Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on October 27, 2020
… is from page 103 of the May 9th, 2020, draft of the important monograph – forthcoming this month jointly from the Adam Smith Institute and AIER – by Deirdre N. McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State:
[T]he economy is composed of people, and is not a machine. It is like the English language, not like an English steam engine. The people are motivated in varying proportions by prudence, temperance, courage, justice, faith, hope, and love, with the corresponding vices. By way of such principles of motion, they pursue their endlessly diverse projects, knitting and model railroading…. Let them do it, laissez faire. Such an arrangement takes people to be liberated and equal and increasingly competent adults, as against the stolid peasants or helpless proletarians of conservative or progressive theorizing since 1848.
Comments
