How the West (and the Rest) Got Rich

The Great Enrichment of the past two centuries has one primary source: the liberation of ordinary people to pursue their dreams of economic betterment

Deirdre N. McCloskey

May 20, 2016 10:27 a.m. ET

Why are we so rich? An American earns, on average, $130 a day, which puts the U.S. in the highest rank of the league table. China sits at $20 a day (in real, purchasing-power adjusted income) and India at $10, even after their emergence in recent decades from a crippling socialism of $1 a day. After a few more generations of economic betterment, tested in trade, they will be rich, too.

Actually, the “we” of comparative enrichment includes most countries nowadays, with sad exceptions. Two centuries ago, the average world income per human (in present-day prices) was about $3 a day. It had been so since we lived in caves. Now it is $33 a day—which is Brazil’s current level and the level of the U.S. in 1940. Over the past 200 years, the average real income per person—including even such present-day tragedies as Chad and North Korea—has grown by a factor of 10. It is stunning. In countries that adopted trade and economic betterment wholeheartedly, like Japan, Sweden and the U.S., it is more like a factor of 30—even more stunning.

And these figures don’t take into account the radical improvement since 1800 in commonly available goods and services. Today’s concerns over the stagnation of real wages in the U.S. and other developed economies are overblown if put in historical perspective. As the economists Donald Boudreaux and Mark Perry have argued in these pages, the official figures don’t take account of the real benefits of our astonishing material progress.

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But none of the explanations gets it quite right.

What enriched the modern world wasn’t capital stolen from workers or capital virtuously saved, nor was it institutions for routinely accumulating it. Capital and the rule of law were necessary, of course, but so was a labor force and liquid water and the arrow of time.

The capital became productive because of ideas for betterment—ideas enacted by a country carpenter or a boy telegrapher or a teenage Seattle computer whiz. As Matt Ridley put it in his book “The Rational Optimist” (2010), what happened over the past two centuries is that “ideas started having sex.” The idea of a railroad was a coupling of high-pressure steam engines with cars running on coal-mining rails. The idea for a lawn mower coupled a miniature gasoline engine with a miniature mechanical reaper. And so on, through every imaginable sort of invention. The coupling of ideas in the heads of the common people yielded an explosion of betterments.

Look around your room and note the hundreds of post-1800 ideas embedded in it: electric lights, central heating and cooling, carpet woven by machine, windows larger than any achievable until the float-glass process. Or consider your own human capital formed at college, or your dog’s health from visits to the vet.

The ideas sufficed. Once we had the ideas for railroads or air conditioning or the modern research university, getting the wherewithal to do them was comparatively simple, because they were so obviously profitable.

Storefronts along Hudson Street in New York City, circa 1860 to 1900. Photo: Fotosearch/Getty Images

If capital accumulation or the rule of law had been sufficient, the Great Enrichment would have happened in Mesopotamia in 2000 B.C., or Rome in A.D. 100 or Baghdad in 800. Until 1500, and in many ways until 1700, China was the most technologically advanced country. Hundreds of years before the West, the Chinese invented locks on canals to float up and down hills, and the canals themselves were much longer than any in Europe. China’s free-trade area and its rule of law were vastly more extensive than in Europe’s quarrelsome fragments, divided by tariffs and tyrannies. Yet it was not in China but in northwestern Europe that the Industrial Revolution and then the more consequential Great Enrichment first happened.

Why did ideas so suddenly start having sex, there and then? Why did it all start at first in Holland about 1600 and then England about 1700 and then the North American colonies and England’s impoverished neighbor, Scotland, and then Belgium and northern France and the Rhineland?

The answer, in a word, is “liberty.” Liberated people, it turns out, are ingenious. Slaves, serfs, subordinated women, people frozen in a hierarchy of lords or bureaucrats are not. By certain accidents of European politics, having nothing to do with deep European virtue, more and more Europeans were liberated. From Luther’s reformation through the Dutch revolt against Spain after 1568 and England’s turmoil in the Civil War of the 1640s, down to the American and French revolutions, Europeans came to believe that common people should be liberated to have a go. You might call it: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

To use another big concept, what came—slowly, imperfectly—was equality. It was not an equality of outcome, which might be labeled “French” in honor of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Piketty. It was, so to speak, “Scottish,” in honor of David Hume and Adam Smith: equality before the law and equality of social dignity. It made people bold to pursue betterments on their own account. It was, as Smith put it, “allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty and justice.”

