From whence derives governments that respect property rights and free market economies? They don't just happen, people make them happen, against great odds.
The people who founded this country knew how to read, write, and do arithmetic before they had a government that respected their property rights, or a free market economy.
Read Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital - what you learn in there about the development of property law in the US may surprise you. It did me, and I took 5 classes on different aspects of property law in law school.
I don't know if you've studied the development of the philosophy of laissez faire, but that may be instructive, too. Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation is fascinating, although he gets a lot wrong, according to reviews I've read. Anyway, it didn't just happen. If you don't want to read Polanyi, read about Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and the Manchester School of Economics. |
