Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page 1 of Deirdre McCloskey’s hot-off-the-press 2022 volume, Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics:

The ethics of liberalism, born in the eighteenth century, should be foundational in a good economic science in all senses of “good.” Liberalism – which is to say the theory of a society of people liberated from hierarchies – is productive in sciences, whether natural or social or humanistic. Free entry (and exit) is foundational in a science or politics or economy. Slaves can’t exit (or enter). Therefore, slaves don’t produce innovation, in art or science or the economy. Look at Nazi painting or Soviet department stores. It’s no accident that art and science have flourished most in the more liberal societies under roughly liberal economic institutions….