And that is the other surprising notion explaining our riches: “liberalism,” in its original meaning of “worthy of a free person.” Liberalism was a new idea. The English Leveller Richard Rumbold, facing the hangman in 1685, declared, “I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him.” Few in the crowd gathered to mock him would have agreed. A century later, advanced thinkers like Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft embraced the idea. Two centuries after that, virtually everyone did. And so the Great Enrichment came.

Not everyone was happy with such developments and the ideas behind them. In the 18th century, liberal thinkers such as Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin courageously advocated liberty in trade. By the 1830s and 1840s, a much enlarged intelligentsia, mostly the sons of bourgeois fathers, commenced sneering loftily at the liberties that had enriched their elders and made possible their own leisure. The sons advocated the vigorous use of the state’s monopoly of violence to achieve one or another utopia, soon.

Intellectuals on the political right, for instance, looked back with nostalgia to an imagined Middle Ages, free from the vulgarity of trade, a nonmarket golden age in which rents and hierarchy ruled. Such a conservative and Romantic vision of olden times fit well with the right’s perch in the ruling class. Later in the 19th century, under the influence of a version of science, the right seized upon social Darwinism and eugenics to devalue the liberty and dignity of ordinary people and to elevate the nation’s mission above the mere individual person, recommending colonialism and compulsory sterilization and the cleansing power of war.

On the left, meanwhile, a different cadre of intellectuals developed the illiberal idea that ideas don’t matter. What matters to progress, the left declared, was the unstoppable tide of history, aided by protest or strike or revolution directed at the evil bourgeoisie—such thrilling actions to be led, naturally, by themselves. Later, in European socialism and American Progressivism, the left proposed to defeat bourgeois monopolies in meat and sugar and steel by gathering under regulation or syndicalism or central planning or collectivization all the monopolies into one supreme monopoly called the state.

While all this deep thinking was roiling the intelligentsia of Europe, the commercial bourgeoisie—despised by the right and the left, and by many in the middle, too—created the Great Enrichment and the modern world. The Enrichment gigantically improved our lives. In doing so, it proved that both social Darwinism and economic Marxism were mistaken. The supposedly inferior races and classes and ethnicities proved not to be so. The exploited proletariat was not driven into misery; it was enriched. It turned out that ordinary men and women didn’t need to be directed from above, and when honored and left alone, became immensely creative.

The Great Enrichment is the most important secular event since human beings first domesticated wheat and horses. It has been and will continue to be more important historically than the rise and fall of empires or the class struggle in all hitherto existing societies. Empire did not enrich Britain. America’s success did not depend on slavery. Power did not lead to plenty, and exploitation was not plenty’s engine. Progress toward French-style equality of outcome was achieved not by taxation and redistribution but by the Scots’ very different notion of equality. The real engine was the expanding ideology of classical liberalism.

The Great Enrichment has restarted history. It will end poverty. For a good part of humankind, it already has. China and India, which have adopted some of economic liberalism, have exploded in growth. Brazil, Russia and South Africa, not to speak of the European Union—all of them fond of planning and protectionism and level playing fields—have stagnated.

Economists and historians from left, right and center cannot explain the Great Enrichment. Perhaps their sciences need revision, toward a “humanomics” that takes ideas seriously. Humanomics doesn’t abandon the economics of arbitrage or entry, or the math of elasticities of demand, or the statistics of regression analysis. But it adds the study of words and meaning and their stunning contribution to our enrichment.

Over 200 years, average world income per person has soared from about $3 a day to a stunning $33 a day. Photo: Getty Images

What public policy to further this revolution? As little as is prudent. As Adam Smith said, “it is the highest impertinence…in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people.” We certainly can tax ourselves to give a hand up to the poor. Smith himself gave to the poor with a liberal hand. The liberalism of a Christian, or for that matter of a Jew, Muslim or Hindu, recommends it. But note, too, that 95% of the enrichment of the poor since 1800 has come not from charity but from a more productive economy.

