You are quite right, and there is an older commentator than Palahniuk to invoke. The original quote comes from John Maynard Keynes in his 1923 "Tract on Moneta

You are quite right, and there is an older commentator than Palahniuk to invoke. The original quote comes from John Maynard Keynes in his 1923 "Tract on Monetary Reform": But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again. Pray that we will always have someone standing up against the surveillance state.