The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State

by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

To the contrary, we repeat, the economy is composed of people, and is not a machine. It is like the English language, not like an English steam engine. The people are motivated in varying proportions by prudence, temperance, courage, justice, faith, hope, and love, with the corresponding vices. By way of such principles of motion, they pursue their endlessly diverse projects, knitting and model railroading, a Beckerian “world.” Let them do it, laissez faire. Such an arrangement takes people to be liberated and equal and increasingly competent adults, as against the stolid peasants or helpless proletarians of conservative or progressive theorizing since 1848.