement, as a young man, and I personally believe that equities analysis is more fun. I never know quite what to make of Portnoy, but my own experience of the game has been entirely positive - as I keep saying to pals, it is much better than working for a living.
"The management of stock exchange investments of any kind is a low pursuit having little social value and partaking (at best) of the nature of a game of skill, from which it is a good thing for most members of our Society [of fellows of King's College] to be free; whereas the justification of Worlaby and Elsham [a farm owned by the College] lies in its being a constructive and socially beneficial enterprise, where we can exercise a genuine entrepreneurial function, in which many of our body can be reasonably and usefully interested. I welcome the fact that the Estates Committee - to judge from their poker faces and imperturtable demeanor - do not take gains or losses from the Stock Exchange too gravely; - they are much more depressed or elated (as the case may be) by farming results." (Keynes, "Memorandum for the Estates Committee, King's College, Cambridge, May 8, 1938," Collected Writings, vol. XII, p. 109) Ted
