Preface ix
Part 1 You Should Become a Humane True Liberal
1. Modern Liberals Recommend Both Golden Rules, That Is, Adam Smith's Equality of Opportunity 3
2. Liberalism Had a Hard Coming 8
3. Modern Liberals Are Not Conservatives, Nor Statists 13
4. Liberals Are Democrats, and Markets Are Democratic 20
5. Liberals Detest Coercion 25
6. Liberalism Had Good Outcomes, 1776 to the Present 29
7. Yet After 1848 Liberalism Was Weakened 34
8. The "New Liberalism" Was Illiberal 41
9. The Result of the New Illiberalism Was Very Big Governments 47
10. Honest and Competent Governments Are Rare 52
11. Deirdre Became a Modern Liberal Slowly, Slowly 60
12. The Arguments Against Becoming a Liberal Are Weak 64
13. We Can and Should Liberalize 70
14. For Example, Stop "Protection" 77
15. And Stop Digging in Statism 83
16. Poverty Out of Tyranny, Not "Capitalist" Inequality, Is the Real Problem 87
17. Humane Liberalism Is Ethical 93
Part 2 Humane Liberalism Enriches People
18. Liberty and Dignity Explain the Modern World 103
19. China Shows What Economic Liberalism Can Do 107
20. Commercially Tested Betterment Saves the Poor 113
21. Producing and Consuming a Lot Is Not by Itself Unethical 119
22. Trickle Up or Trickle Down Is Not How the Economy Works 124
23. The Liberal Idea, in Short, Made the Modern World 130
Part 3 The New Worry About Inequality is Mistaken
24. Forced Equality of Outcome Is Unjust and Inhumane 143
25. Piketty Is Mistaken 151
26. Europe Should Resist Egalitarian Policies 156
27. Piketty Deserves Some Praise 165
28. But Pessimism About Market Societies Is Not Scientifically Justified 169
29. The Rich Do Not in a Liberal Society Get Rich at the Expense of the Rest 177
30. Piketty's Book Has Serious Technical Errors 185
31. The Ethical Accounting of Inequality Is Mistaken 192
32. Inequality Is Not Unethical If It Happens in a Free Society 197
33. Redistribution Doesn't Work 204
Part 4 And the Other Illiberal Ideas are Mistaken, Too
34. The Clerisy Had Three Big Ideas, 1755-1848, One Good and Two Terrible 213
35. The Economic Sky Is Not Falling 216
36. The West Is Not Declining 220
37. Failure Rhetoric Is Dangerous 224
38. The Word "Capitalism" Is a Scientific Mistake 231
39. Marxism Is Not the Way Forward 236
40. Some on the Left Listen 243
41. But They Have Not Noticed the Actual Results of Liberalism 251
42. And Are Unwilling to Imagine Liberal Alternatives 257
43. A Post-Modern Liberal Feminism Is Possible and Desirable 264
44. Imperialism Was Not How the West Was Enriched 272
45. Liberalism Is Good for Queers 277
46. The Minimum Wage Was Designed to Damage Poor People and Women 282
47. Technological Unemployment Is Not Scary 287
48. Youth Unemployment Is Scary, and Comes from Regulation 296
49. Do Worry About the Environment, but Prudently 302
50. Illiberalism, in Short, Is Fact Free, and Mostly Unethical 307
Notes 313
Bibliography 331
Acknowledgments 371
Index 373