… is from page 133 of my colleague Richard Wagner’s insightful 2017 intellectual biography of Jim Buchanan, James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy:
A regime grounded on individual liberty will not automatically renew itself as time passes. Renewal requires that people act responsibly to maintain that free republic.
DBx: Perhaps the public good the supply and preservation of which has potentially the highest payoff of all – highest both in material and in ethical dimensions – is the public good of supporting a free society. Under constant attack by the greedy, the ignorant, and the arrogant, a free society is historically rare.
Climate change, whatever its source, poses to the well-being of humanity a risk not one one-thousandth as calamitous as the risk posed by a rejection of the ideas and institutions that maintain private property and contract rights, the rule of law, and competitive markets.
