Harberger was responding to a paper by the Uruguayan economist Ramón Díaz, who argued that 'Latin American democracy has sought its inspiration very much in Rousseau, and very little in Locke' – that is, it has prioritised popular sovereignty over property and individual rights. It was this culture of romanticism and popular political mobilisation that Harberger saw as the source of Chilean socialism.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 315