Matt Ridley

I just finished Ridley's new book - The Rational Optimist. I recommend it and will suggest that this be a future ASET book club selection. It is a more nuanced and centered version of Capitalism Democracy and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocer and Ridley makes effective use of anthropology to buttress his thesis. Ridley does a nice job of outlining the benefits to growth and the role that decentralized exchange plays.

He also posted a reaction over on CATO to the current discussion of McCluskey's view of the central role played by values and informal norms.

His full essay is well worth a read - he writes (as he always does so well)

“A true liberalism, what Adam Smith called ‘the obvious and simple system of natural liberty,’ contrary to both the socialist and conservative ideologues, has the historical evidence on its side.” Yes!

So let’s agree that absolutely key to the economic success of the last 200 years is that people are free to innovate in an undirected way. What I cannot bring myself to agree with is that this was an idea that had to be invented. I cannot agree that “what changed around 1700 was the valuation of economic and intellectual novelties within a system of all the virtues.”