Listen to Dead People

It's amazing how we sometimes believe that we the living are always on the forefront of knowledge. That we progress ceaselessly, always upwards and that we know more than our grandfathers did and we can therefore ignore their insights. We tell ourselves stories about how very different our society is today than it was in their times and so we can make up our own rules. How vain we are. The fact is that there is a host of ideas out there, written by people who now lack a pulse, that were somehow forgotten or ignored, but have a far better insight than 99% of the soundwaves that fly into our ears on a daily basis. Here are some of the ones I find interesting:

"It means forgetting that the execution of these regulations is always entrusted to men who may have all the more interest in fraud or in conniving at fraud since the fraud which they might commit would be covered in some way by the seal of public authority and by the confidence which this seal inspires in the consumers."
-Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) about how foolish it is to believe government regulators will always look out for our own good as opposed to actors on the market who are supposedly always just trying to con us, while government agents are angels and cannot be corrupt.
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If the king "should tell the tyrant's usual lie that he applies the profit from debasement to the public advantage, he must not be believed, because he might as well take my coat and say he needed it for the public service".
-Nicole Oresme (1325-1382) on how governments have always used the tool of money debasement to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else and then to add insult to injury, had the nerve to try to convince us that this is really for our own good.
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"Disputes among the ordinary people are merely trivial matters, for what scope of consequences can a contest of strength between ordinary fellows generate? They have no spreading lands to arouse avarice... they wield no authority through which they can advance their struggle. Their power is not such that they can assemble mass followings, and they command no awe that might quell [such gatherings] by their opponents. How can they compare with a display of the royal anger, which can deploy armies and move battalions, making people who hold no enemies attack states that have done no wrong?"
-Pao Ching-yen (4th century AD) on the devastating results of government force.
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What did these people know that we don't? Were they correct? Do these words seem like a relic of the past or can we use their knowledge and apply it to the challenges of today?