… is from page viii of George Gilder’s Foreword to Rainer Zitelmann’s 2024 book, How Nations Escape Poverty:
The chief source of new wealth and growth is entrepreneurial disruption of incumbent wealth.
DBx: So few words; so much insight.
Progressives overlook this reality because they believe that wealth begets itself – that wealth is created by mysterious historical forces and grows more or less automatically. No human choices or genuine action are necessary.
Economic nationalists, in contrast, bemoan entrepreneurial disruption and believe that government can choose how to ‘optimally’ trade-off entrepreneurial disruption (and material wealth) for whatever goodies – more manufacturing jobs, more static communities, more stay-at-home moms, a more god-fearing populace, whatever – the particular economic nationalist in question happens to fancy the country needs more of.
Neither progressives nor economic nationalists have any idea of the complexity of the economy and economic forces that they lash out against.
