Sublime

General prosperity is favorable to the stability of all governments, but more particularly of a democratic constitution, which depends upon the dispositions of the majority, and more particularly of that portion of the community which is most exposed to feel the pressure of want.

The defence of the individual’s right to do what feels good amounts in most cases to safeguarding the property and privileges of the middle and upper classes. What good is the liberty to live where you want when you cannot pay the rent; to study what interests you when you cannot afford the tuition fees; and to travel where you fancy when you canno

Bitcoin already appears to satisfy all the requirements of Menger, Mises, and Hayek: it is a highly salable free‐market option that is resistant to government meddling.

Rawls explicitly rejected “welfare state capitalism,” arguing that we cannot create a fair economy through redistribution alone. As we have seen, the difference principle is concerned not just with income and wealth, but with inequalities of economic power and control and of opportunities for self-respect; and this broad perspective, in turn, point

The market, therefore, provides a training ground for the reward and expansion of successful, far-sighted entrepreneurs and the weeding out of inefficient businessmen.

Big Idea Seven: Institutions Matter

Stiglitz employs Isaiah Berlin’s positive and negative freedoms, and later threads the needle: neoliberalism believes only in ‘freedom to do’, and disparages the need of government to constrain corporations and the wealthy for the good of the rest: