A discussion of chapter 4 “As Your Own Life Shows” In the previous chapters, McCloskey has shown that before the Great Enrichment began over 200 years ago, all of mankind everywhere lived a subsistence lifestyle. It was only after industrialization that technology grew at a sustained rate faster than the population,…
Bourgeois Equality
Capitalism and the Hockey Stick
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 3 “Then Many of Us Shot Up the Blade of a Hockey Stick” After establishing the last chapter that industrialization led to technological change growing output faster than population for the first time in human history, we return to the idea of the Great…
Bourgeois Equality
Are You a Malthusian?
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 2 “For Malthusian and Other Reasons, Very Poor” We established in the previous chapter that historically, people lived on a subsistence level averaging $3 a day for most of human history. Now McCloskey wants to explore why and is starting with an argument that is…
Bourgeois Equality
Historically, Poor was Normal
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 1 “The World is Pretty Rich, But Once was Poor” In my teaching and research, I keep coming back to the question of why an economy grows, with the hope of that knowledge helping those that don’t. Dr. Deirdre McCloskey wrote a trilogy of books…
Economic Thought
Economy not Developing? Check your Spirituality
A Discussion of “Morality and Spirituality: The missing link for economic development in the 21st century”. Economists postulate that it takes good institutions (laws, regulations, morality, customs) to create the incentives needed to organize your factors of production (capital, labor, etc.) to produce a growing output (GDP per capita). Kame…
Economic Thought
Can Ancient Greece Help Developing Economies?
A Discussion of “Morality, Institutions and the Wealth of Nations: Some Lessons from ancient Greece” When I teach macroeconomics, I know one question the students have is, “Why can’t we use all this economic knowledge to help poor countries grow?” And the answer is, we can, to a point. But,…
Regenerative Agriculture
Being Green and Still Eating Meat
A Discussion of “Ecosystem Impacts and Productive Capacity of a Multi-Species Pastured Livestock System” I try to limit my exposure to the cesspool of viral “news” stories as they are happening. Looking back after the morass of half-truths and lies when things have settled and the truth can be seen…
Regenerative Agriculture
Moving from Unsustainability to Sustainability
A Discussion of “The Historical Production (and Consumption) of Unsustainability” My last couple of stories have examined the unsustainability of our diet, …and an escape from the unsustainability of our agricultural practices. Today, I want to examine unsustainability itself. I turn to an article published in The Hedgehog Review, an interdisciplinary…
Regenerative Agriculture
Why We Need Regenerative Agriculture
A discussion of “Why Regenerative Agriculture?” Writing previously about the un-sustainability of our Western Dietary Pattern has inspired me to look more into how we got here today. We saw the WDP as the cheapest way to eat, but also the least healthy and the most damaging to the environment….
Regenerative Agriculture
Can We Keep Eating Like This?
A discussion of: “Global Sustainability (health, environment and monetary costs) of Three Dietary Patterns: Results from a Spanish Cohort (the SUN project)” The CDC reports that over 40% of American adults are obese, which means a BMI of 30 or higher. Now, we can argue about the BMI as a metric, but…