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, had the right idea in what he said to Reason magazine last year: “When people ask, ‘Will our children be better off than we are?’ I reply, ‘Yes, but it’s not going to be due to the politicians, but the engineers.’ ”

I would supplement his remark. It will also come from the businessperson who buys low to sell high, the hairdresser who spots an opportunity for a new shop, the oil roughneck who moves to and from North Dakota with alacrity and all the other commoners who agree to the basic bourgeois deal: Let me seize an opportunity for economic betterment, tested in trade, and I’ll make us all rich.

Dr. McCloskey is distinguished professor emerita of economics, history, English and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This essay is adapted from her new book, “Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World,” published by the University of Chicago Press.

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Charles Pierce subscriber

I think the better view is why have some counties done will and others have not done well. In most of the third world the common man can not hold title to the property that he owns or works, he therefore can not use the land to borrow money to improve the method of using the land to his benefit. In the west the ownership of the land is embedded in Common Law and even the Code Napoleon, and the execution of the law has been for the most part been in the favor of the common man, and not the crown. We are seeing a reversal of that in the modern liberal democracies of the west, it will become a greater problem as time goes on and governments make more and more decision on how the economy will function. History should tell us that command economies do not work and eventually fail. The workers like them because they tend to make life easier but not necessarily better for the common man. The term common man is used to reflect the whole of society not just the male portion.

Alexander Bayne-Powell subscriber

Yes this is good however...If wages increased with inflation at 2%per year starting at $3 over 200years would be $157 not $33

@Alexander Bayne-Powell that is true but it has not been a straight line from year 1 to year 200. Panics, recessions and depressions along the way tend to make growth uneven and in some cases cause a decline in the growth of the economy. The process needs to be looked at year over year and by nation. The classic is The salary of the President, if you inflate the salary of George Washington to the present we should be paying the President about $8M.

Tim Murphy subscriber

Brava, Dr. McCloskey!

Robert Fairless

I enjoyed Dr MCCloskey's article; it was interesting and informative. Some critics in a snobbish frame of mind think it is superficial. But I complement Dr MCCloskey because she aimed and caught her intended audience, i.e. the ordinary public eager to know more. It was not aimed at academics although some would benefit from an impartial reading.

Without any academic knowledge, and taking the simplest view, I think recent progress is the product of open and inventive minds, unrestrained by either governments or religion. Our enlightenment starts with natural resources miraculously manipulated and exploited to produce steam and electricity. Everything follows from that.

Anthony Tsang subscriber

I wonder if Dr McClosekey's thesis may not be an oversimplification. The link between liberty or liberalism and ideas having sex may not be as straightforward and direct as Dr McClosekey has suggested. In part because liberty did not take root in England, at least not on a scale having an impact on economic performance, until the 20th Century. England was certainly not that liberal when the 13 British colonies in North American declared their independence. So even if the notion of ideas having sex is capable of explaining the explosion of earnings as observed by Dr McClosekey, might that notion a manifestation of an underlying factor rather than the factor itself. And may that factor not be the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment ended centuries of religious doctrinal dogmas. In its replacement was reasoning and the scientific method to establish new knowledge.

Jeffrey Long subscriber

England was the most liberal society on the planet and had been since Henry II when he began England's Common Law. That was the beginning. England may not have been as liberal as they became but they started what grew into it.

@Jeffrey Long Henry II established the common law as a set of legal rules common to the entire kingdom. That is to achieve legal consistency. That facilitated administration. But the common law became too rigid to the point of creating injustice. Hence the rise of the court of chancery circa 1280. Today, we have two sets of English (and Welsh) Law (Scotland has a separate and different legal system): common law and equity. In any case, England remained a catholic country under Papal rule until 1532 to 1534, when Henry VIII as head of the Church of England broke away from Rome. England was under feudalism until the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660. Even after the English Reformation, English intellectual life was still under religious dogma. I would not consider pre-Enlightenment England as liberal, even making allowance for interpreting historical events through a 21st Century lens.

Gerry Dail subscriber

@Anthony Tsang You may have a point regarding the Enlightenment, but it would be quite a mistake not to recognize that Judeo-Christianity vectored with philosophy founded in Athens led to the affirmation that each individual human being has intrinsic value and is essentially equal in the Eyes of God. Without that affirmation, I believe it can be argued that the "Enlightenment" would probably never have occurred at least in the West and more than likely anywhere else either for that matter. It is too simplistic, too narrow-minded to make the claim that only through "reasoning" and the scientific method can one establish new knowledge that has apparently "value."

