Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 68 of the 1983 Transaction Publishers edition of Redvers Opie’s 1934 translation of Joseph Schumpeter’s 1912 book, The Theory of Economic Development:

The slow and continuous increase in time of the national supply of productive means and of savings is obviously an important factor in explaining the course of economic history through the centuries, but it is completely overshadowed by the fact that development consists primarily in employing existing resources in a different way, in doing new things with them, irrespective of whether those resource increase or not…. Different methods of employment, and not saving and increases in the available quantity of labor, have changed the face of the economic world in the last fifty years.

DBx: Thus you can understand Deirdre McCloskey’s frustration with the continued use of the term “capitalism” to describe the modern market order. The essential distinguishing feature of this order is its orgy of innovations introduced into and tested in markets.