Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 132

Kaldor-Hicks Compensation Test

Kaldor-Hicks Compensation Test is a measuring stick. Use it on yourself before you use it on others; the readings are more honest that way.

No single score defines a person, a team, or a year. But a score honestly taken is a mirror, and mirrors, however unkind, are cheaper than self-deception.

Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.

In every examination hall there are two kinds of silence: the silence of those who prepared, and the silence of those who are preparing excuses. The room can hear the difference.

Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. Do not memorise it. Notice it. Noticing is the senior discipline.