@Gerry Dail @Anthony Tsang It is hard to ignore what happened after the golden classical age. Feudalism was the economic organisation of English society until the 17th Century. Even after the apparent abolition of feudalism, illiteracy placed a severe limitation on the pursuit of individual economic freedom. Compared to the narrow confines of religious doctrines. An objective approach to knowledge creation using reasoning and the scientific method was a considerable improvement and is undoubtedly a superior mode of intellectual development. Had it not been for that, we would still be living in a world believing the Sun rotates around the Earth, to say the least.

Robert Whitten subscriber

Mr.Archer - I can speak from at least a small bit of experience in South America where I have done business for many years and have made business friends and friends from business. I am not an academic, just a common business person. All I have is experience and not a bit of theory. My friends there and my experience inform me that capitalism was certianly attempted and still is (one recent exception is Venezuela), but it was strictly managed by central authorities and could be characterized most generously as a form of crony capitalism where well-heeled insiders have the advantage. I also have friends from India. Same there - massive central government interference. The little guy/gal has no chance. In these areas of the world and some others you mention, small business and individuals, where great ideas are born, can not prosper.

I believe that I will read her book to see if it is as sketchy and ideological as is your comment.

Ewart David Archer subscriber

Prof. McCloskey writes a lot but never got a job at a first-rate university.

We know why. If this sketchy, ideological journalism is the best he/she can do after a lifetime of reading, then she is little better than a local high school teacher.

The accomplishments of Stalin, Mao, Lee Kuan Yu, and other "dictators" can't fit into her simplistic narrative. No explanation is offered for the failure of capitalism in most of Latin America and in the Indian, African and Caribbean colonies of the British and French empires. That covers most of the world's people.

Those were not failures of capitalism. Those were failures of government policies, government favoritism, and government corruption.

But more importantly, to the extent that classic liberalism and capitalism were allowe to exist, those countries have also been enriched.

@Ewart David Archer Other than mass murder and the confiscation of what wealth there was in their societies, what exactly are the "accomplishments" of Stalin and Mao? Methinks that lumping in Lee Kuan Yu with these other two characters might be a bit of overreach.

Mr. Long nicely counters your contention that capitalism failed in most of Latin America, India, Africa and the Caribbean colonies of France and Great Britain. It is hard for something to fail when it was never tried, except perhaps in Argentina at the turn of the last century. Of course, they have managed to botch that up since around the 1930's.

TY ANDROS subscriber

This is correct with the addition of cheap inexpensive energy which allowed the common man to free his time for more productive endeavors. The car, washing machine, modern heating and cooling, automation, transportation, communications, commercial farming, all have yielded thousands of percent of productivity gains.

william payne subscriber

Very uplifting,but it is a very short detour to the hell on earth known as N.Korea.

bruce seibert subscriber

Isn't it fascinating that there's no mention of Islam's contributions. Hmmmm.

Angela Luft subscriber

I am currently reading about the ancient Egyptians, I wonder how far along they could have gotten had the lower classes been equal to the pharaoh and viziers. It's hard to say, after all by the 1700 things like iron had been invented and mathematics had come along way, so the European were standing on the shoulders of past generations. Would the Egyptians had figured out better metals than copper had their society been equal?

Terry Chapman subscriber

@Angela Luft

Miles Dudley subscriber

@Angela Luft I think it's pretty obvious after reading this article that the only reason we beat the ancient Egyptians to the invention of the nuclear bomb is because they failed to develop true inter-subjectivity.

mike budig subscriber

No NO NO it was the Federal Government that created prosperity.... Didn't you hear Mr. Obama?

Dave Lind user

Tick... Tick...Tick...Tick....Tick...

$19 plus TRILLION in Federal Debt and counting...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Tick...Tick...Tick...Tick...Tick...

Gabriel Zee subscriber

Dr. McCloskey: What you had written may be true - living conditions have improved for many. On the other hand, is the trend sustainable? Is the current prosperity (for many) a result of the overuse of natural resources (fossil fuel, land, water, air) in such a way that extinction rates for almost all other species are rising exponentially? Are we not seeing a "tragedy of the commons" with most of us not worrying about external costs to the environment and other species? Can humans continue this path or are humans going to be wise enough to find a way to live within our physical and environmental limitations?

