MULLEN LECTURE: HUMAN VALUES AND THE GREAT ENRICHMENT

Deirdre McCloskey’s talk will focus on how workers’ economic conditions improve when they are given a chance to live in a better functioning economy. But how do we get that better functioning economy? McCloskey explains what she calls the Bourgeois Deal: the “experiment” of the 19th century, “Laissez-nous faire,” that fostered an environment where ordinary people were generally left alone, allowed to open shops or enter occupations. This, she argues, led to significant betterment through innovation—electric lights, railways, radio, espresso machines, containerizaion, dropped ceilings, books, and newspapers. “Let me, une bourgeoise, start a business bettering some activity, and let me in the first act keep the profits (in the second act the irritating imitators of my success enter and spoil my profits), and in the third act I will make you [voi] better off, gigantically,” McCloskey states.

Deidre McCloskey was a Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago  from 2000 to 2015