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NOTE What was Turgot's contribution to economics?

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Turo is magnificent. He's great. He's one of my really favorite characters in history of thought.

2
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Considering also the fact that he was, first of all, he spent very little time in economics.

3
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He was a busy top bureaucrat and then-governor.

4
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And most of his time, intellectually, he was spending on other things, history, linguistics,

5
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sort of an all-around type.

6
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Rowan read a lot on that topic. Economic topics, he was the only sort of good offhand.

7
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He was pressed into it when he had to tell somebody something.

8
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For example, his Reflections on Wealth, his longest book, which is about 50 pages, was written under severe time pressure.

9
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He was trying to form questions to ask two Chinese students in France about Chinese economy,

10
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preparing them to ask about French economy.

11
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And so he wrote this as sort of an outline to himself, as a memorandum himself of preparing questions to ask.

12
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This was a great work on wealth and capital theory, et cetera.

13
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So he wrote all of his stuff on a severe time pressure, sort of dashed it off, and it was absolutely magnificent.

14
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He's got the whole Austrian stuff in there, not only laissez-faire, complete laissez-faire,

15
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without any of Smith's evasions, qualifications, etc.

16
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But also he's got Austrian time preference theory, he's got Austrian von Boehm-Bawerkian capital theory,

17
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he's got money in process analysis, he's got the whole business.

18
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And done with brilliance, just sort of in passing almost, a few clauses.