TOM REEVE subscriber

@Gabriel Zee

The current wide-spread prosperity and the possible escape from extreme poverty for the world's bottom 10% is contrary to chronically erroneous predictions of limitations theorist and the leftists regressives. Paul Ehrlich not only lost his commodities bet, but he also erroneously predicted cannibalism in England by the 1970's. Others predicted "peak oil" before our current surplus arose. A General Atomics pilot project proved fuel could be produced from algae and scaled to about $2 per gallon....innovation works!

Rather than consistently failing central controllers and self-appointed elites wishing to run others' lives, we need to increase individual freedom to innovate and increase property protection for individuals to reap rewards for such innovation.

No, we are not seeing a tragedy of the commons. Even the UN predicts that world population will peak this century -- without mass starvation. We are not insects, and should not act like sheep.

Optimistically yours,

Pooranalingam Ravindran user

The New Growth Theory is put out as the answer to your question. Apparently, as people get wealthy they have fewer children but more well educated ones. (Economist Gary Becker calls this quality-quantity tradeoff). Therefore, the world goes on to a trajectory where there is enough for almost everyone. Soon people in poorer countries will have fewer children. They call this Demographic Transition. This is unique to Moden Economic Growth of the past two centuries. Prior to this, everytime there was a prosperity windfall people multiplied quickly and abundance recersed to scarcity within a generation.

This is all nice, but lets see how far we go from here.

Jeffrey Harding subscriber

I don't know what McClosky would say, though I have a pretty good guess, but the concepts you mention originate with Thomas Malthus and have been proven wrong time after time. Paul Ehrlich, Garrett Hardin, and others, modern Malthusians, predicted the end of civilization many times -- I don't believe that has or will happen. The point of the essay is that left to our own devices we will continue to overcome obstacles put in our way. Resources expand, not diminish. And if they do diminish we will always find a solution.

RAY ANTONELLI subscriber

@Gabriel Zee @Jeffrey Harding 10 or 15 years ago there were many articles about "Peak Oil" and that it was about to be reached by all the producers the world over. Which would cause price spikes and all kind of hardship. Of course it never happened because of fracking, a world wide over supply of natural gas and many other external factors around the world.

Dr. McCloskey also spoke about the temporary interruptions like Marxism and institutionalism. Ultimately Liberty and freedom of expression were/are the biggest drivers of progress...

Luis Flores subscriber

I like what the author is saying. Although, the author is right in pointing out that institutions and politics are not responsible for the betterment of humanity, they certainly hinder the progress for people. California, for example, is an example of politics hindering the progress for Californians. High taxes on income, property, sales, business, and gasoline; hurt the very people that are trying to move up in the economic ladder. Don't get me started on regulations on construction that hinder the ability of developers to construct more apartments to help easy rent cost. As a result, cost of living is increasing higher everyday.

robert barrows subscriber

After reading this article, you can vent some of your frustrations about money to a song called "Big Bucks." You can hear a free clip of "Big Bucks" at www.barrows.com/music.html

henry blaufox subscriber

Commentary like this essay (not to mention the book, in all likelihood) are fhe sort of thing that cause outrage on the modern day US college campuses - protests, "trigger warnings," demands to prevent the authors of such as this to be denied speaking engagements, or denial of tenure if they are hired at all. Many, if not most faculty and college administrators these days would be appalled to find such views presented by their colleagues. That's what's so sad. Brave, Prof. McCloskey, and WSJ for giving this unadulterated classical liberal a platform.

Now if we can just solve the problem on the campus.

T Mack subscriber

@henry blaufox

A good step in the right direction to solving this problem is to ELIMINATE ALL TENURE in colleges and universities.

@T Mack @henry blaufox Many years ago I saw a note on a dorm room door as follows: Whats the difference between a terrorist and tenured professor? You can negotiate with a terrorist.

ALAN SEWELL subscriber

"The citizens of America, as sole lords and proprietors of a vast tract of continent, are the actors on a most conspicuous theater which seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity."

So said George Washington. He and the other Founders could see that we inherited the best traditions of English liberty and capitalism. Once we got King George out of the mix, we were able to combine the two and turn the better part of a continent into improved real estate.

Free Enterprise WORKS.

Socialism does NOT WORK.

Socialism made Russia a Great Power. China too.Capitalism has kept Latin America in poverty.

