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… is from page xiii of Deirdre Nansen McCloskey’s and Art Carden’s hot-off-the-press (2020) book, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World [2]:
The evidence is overwhelming that liberty, not coercion by a private master or a public state, inspires people to continuous betterment. For the poorest.
DBx: Yes.
Yet this evidence, as overwhelming as it truly is, is ignored or dismissed by all who pray to the god-state to make the world more closely satisfy the particular fancies of those who pray. Most people who offer such prayers to the state believe it to possess miraculous powers, for only a being in possession of such powers could bring about the prayed-for outcomes.
And as I’ve said before, the fact that these worshippers of the state are unaware that they believe the state to possess god-like powers only further discredits their case for [fill-in-the-blank with whatever particular schemes or outcomes are prayed for].