Fascinating essay by Stephen Davies looking at the way merchants and traders have been loathed and despised through history.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, there’s also a chapter devoted to contemporary culture’s treatment of business and commerce in a very good book called Culture and Enterprise, by Emily Chamlee-Wright and the late Don Lavoie. Bizarrely, the book costs $150 on Amazon, but you can get it from the Cato website for five bucks (predatory pricing!).

Davies is a personal favorite. He’s that rare breed of academic — a guy who’s incredibly smart and knowledgeable, but also interesting and able to communicate complicated ideas to a lay audience. He specializes in the history of liberty and power. He’s a terrific ambassador for libertarianism. If you ever get the chance to hear him speak — at a Cato University, for example — you oughtta’ seize it.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 6:27 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.