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Liam Baldwin's avatar

> “Liberalism, not science or Enlightenment or investment or slavery, made us very rich, and reasonably virtuous”

“not science” here is interesting (as well as Enlightenment). Certainly these other things were large contributors. And maybe because (!) of liberalism, but that doesn’t make them competing explanations for prosperity.

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Knight Templar's avatar

Liberalism is how one splits up the pie. Similar to the exhausting rhetoric that defines Greek politics to this day, as they (realistically) have little hope that capital investment will increase the size of the pie. Just investing in shifts along the production possibilities frontier.

USA had it all--like when a Professor of Math told me that if a mapping is C2 (2nd derivatives are continuous), then I've got just about everything--vast natural resources, open trade borders between states, large and productive agricultural sector, significant differences in topology, and a large, fairly well educated workforce that was, for many decades, committed to hard work.

Dierdre, where is this in South America?

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Rafe Champion's avatar

FIVE PILLARS OF PEACE, FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY

Critical rationalism

Classical liberalism

Sound economics

A robust moral framework

Abundant, cheap and reliable electricity

https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/five-pillars-of-peace-freedom-and?r=5c3gj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

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Loren's avatar

My favorite author 😊 If you read her Bourgeois series you will understand how the world works as well as anyone and better than most.

She details hundreds of years of economic history in the most readable fashion of any history I’ve read in 50 years 😊👏👏👏👍🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

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