@Ewart David Archer

Did you read the very first paragraph of the article:

"- - - An American earns, on average, $130 a day, which puts the U.S. in the highest rank of the league table. China sits at $20 a day (in real, purchasing-power adjusted income) and India at $10, even after their emergence in recent decades from a crippling socialism of $1 a day. - - -"

You've got to be kidding.

Nobody is so stupid to believe your comment.

Or maybe you are.

PATRICK THOMAS subscriber

F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" is as meaningful and germaine now as when Hayek wrote it 70 years ago.

Good for McCloskey, more scholars as well as leaders should rise to the defense of the system of free enterprise.

CHRIS Gaudino subscriber

Another important element to Western success is routed in our Judaeo Christian tradition. Part of this tradition holds that all men are created equal in the eyes of God thus by dissemination we should also be equal in each others eyes . This is the foundation of our judicial system , property rights and contract law. These extrapolations of religious concepts have made the West more successful because individuals have no fear of becoming wealthy. When people come to understand the boundaries of the law are essentially set, and that the law is impartial, they begin to take risks.

This is not the case in dictatorships or socialist systems where wealth is viewed as a threat. In many of these economic systems wealth once accumulated is often seized (nationalized) taxed or regulated out of the control of those who earned it .Thus, making the effort of creating a better life for yourself pointless.

Capitalism and individualism fit together like a hand in a glove

@CHRIS Gaudino ::: Conservativism is the defense of Western Civilization, its values, its ethics, its time-tested heritage. ProgressiveLiberal relativism, on the other hand, is simply willfully dishonest.

JOHN NELSON user

How deeply ironic "Western values" are now used against the birthplace of western civilization - Greece!

Global financialization, I would argue, isn't a "western value," but rather a new phenomenon born of technology.

Property rights and the rule of law were both born of socialism, which at its core necessitates central control of property, and production. Providing a rule of law for the orderly transfer of assets and provide protocols for trade are the hallmarks of socialized interaction.

Thank you socialism!

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's SOCIALISM will STOP all these Enrichment benefits.

According to them:

"Getting Rich (evenly moderately) is EVIL"

except for them, of course.

They want to make Everyone EQUAL:

- EQUALLY Poor

- EQUALLY Lazy

- EQUALLY Dumb

- TOTALLY Dependent on a corrupt Government.

What a Plan for DISASTER.

Tore Fossum subscriber

All that having been said, there are still people all across the political spectrum who would like to yoke others to do their bidding, and make themselves richer than anyone, by taking over the governmental reins of power. Human life has always been a struggle between those who would be free to pursue their own lives in peace, and others would would subjugate all around them to their will. Every generation has to fight its own battle for liberty, for its foes are like the many-headed hydra. Now as true as ever, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

@Tore Fossum

Re: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Truer words have not been said my friend.

Dr. McCloskey has penned a very good explanation of why we are so rich. Part and parcel of this explanation is the free exchange of ideas that has exploded since the usage of the printing press, which made possible newspapers and journals. More recently has been the electronic transmission of knowldege, to the point where anyone with a smartphone can access more information in seconds than was stored in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. The recombination of ideas is a powerful metaphor. Reagan said that a rising tide lifts all boats. That is true, for the least among us live in luxury compared to the still backward countries in the world.

Ronald Pritchett subscriber

For those who ponder why the USA has grown so far, so fast - consider the records housed in Leadville, Colorado at the Mining Hall of Fame:

http://www.mininghalloffame.org/page/hall-fame

US laws allowing optimization of one's private property, including the minerals therein, are unique in the world. Forces of individual creativity are unleashed in this property freedom; the result is maximized benefits for all. The Left knows the power of individual freedom in property, finds it threatening, and tries continuously to extinguish private property rights.

Vigorously defend property rights, and you can become rich, too. Allow private property rights to be banned, and watch poverty become the rule for most people.

Brooks Van Pelt subscriber

I heartily agree with Dr. McCloskey's thoughts. The final paragraph of her essay speaks strongly of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand".

Lawrence Washington subscriber

@JOHN NELSON

Nelson's comment is Leftist nonsense. Another attempt to discredit free markets Capitalism by explaining them away as a temporary early phase in economic development, much as Marx tried & failed. After geographic frontiers have been "exploited", then freedom must give way to the "realities" of collectivist society & it's arbitrary controls. They focus on non-essentials & are wrong even on those.

