Lingua non-franca

“Like all complex institutions, markets rest on supporting structures of rules, impartially devised and enforced. That requires politics, preferably democratic politics. And no rules, however well formulated and enforced, can prevent large differences in initial endowments of ability, resources, and information from producing extreme and permanent inequality. That requires redistribution. Public or collective goods—infrastructure, literacy, basic science, clean air—cannot be privately owned and so will not be privately produced. That requires public investment. A viable society requires civic virtue, above all an irreducible minimum of selflessness. Laissez-faire ideology cannot generate, or even comprehend, selflessness.” – George Scialabba, “The Squandering of America”