… is from page 434 of the final (2016) volume – Bourgeois Equality – of Deirdre McCloskey’s soaring trilogy on the essence of bourgeois values, on their transmission, and on their essential role in modern life:
Zero-sum is the default in thinking about my gain and thine. It is the chief error in economic thinking in the street and in politics.
DBx: Or, it is among the chief errors. In addition to the chief error of zero-sum, there is also the error of of failing (as McCloskey says) “to stay for the whole play” – that is, the failure to look past the most immediate consequences of some action or event. There’s also the error of what Hayek calls “constructivism,” which is the fallacy of believing that all observed order is the result of conscious design.
