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Bourgeois Equality - How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (Paperback)
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Bourgeois Equality - How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (Paperback)
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There's little doubt that most humans today are better off than
their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre
McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy
celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest
of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative
riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Why? Most economists from
Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty say the Great Enrichment
since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees,
fiercely. "Our riches," she argues, "were made not by piling brick
on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on
idea." Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It
was ideas, not matter, that drove "trade-tested betterment." Nor
were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of "add
institutions and stir" doesn't work, and didn't. McCloskey builds a
powerful case for the initiating role of ideas ideas for electric
motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre
and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk.
Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in
northwest Europe, yielding a unique respect for betterment and its
practitioners, and upending ancient hierarchies. Commoners were
encouraged to have a go, and the bourgeoisie took up the Bourgeois
Deal, and we were all enriched. Few economists or historians write
like McCloskey her ability to invest the facts of economic history
with the urgency of a novel, or of a leading case at law, is
unmatched. She summarizes modern economics and modern economic
history with verve and lucidity, yet sees through to the really big
scientific conclusion. Not matter, but ideas. Big books don't come
any more ambitious, or captivating, than Bourgeois Equality.
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