Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Complexity is too simple

issue 18 August 2012

Pojoaque, near Santa Fe,
New Mexico

This is a magical part of the world — and it’s easy to see why D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and Douglas Adams were tempted to hang around for a while. When James Delingpole finally gets his act together and leads 10,000 Spectator subscribers into the desert to form a libertarian commune, northern New Mexico should be the first place he tries. He’ll have the blessing of a former two-term governor here, triathlete and Everest mountaineer Gary Johnson, now the Libertarian party’s presidential candidate.

As Republican governor, Johnson spent part of his second term campaigning for the decriminalisation of marijuana: when asked of his past drug use, ‘Did you inhale?’, Johnson replied, ‘I barely exhaled.’

Truthful politicians? What other surprises are there? Well, just where you wouldn’t expect it, there is a spectacular 2,000-seat opera house north of Santa Fe.

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