I spent a couple of days in a TV studio recently, recording a series of short teaching sessions on the basic principles of classical economics and how they apply to investments. Since the idea of God was integral to the founders of classical economics, and the firm which requested the series was sympathetic to that idea, I spent time reading Jacob Viner’s unfinished book, Providence and the Social Order in preparation for the project.
Viner was a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and taught, among others, the great Milton Friedman. Some of Viner’s colleagues at Chicago believed that he had read more economic history than any man ever had. Viner had a life-long interest in writing about the theological roots of modern free-market economics, but because there was little interest in the topic among economists in the mid-20th Century he put the project off for most of his life. Eventually he was able to start to write on this topic, but by then it proved to be too late for him to finish it before his death.
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