A society such as this [Mont Pelerin Society], beyond entertainment or evil has one other possibility -- an intellectual levelling-up of its members. After attendance at three meetings I have experienced nowhere near the edification I can obtain elsewhere and at lower cost. Maybe these folks are too far advanced for me to grasp their wisdom. In any event I am not benefited...These pedants have a gadgetry of scholarship -- degrees, licenses, titles, readings of all old-world philosophy -- to which those outside are not admitted except in condescending tolerance, a form of gentle and mannerly contempt.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A society such as this [Mont Pelerin Society], beyond entertainment or evil has one other possibility -- an intellectual levelling-up of its members. After attendance at three meetings I have experienced nowhere near the edification I can obtain elsewhere and at lower cost. Maybe these folks are too far advanced for me to grasp their wisdom. In any event I am not benefited...These pedants have a gadgetry of scholarship -- degrees, licenses, titles, readings of all old-world philosophy -- to which those outside are not admitted except in condescending tolerance, a form of gentle and mannerly contempt." in the context of "Leonard Read Journals, September 8, 1950" to mean that wisdom is timeless.