Tweet [1]
A loyal Cafe Hayek patron – whose name I was asked not to reveal – e-mailed the following to me after reading my response [2] to Pankaj Mishra’s recent error-laden attempt to discredit free trade and free markets. Readers will recall that I took Mishra to task for his argument that China’s post-Mao economic growth is the result, not of what market liberalization has occurred in China, but, rather, of the continuing economic interventions of the Chinese state.
Another analogy [of the sort that Mishra would fall for]:
A man covered in chains cannot walk. Remove some chains, he begins to walk, but it’s not because some chains were removed, it’s because some chains remain.
My correspondent’s analogy is far better than the balloons-beneath-a-tarpaulin analogy that I used.