This is where art comes in: art, even through something apparently simple as the appreciation of beauty, has the power to give people a sense of self worth, a dignity, an understanding of how their lives are worthwhile.
As Boudreaux notes in his Wall Street Journal appreciation, Buchanan saw the fundamental problems of social cooperation as problems of identifying and implementing constraints that would channel self-interest toward socially beneficial results rather than parts of a project of remaking human nature.