… is from page 62 of Johan Norberg’s excellent 2023 book, The Capitalist Manifesto (original emphasis):
[T]he market economy is the first economic system that makes it profitable to be colour-blind and look for the best supply and the best demand, regardless of who is responsible for it. Of course, it will not make everyone colorblind, but it does so more than otherwise would have been the case (especially in combination with the liberal values on which capitalism is based). Attitude surveys show that Western market economies are the world’s least racist societies.
DBx: Yes.
Indeed, in the modern market economy, to find large collections of overt racists you must look to governments and the non-profit sector, especially higher education. Shielded from the forces of competition, and largely living off of funds either extracted from taxpayers or cajoled out of gullible philanthropists, too many Western intellectuals give vent to their racist predilections. Throw a stone in a university faculty club or in the coffee room of a randomly chosen nonprofit outfit. Only there do you have a real likelihood of hitting a genuine racist, someone obsessed with skin color or ethnicity and absolutely certain of his or her theory of the inherent moral inferiority of particular sorts of individuals.
