“If liberalism is a theory of being an adult, nationalism and socialism are nostalgic longings for the comfort of childhood. Nationalism reproduces our father, the king and country for which we are willing to die. Socialism reproduces our mother, who will protect and nourish us… Many versions of the father-mother government have been disastrously bad for human welfare.”
– Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich
Poverty was the default position from the beginning of time. But by the nineteenth century, the poor didn’t stay poor for long after leaving the agrarian life for work in the cities. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and a new idea for thriving, the spark of production would soon roar around the world. Today’s poor live larger than Europe’s ancient Kings. In 1800, 95 percent of the world was in poverty; today, it is less than 10 percent.
It was neither government regulations nor redistribution schemes, Christian charity, nor materialism that enabled ordinary people to succeed for the first time. Its betterment came by removing the chains and opening up commerce from the bottom up and not just the top down. While many still claim that the Industrial Revolution is to blame for persistent poverty and ongoing inequality, its sister pillar of classical liberalism made the Great Enrichment possible. In fact, liberalism led to America’s founding which ensured the right to life, liberty, and happiness.
Classical liberalism, a philosophy of personal autonomy, free markets, and economic freedom, eroded the hierarchy of aristocracy and authoritarianism by raising the working class. Beginning in 1517, it was liberalism that obliterated the idea that one thrives at the expense of another, allowing all to rise. Its effects were a cascade of innovation. Coercive competitions over the centuries came from aristocracy, communism, the welfare state, and administrative regulation.
In Deirdre McCloskey and Art Carden’s 2020 book, “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich”, economists McCloskey and Carden answer the question of where modern economic growth came from, making the case that human liberty brought about the Great Enrichment beginning in the 1800s. Based exclusively on McCloskey’s Bourgeois Trilogy, “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich”, highlights how the history of liberalism singlehandedly made the ordinary bourgeoisie, extraordinary. The ensuing economic improvement came from ideas that led to both innovation and freedom.
In her three-book series, McCloskey outlines the explosion of real income following the introduction of liberalism and the Industrial Revolution. New governments replaced hierarchical systems allowing wealth creation to the average citizens for the first time, which McCloskey coined the bourgeois spirit. In The Bourgeois Virtues (2006), McCloskey explores how the combination of character and virtue and the emergence of capitalism resulted in astonishing economic growth. From rational discernment to self-control, risk-taking, and fair competition, capitalism rewarded good virtue. In The Bourgeois Dignity (2010), culture changed when commerce was no longer deemed unseemly, and trade became respectable among the common class. Providing unprecedented prosperity to an unprecedented number of people, the worst off, often benefited the most. The Bourgeois Equality (2016) reveals how commerce brought opportunity to the merchants and businessmen, giving them parity with the aristocracy and priests. Altogether, the bourgeois deal brought betterment by leaving people alone to make their own decisions and accept their own consequences.
Innovation and production increased wages and created consumers with wants and needs. Through human intention and creativity, new prospects gave the common men a new lease on life, a reason to live. Markets sprung as if by an invisible hand, thanks to spontaneous order. Progress came from increased production, not predation of workers. Growth came from progress, not redistribution of benefits. The masses flourished by ingenuity, not exploitation. Since markets are comprised of free men, they are built on cooperation and self-rule, their defining features. The market's embrace of innovation guaranteed an improvement in the standard of living for all.
A rising tide lifts all boats, was re-popularized by President Kennedy in a 1963 speech. In free market parlance, a rising tide refers to production when entrepreneurs are allowed to risk and be rewarded, and how those riches provide more opportunity for everyone.
Despite the claim of many experts, the Great Enrichment didn’t come from competition in the markets, consumerism, modern medicine, the work ethic, natural resources, property rights, financial investment, science, imperialism, slavery, theft, or any other tangible or intangible element, most that have existed for millennium. Since production always precedes consumption, the welfare state was also not the cause of world riches. While governments the world over have impoverished the people, liberalism liberated and then enriched them. Today, we continue to fight these same battles.
America and the West are rich because we are free and for no other reason. Free to innovate, free to follow our preferred path, regardless of our class status. It was liberalism alone that enabled us to excel. The only way to escape the morass we find ourselves in, we must return to the system that rewards innovation, and once again allows all takers, big and small, to succeed.
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