… is from page xxx of the just-published third volume – Bourgeois Equality – in Deirdre McCloskey’s pioneering trilogy on the essence and role of bourgeois values in modern life (links added):
The theory of great wealth espoused by the peasantry and proletariat and their soi-disant champions among the leftist clerisy is non-desert by luck or theft. Likewise, the theory of great wealth espoused by the aristocracy and their own soi-disant champions among the rightish clerisy is desert by inheritance, itself justified by ancient luck or theft, an inheritance we bloodline aristoi should receive without psychologically comforting rationalizations. By contrast, the theory of great wealth espoused by the bourgeoisie and its friends, the liberal liberal economists such as Smith and Mill and Friedman … is desert by a skill in supplying ethically, without force or fraud, what people are willing to buy.
…..
