… is from page 346 of the 1990 Transaction Publishers reprint of W.H. Hutt’s 1936 volume, Economists and the Public:
And it is when demand is impartial, when purchasers are completely ignorant or indifferent to the status (e.g. rank, age, sex, race, nationality or religion) of producers, and when other institutions do not protect status, that this tendency to equality finds realization.
DBx: Occupational-licensing requirements, subsidies (such as those doled out through the U.S. Export-Import Bank to its crony clients), and protective tariffs are some of the chief means by which the state undermines the healthful impartiality here praised by Hutt. And the more this impartiality is undermined, the more does status replace contract as each person’s means of prospering and advancing in life. This bargain works out well for the fortunate few who attain status; it’s a calamity for the great majority of their fellow citizens.
