| "Every journey of a 1000 miles begins with 1 step" Maybe we should laude and celebrate that at least loads of effort was put into getting all the G7 finance ministers in one place and actually have a discussion + agree to a next step? Feels unnecessary negative and very arm chair criticism to just hand wave the whole endeavour and say "oh nothing was done and all they did was talk". I sometimes think people in the last decade are to quick to find faults for every little thing that falls short of a 100% effort (and even that gets criticism) without even considering that they are not the men-in-the-arena [1] doing the hard work. ---- [1] Whenever I think of criticizing something/someone, I always consider Theodore Roosevelt comment on this sort of behaviour where he once said: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." |