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… is from page 285 of Matt Ridley’s marvelous new (2020) book, How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom [2] (link added):
Britain, too, was slow to provide public support for science compared with France and Germany, but as [Terence] Kealey observes [3]: ‘the continent supposed markets failed in science, the UK supposed they did not, and the industrial revolution was British, not French or German.’
DBx: Yes.
Only one error is more commonplace than to underestimate the creativity and abilities of people acting voluntarily – that is, acting in ways that each individual chooses, uncoerced by other human beings. That more-commonplace error is to vastly overestimate the creativity and abilities of people possessing the power to coerce fellow human beings.