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Linguistics and Economics: Is Entrepreneurship Innate?
Author(s) -
Miller Robert C. B.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
economic affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1468-0270
pISSN - 0265-0665
DOI - 10.1111/ecaf.12088
Subject(s) - flourishing , property (philosophy) , entrepreneurship , natural (archaeology) , limit (mathematics) , sociology , expression (computer science) , linguistics , natural language , character (mathematics) , epistemology , political science , psychology , computer science , mathematics , law , history , philosophy , social psychology , mathematical analysis , geometry , archaeology , programming language
One of the great scientific achievements of the second half of the twentieth century was the advance in linguistics. N oam C homsky was one of its foremost exponents. C homsky and his followers claim that human beings have an inbuilt ‘language acquisition device’ which allows children to acquire language with extraordinary ease. Language is as much part of human nature as flying is that of birds. This paper argues that, like language, the propensity to trade is an inbuilt characteristic of human beings. Language permeates all human faculties including the ability to plan for the future. As a result human economic activity shares many important features with language, in particular its recursive and unbounded character. There is also evidence that the concept of property is innate. It follows that attempts to frustrate or limit the exercise of property rights and their use in trade works against the grain of human nature. Limits on the natural expression of entrepreneurship may be as damaging as other constraints on human flourishing.