“When innovation is the subject at hand, always quote Deirdre McCloskey.”
From “Beyond ‘Anything That’s Peaceful’: Why Culture Matters,” Students for Liberty, 23 May 2012.
The article quoted the following from Bourgeois Dignity:
“I claim here that the modern world was made by a new, faithful dignity accorded to the bourgeois… and a new, hopeful liberty… And both were necessary. My libertarian friends want liberty alone to suffice, but it seems to me that it has not. Changing laws is not enough (though it is a good start – and rotten laws can surely stop growth cold)… dignity is a sociological factor, liberty an economic one. Dignity concerns the opinion that others have of the shopkeeper. Liberty concerns the laws that constrain him. The society and the economy interact. Yet contrary to a materialist reduction, they are not the same”
