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David Wyman's avatar

(Typo in P7, "so" instead of "sow.")

This has a good deal of Thomas Sowell's Conquests and Cultures in it. Noam Chomsky once tried to claim in a college debate that economic improvement was not a moral good in itself because standard of living had gone up gradually for blacks in slavery, and that would mean that slavery was a good thing. He missed the point. That evidence says nothing about whether slavery is a good thing, but is powerful evidence that free markets and good institutions are a good thing. Even when people are completely callous about your well-being or even hostile to your interests, if you live in a free market, your lot improves.

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Alex Nowrasteh's avatar

I too dislike the deep roots literature for thorny methodological reasons, but I’m not enthused by the Kelly paper anymore. Voth convincingly eviscerated it.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128158746000150

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