In 1972, Stone Age Economics, by anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, appeared. It came out in France in 1976 under the title Stone Age, Age of Plenty. The aim of the author is to deconstruct what he considers to be conventional wisdom about the disadvantages of primitive societies and the advantages of industrial civilization.

Imperial nostalgia leads Europeans to adopt the prejudice that the prosperity of a civilization depends on its ability to transform itself into a vast empire. Hence the anxious atmosphere that reigns over the United Kingdom, which has been trying for too many months to implement the exit from the European bloc decided in the referendum of June 23, 2016. Is the cult of political gigantism justified?

The history of Singapore proves the opposite.

Eric Nelson, a Professor Government at Harvard, has published this year a brilliant and imaginative book, The Theology of Liberalism (Harvard University Press, 2019). Nelson, it should be said, is no leftist, despite what you might expect from his Harvard affiliation. To the contrary, he is a conservative and favors, though not to the fullest extent, the free market and private property rights.

The flood of obituaries that noted the passing of Paul Volcker (1927–2019) last week have almost all lauded his achievement as Fed chair (1979–1987) in reining in the double-digit inflation that ravaged the US economy during the 1970s.