“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine 250 years ago, at a juncture between tyranny and freedom in his country, which is now ours. Once again, we are living through trying times if you are a lover of economic and political freedom, both of which are having a tough decade worldwide. Too many Americans are celebrating the semiquincentennial (I think I got that right) with half a heart — looking back on a glorious if flawed past, looking forward with trepidation to an uncertain future. Even as technological marvels continue to unspool at an astonishing rate, we in the United States are facing a crisis of confidence.
We should not be. The U.S. is the richest large country that has ever existed, one of the freest, and historically and in the present a champion of liberty throughout the world. To resign ourselves to decline, or to a loss of liberty, is an entirely wrong way to look at the future. Alex Tabarrok, best known as the co-captain of the marvelous economics blog Marginal Revolution, helps us understand why in a talk he gave at a conference I helped organize and in an excellent book chapter he wrote with Vincent Geloso, “Two Peas in a Pod: Democracy and Capitalism.”
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