I find it fascinating when people think they can just make up bullshit. Tragically, that means that I'm fascinated a bunch of the time.
The most recent time though was earlier today when Steven Rattner was on NBC misattributing the ideas of someone over at the Hoover Institute for that of a "Scottish political theorist in the 17th century".
Check it out, skip to about 4 minutes 20 seconds:
In this case "Ferguson's Law" was self-coined by Niall Ferguson in his April 2024 op-ed in Bloomberg where he states:
My sole contribution to the statute book of historiography — what I call Ferguson’s Law — states that any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long. True of Hapsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire, this law is about to be put to the test by the US beginning this very year, when (according to the CBO) net interest outlays will be 3.1% of GDP, defense spending 3.0%. Extrapolating defense spending on the assumption that it remains consistently 48% of total discretionary spending (the average of 2014-23), the gap between debt service and defense is going to widen rapidly in the coming years. By 2041, the CBO projections suggest, interest payments (4.6% of GDP) will be double the defense budget (2.3%). Between 1962 and 1989, by way of comparison, interest payments averaged 1.8% of GDP; defense 6.4%.
This stems from a paper that Ferguson is writing where he calls out the ideas of another Scot, Adam Ferguson, who states:
States have endeavoured, in some instances, by pawning their credit, instead of employing their capital, to disguise the hazards they ran. They have found, in the loans they raised, a casual resource, which encouraged their enterprises. They have seemed, by their manner of erecting transferable funds, to leave the capital for purposes of trade, in the hands of the subject, while it is actually expended by the government. They have, by these means, proceeded to the execution of great national projects, without suspending private industry, and have left future ages to answer, in part, for debts contracted with a view to future emolument. So far the expedient is plausible, and appears to be just. The growing burden too, is thus gradually laid; and if a nation be to sink in some future age, every minister hopes it may still keep afloat in his own. But the measure, for this very reason, is, with all its advantages, extremely dangerous, in the hands of a precipitant and ambitious administration, regarding only the present occasion, and imagining a state to be inexhaustible, while a capital can be borrowed, and the interest be paid. … an expense, whether sustained at home or abroad, whether a waste of the present, or an anticipation of future, revenue, if it bring no proper return, is to be reckoned among the causes of national ruin.
—Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), Part V, Section V.
but the "law" as declared is that of Niall Ferguson...
So, clearly not ancient history but at least he got the nationality right. At least I know to be skeptical of the guy who doesn't check his sources.
Also, I see that the ding-dong is even repeating his claim on his own blog.