A Culture of Growth

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1. OhMeadhbhOct 2025

      I know this isn't the place to chime in with a conversation
      about economics, but when has that stopped me before?
   
      I read Mokyr's book, A Culture of Growth
      [[ https://search.worldcat.org/title/964805224 ]] a couple years
      ago and enjoyed it.  I had a few nits about the content, but
      then again, I'm not a Nobel Prize winning economist, so maybe I
      should keep my mouth shut about that.  If you're interested in
      either history or economics, you should put it on the list of
      books to consider reading.  If you're interested in both, you
      probably should read it.
   
      But... I can also recommend von Hipple's Innovation series:
      [[ https://evhippel.mit.edu/books/ ]].
   
      And for the beginnings of a contrasting view to the "yeehaa!
      growth!" mindset from the timeframe covered by Mokyr's book, I
      would recommend Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful."
      [[ https://search.worldcat.org/title/1239792692 ]] To be honest,
      except for two chapters, I found the writing a little
      uninspired.  But it's worth a read as it introduces concepts you
      hear from "post industrial" types (thinking of the Slow Food and
      Slow Money movements.)  I have a to-do item to write a book
      about the "Slow Code" movement, but the industry probably
      doesn't need help with that.
   
      I haven't read Aghion's Endogenous Growth Theory
      [[ https://search.worldcat.org/title/1027693933 ]], but worldcat
      tells me it's at my local academic library, so I may have to
      give it a go.

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2. snowAbstractionOct 2025
   Maybe I will try Mokyr. I saw his "A Culture of Growth" is available as an audio book. What do you think about that book? Thanks
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3. dredmorbiusNov 2019
   Nowhere does Diamond claim to have invented geographic determinism. He does suggest a model for a specific mechanism, largely urbanisation (accounting for much of the terms), technology, and a wide range of domesticated animals, including multiple heavy draft animals. Not all of these are specific to Western Europe, and several decidedly did not originate there.

   Going beyond the Age of Discovery to why it was the West that industrialised ~1800, rather than other places and times, has occupied a great many writers. Karl Polnyi's The Great Transformation, a whole set of economic history texts edited by Joel Mokyr (the Princeton Economic History of the World), notably Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, Clark's A Farewell to Alms, and Mokyr's on (not part of the series) Gifts of Athena, A Culture of Growth, The British Industrial Revolution, and Lever of Riches. The question of "why Europe and not China?" is literally The Needham Question, which occupied British sinologist Joseph Needham for his entire life (and beyond -- his Science and Civilisation in China is still being written, approaching 70 years since it began, and two decades after Needham's own death.

   Much of the criticism of Diamond's work smells far more to me of academic jealousy over not respecting borders. Several of the broad-brush elements you describe simply aren't valid. Others are details of larger theory which may require revisiting, but don't invalidate the whole.

   Again: I'd asked for specific criticisms, preferably references to the best specific critiques available. Most I've seen are, as yours, vague, broad, and themselves grossly flawed.

   Or for another view, Barbara King at NPR:

   https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-d...

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4. dredmorbiusNov 2016
   You might want to look at Techno-Fix: why technology won't save us or the environment. There's the problem of unintended consequences, a/k/a "bite-back".

   http://www.worldcat.org/title/techno-fix-why-technology-wont...

   Joel Mokyr also looks into this problem in his new book The Culture of Growth:

   http://www.worldcat.org/title/culture-of-growth-the-origins-...

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