Glenn Reynolds posted something this morning that reminded me of a photo I took in Austria last week. Here’s the quote he posted from Robert Heinlien:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
And here’s the photo I took in the city museum in the town of St. Johann im Pongau (I added the red underlines):
Max Weber famously wrote that the spirit of capitalism rose out of the Reformation. St. Johann, it seems, paid a heavy price for expelling entrepreneurial Protestants, that despised and condemned minority of which Heinlein spoke.
