Bourgeois dignity
Bourgeois Dignity turns to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to reconsider the birth of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to McCloskey our modern world was not the product of new markets or imperial theft, but rather of shifting opinions about the economy. Talk of private property, commerce, innovation, and the bourgeoisie radically altered, becoming far more approving and contradicting prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn't grow so dramatically after 1800 because of economic factors; it grew because rhetoric about markets, enterprise, and innovation finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity. Bourgeois Dignity retells the story of modern economic growth, recasting what we thought we knew from 1776 to the present. McCloskey tests the traditional stories against what actually happenedùand the usual stories don't work very well. Not Marx and his classes. Not Max Weber and his Protestants. Not Fernand Braudel and his Mafia-style capitalists. Not Douglass North and his institutions. Not the mathematical theories of endogenous growth. Not the left wing's theory of working-class struggle, nor the right wing's theory of spiritual decline. What works is "rhetoric." What people said about markets and innovation changed in Holland and then England and then the world. --Book Jacket.
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- I recently read the book "Bourgeois Dignity" by Dierdre McCloskey, and it makes a somewhat similar argument backed up by serious historical research. The thesis of the book is that the respectability of inventing, doing business, "getting rich" etc is what has enabled standards of living to greatly exceed the historical (Malthusian) norm.
McCloskey talks about hope and courage (and not just "mere prudence") making a big difference, enabled by an encouraging culture rather than an elitist or fatalistic one. I think that it rhymes with your idea that "the brain should not do any triage" (if at a different scale -- social, rather than personal.) Your idea that the freedom to innovate throws off positive externalities is a core part of the argument.
I enjoyed the book a lot, and recommend it. It's a knife-fight from start to finish, but fun and funny and wide-ranging, worth reading just for the tour of its bibliography even if you don't like the thesis.
- I think you would agree with Deirdre N. McCloskey who, in her tome Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World[1], thoroughly thrashes out the idea that the thing that made the difference is the dignity of the middle class to be able to bring an innovation to market.
None of the items you've listed do it alone, but taken together and with the cultural idealisation of innovating and bringing to market a novel idea or product, we have been able to create the world as we know it today.
https://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Dignity-Economics-Explain-M...
- In support of this, have you happened across Deirdre McCloskey, and her tomes Bourgeois Dignity and two books that follow.
She does a decent job of thrashing out, at length, why the dignity to participate in the free market by innovating and bringing those innovations to market is the thing that created the modern world. In her own words she gives a "full scale defence of capitalism."
- Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World by Deirdre McCloskey, and presumably the other books in the series[1]
1. Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World
- Great comment. Incidentally, have you come across Deirdre Mccloskey, I've been reading her book 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World' and finding it really interesting. Economics is a social science, taking measurements / accumulating data and theorising on that data causes changes in behaviour. Just sitting around talking about economics, or your weekly budget, drives changes in behaviour.
As a layperson with a bit of an interest in economics I don't really see how, as the article says "econ is now a rogue branch of applied math". More like economics uses applied maths, or something like that. It's a 'social science', we can't reveal the laws (let's call them 'habits') of economics like we do The Laws of Nature, because circumstances change -both globally and locally (macro / micro)- and new economic phenomenon emerge.
It'd be interesting to see what future historians have to say about present day economics.
- Is this really the fault of the financial system? In some respects I believe 'economics' is a verb, so the fault -if there is any- lies with the agents enacting the verb, that is to say: people. Humans, groups of them even, certainly have a tendency to produce and accumulate all sorts of things being their survival needs and go on to trade them. This raises all sorts of concerns and has cause many a lot of stress.
Blaming 'capital' seems fairly erroneous. Deirdre Mccloskey, in her book 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World' has a very convincing go at turning the idea into a fallacy. The accumulation and use of capital isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. How much good has come from our desire to pool resources.
Also, it seems to me we tend to forget what the word 'corporation' means, literally "any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body". Certainly the other more obvious definition of the word includes that thing about "having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members", though me must remember that the words "an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law" come immediately prior. If people lose faith in a "company" it will rapidly cease to exist, or at the very lease must drastically change in order to continue.
And yes, I acknowledge we are, probably to a greater extend than we typically realise, products of our environment, products of the societal structures, and built environs, we find ourselves in, and that this makes it very messy to try to discern cause and effect, and to apportion blame. I guess I'm just sceptical of apportioning blame, I don't believe it's particularly helpful.
Maybe this comment is a bit incoherent. I often find myself writing comments then not posting them because I can't seem to make a point without contradicting, or undermining, my own writing.
Maybe my point is that things probably aren't as simple, as clear cut, as we think. Maybe that's why some people study the liberal arts and sciences and go on to write entire volumes on these sorts of topics.
