Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.46 (505 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 022652793X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 768 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2018-01-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"It took me two months to read this 650-page, small-type book, the third volume in a trilogy. In that time I read several other books, absorbing Bourgeois Equality in small doses on trains, ships, Tubes, sofas and beds. If that sounds like faint praise, it's not. I wanted to savour every sentence of this remarkable feast of prose. It is a giant of a book about a giant of a topic: the ‘great enrichment’ of humanity over the past 300 years. It is so rich in vocabulary, allusion and fact as to be a contender for the great book of the great book of our age. Dump your copy of Thomas Piketty and put Deirdre McCloskey on the book
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. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. There’s little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. The World Bank orthodoxy of “add institutions and stir” doesn’t work, and didn’t. Not matter, but ideas. 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. Big books don’t come any more ambitious, or captivating, than Bourgeois Equality.. It was ideas, not matter, that drove “trade-tested betterment.” Nor were institutions the drivers. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Few economists or historians write like McCloskey—her ability to invest the facts of economic history with the u
"An Economic Historian Explains Why the World is Much Wealthier Since 1800" according to DonL2507. I've often thought that the bourgeois (middle class) values of thrift, diligence, and self-restraint leavened with risk-taking are too often mocked and underappreciated. For that matter, how many Hollywood films can you name where a businessman is portrayed as honest and valuable to society? A business person who uses an economy's scarce resources and transforms them into a product worth more to voluntary buyers than the cost of those resources is earning a well-deserved profit in competitive markets. Professor McCloskey trots out Samuel Johnson's . What & Why said Important, but with a glaring omission.. This book describes and claims to explain the vast improvement in well-being of most of the world's population since about 1800. The author debunks the importance of several factors which various experts have claimed to be crucial to this improvement. She proposes that far more important to this improvement were two changes in public opinion, namely, increased regard for the liberty and dignity of ordinary people, and decreased disdain for trade-tested innovations and the profits therefrom. I found the explanations persuasive, and I am grateful to . Brilliant analysis of the great enrichment that has expanded human Henry Oliner Brilliant analysis of the great enrichment that has expanded human wealth 70 fold in less than 2 centuries. This is more amazing when we note it occurred in the face of devastating wars and economic crisis. Opens up the field of cultural economics, which can be very useful in examining the potential and weaknesses of current policy. McCloskey examines literature, history, religion, and government institutions to trace this overlooked power of the unleashing of the economic and innovative power of the common man. once he was afforded the dignity and