Man's mind, ideas & innovation to solve challenges within constraints are the essential driver of man's success and progress. But since each man's mind is individual in nature, the myth of a collective or social "mind" denies this reality. Ditto the "need" to muzzle individuals by unjustifiable majority controls.

Economic progress depends on identification & protection of individual rights, as Ayn Rand identified & as the Founders realized to create the first (and only) nation established on that idea.

Frontiers include global competition, limited resources, etc. Nothing new.

@Lawrence Washington

Your Ayn Rand view of the world is as fictional as her novels. I'm not sure how her musings became so ingrained in many conservative neo-liberals.

The reality is socialism, more so than capitalism. To live in a civilized society, we each cede a bit of our Liberty to the common good of society - you know, that pledge of allegiance isn't just one directional. Pure capitalism can never exist because even market participants require socialistic mutually agreed upon term to operate - settlement protocols, hours of operation at the simplest. Whereas, since we live mostly in urban environments now, we each must yield some liberties to the whole, or what you endeavor to label collective.

Socialism is the reality, capitalism just a set of market-based tools to elicit certain outcomes. Where these tools can be occilated, basic rule of law and care for society shouldn't be.

Au contraire. Your inaccurate or ignorant characterizations of socialism/collectivism as benevolent and for the common good is the opposite of the moral and practical reality. Your smear of capitalism as an unworkable fantasy that can never exist, especially in an urban or modern society, is the opposite of the truth & of history.

You (and all the other smug condescending statists) have it backwards. Socialism is anti-man, immoral and an impractical failure, with a unbroken record of abysmal failure as well as corruption. Under that, all men are the property of the tribe, the collective, "society" - which means the state can rule over and dispose of their lives and property as it see fit, supposedly for the "common good". There's no such thing as the "common good". It's an undefinable disguise for some men to rule over and exploit others. It's justification is the malevolent immoral code of altruism & self-sacrifice.

Capitalism is voluntary. Statism rules by force.

What pure market theorists advocate is ownership by excercise of greater power, similar to what we saw in the late 1800's in the lawlessness of the western territories where wealthy ranchers were able to intimidate and coerce away ownership to grazing land and water rights. A form of feudalism that can be seen today in our inner cities in gang activity and during heavy immigration periods in early 20th century NYC. Rule by intimidation is what you advocate vs the rule of law in socialism which requires subjugation of conflict to a court of peers and an adversarial form of Justice.

Those who've amassed capital and the power that accompanies it always find democracy and socialism that flourishes from it as a threat, and so seek to undermine it. For instance, I holdout the efforts to impede voting of the poor, elderly and those in the working class. Much like those villain ranchers out on the frontier west we see depicted in so many John Wayne movies, they seek to undermine our democracy and malign socialism.

Again, you set up false straw men to knock down. Feudalism is what the modern socialist welfare states & dictatorships create. Gangsterism of inner (Left - Democrat controlled) cities is a result of the gov't improperly giving favors(entitlements) & cronyism (patronage). The only proper moral system is separation of economy and state. Otherwise corruption and injustice results - from government powers that should have been limited to protecting individual rights, but were instead stretched to unlimited controls..

The abuses of both ranching & railroads of the wild west were made possible by statism & the corruption it enables. Gov't monopolies & favoritism are features of statist government, not limited gov't of capitalism as created by the Founders. When gov'ts improperly are allowed to give favors or disfavors in business & property, that is corruption. The ranchers and railroads that got gov't monopolies were the problem, not those that never rec'd gov't favors.

You're swimming so deep in your own rhetoric, you're not hearing my point. Economy and government aren't inseparable and our founding fathers had no intent in them being separable. Or at least half didn't. You conservative free market zombies somehow forget there were federalists involved in our country's founding too. Adams and Jefferson tussled mightly over the extent of the federal government's involvement, which resulted in significant debate and compromise. Your guy, Jefferson, happened to be the party bargaining from a conflict of interest as his wealth depended mostly on the suffering of human chattel and concubines under his auspices. Adams, from his reverence for the law and humanity.

I choose Adamx and humanity, you may have the poet rapist.

There is nothing voluntary about a "choice" to work for any of dozens of capitalists, all of whom exploit you by using you to generate their "profit" (theft of surplus value).

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