I just got my copy of Deirdre McCloskey’s new Bourgeois Equality which completes her three-volume hymn to the middle class. The first thing that jumps out, in the introductory “Exordium” that tells the story so far, is this: For reasons I do not entirely understand, the clerisy after 1848 turned towards nationalism and socialism... and proliferating regulation for imagined but not factually documented imperfections in the market[.] Gosh, I thought immediately. Isn’t it grand that here in the good old USA we have running for president one nationalist candidate, one socialist candidate, and one regulationist candidate, three anti-capitalist candidates in one. Then I paused for a moment, and I tried to think. What are these anti-capitalist crackpots telling us? And then I realized, plumbing the deep well of my knowledge of the human condition, that this is all about the scapegoat mechanism. Something has gone wrong, but we don’t, we...(Read Full Article)