Ridley also suggests that scientific central planning, especially in the form of public funding of research, poses problems. In 2015, for example, the Institute for International Economics found that research and development in “the business sector had high social returns, and hence contributed to growth, but there was no evidence in this analysis of positive effects from government R&D.” It would be really surprising if government R&D did not help give birth to some technological breakthroughs—nuclear power and the Internet leap to mind. Still, a 2014 paper published in PLoS Medicine estimated that 85 percent of public research resources are wasted.

What’s more, a 2015 study in PLoS Biology alarmingly suggested that half of all preclinical research is irreproducible. Replication and cumulative knowledge production are cornerstones of the scientific progress. This means that in U.S. that about $28 billion in annual public biomedical research funding, arguably, is squandered.

And then there is the evolution of government. States emerged from protection rackets in which a gang monopolizing violence demanded payment of goods and services—taxes—in exchange for promises to defend local farmers and artisans from predation by rival gangs. “Tudor monarchs and the Taliban are cut from exactly the same cloth,” summarizes Ridley.

But two to three centuries ago, the fractured polities of Western Europe provided an open, speculative space where novel ideas about property rights, free trade, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and limits on government could mutate and grow. Where those bottom-up conceptual mutations took hold, technological innovation sped forward, incomes rose, and civil liberties were recognized. Once established, liberal societies are veritable evolution machines that frenetically generate new mutations and swiftly recombine them to produce a vast array of new products, services, and social institutions that enable ever more people to flourish. So far liberal societies are outcompeting—in the sense of being richer and more appealing—those polities that are closer to the original protection rackets.