INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE TO ECONOMIZE ON TRANSACTION COSTS. At Number 2 Pencil, thoughts on bad language and bad manners, linking to one Briton's assessment.

The middle class learned a long time ago that even their least intellectually able children can still get on in the world armed with please, thank you, and a winning smile, whereas the children of the offensive and coarse, to whom pleasantries are a foreign language, are fodder only for sullenly pushing burgers out drive-through windows.

If that.