Sarah Skwire The “most modern man” in Dickens, John Wemmick from Great Expectations, makes much of the importance of separating what Deirdre McCloskey calls the P-values of prudence from the S-values of sociability. “The office is one thing, and private … Continue reading
Lynne Kiesling For your weekend intellectual stimulation and viewing pleasure … I cannot recommend this highly enough: Deirdre McCloskey’s recent talk at George Mason University about her new self-recommending book Bourgeois Dignity, the second in what’s likely to be a … Continue reading
A few weeks ago President Obama made his now memorable “you didn’t build that” remark. Most of the resulting political exchange has been pretty thoughtless. Extremely rare have been the thoughtful reactions. Here are two of the best. Continue reading
Lynne Kiesling Today’s Wall Street Journal has a review, King of the Shopkeepers, of a new biography from Caroline Dakers. A Genius For Money tells of the rags-to-riches life of James Morrison, a Victorian innovator of retailing and banking in … Continue reading
Lynne Kiesling Think about public policy concerning disaster relief — the typical argument is that government intervention is necessary to supply affected people with food, clothing, shelter, and construction resources. One theoretical foundation of this argument is the standard public … Continue reading
Lynne Kiesling As if Mike and I haven’t given you enough nudges to go read Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity, here’s another one: Don Boudreaux has a lovely column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that introduces the work via the question of … Continue reading
Lynne Kiesling Increasingly I agree with Deirdre McCloskey that over the past 120 or so years economics has moved further away from incorporation of the importance of the Bourgeois Virtues into our analyses of economic decision-making and economic growth. Indeed, … Continue reading
Michael Giberson At AidWatch, an interview with Dierdre McCloskey, author of Bourgeois Dignity: “Don’t be snobbish towards merchants & entrepreneurs, and you’ll develop.“ Short, and to the point, so likely worth a few minutes of your time to read. Here … Continue reading
Lynne Kiesling Speaking of Neal Stephenson, he’s involved in a new, online, serialized novel called The Mongoliad. Set in 1241, it’s an adventure journey story with the Mongol invasions of Europe as a backdrop. There are some stories you can … Continue reading
