… is from page 262 of Matt Ridley’s indispensable 1997 book, The Origins of Virtue:
And yet [Margaret] Thatcher and her allies were articulating what is, in some ways, the most Rousseauian argument – that government does not impose virtue on inherently evil people, but corrupts the original virtue of the market place….
We are not so nasty that we need to be tamed by intrusive government, nor so nice that too much government does not bring out the worst in us, both as its employees and as its clients.
