Author’s note: The following is a review of “Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make you Rich. How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World,” by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Art Carden. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2020, 227 pages. One day a socialist is supposed to have come into the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s office at the height of his wealth in the 1890s and demanded that the rich should distribute their wealth to the poor of the earth. Carnegie, so the story goes, asked his assistant to estimate his current wealth and then divide it by the number of people in this world. The assistant returned shortly thereafter with the figures and Carnegie told him: “Give this gentleman sixteen cents. That’s his share of the wealth.”