A Message of Hope from the Dismal Science - Art Carden - Mises Daily

A Message of Hope from the Dismal Science - Art Carden - Mises Daily: "Almost all economic progress has been confined to the last two and a half centuries, which has (for me, at least) changed the way I look at history, look at my life, read my Bible, and all sorts of things. We've done well, but the fact that our progress is confined largely to the last 250 years suggests that we should tread lightly and avoid hubris. The past shows us that economic growth is not automatic, and under the wrong conditions, self-interest will be channeled into predation rather than production."

"for all of our wars and bloodshed you are today less likely to die at the hands of another person than at any point in history. In China and India, we are witnessing the largest movement of human beings out of abject poverty in the history of our species.

An average life several hundred years ago would be considered a humanitarian disaster today."

"The poor are not better than you and me. They're just poorer. We bourgeois do not make them better off by being ashamed of being rich, since it's not our fault that they are poor, and there is therefore no original sin in our being rich. We should instead work to make them rich, too, by spreading the used-up liberal capitalism."

"just because some people cannot be trusted with liberty does not mean that other people can or should be trusted with power."

"Calling President Obama a socialist or a Nazi short-circuits the discussion and puts our friends on the Left on the defensive. It obscures the substance of the analysis. It's also intellectually lazy, and it's something I don't tolerate from my students."