A Discussion of Oliver DeMille’s 1913 Chapter 13 “The Last Turning Point” As Oliver DeMille concludes his book, he titles his last chapter, “The Last Turning Point,” which I find bleak, though perhaps that was not the intention. I prefer the idea of the next turning point. He opened his…
Tag: Capitalism
Bourgeois Equality
Both the Right and the Left Oppose the Bourgeois
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 65 “Despite the Clerisy’s Doubts” Dr. McCloskey continues her discussion of the threats to a continuation of the bourgeois trade tested system of betterment that has given us a 3000% to 10,000% growth in incomes over the past two hundred years. In this chapter…
Bourgeois Equality
The Entanglement of Polanyi’s Embeddedness
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 58 “Yet Polanyi was Right about Embeddedness” Last chapter, Dr. McCloskey argued Karl Polanyi was wrong about his central point that capitalism rising in the 1800s was the first time markets had dominant influence on society. This chapter, she is agreeing with a secondary…
Bourgeois Equality
Good Institutions are not Enough — You Still Need Good Ideas
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 14 “Because Ethics Matters, and Changes, More” I’ll be honest. If the first few chapters read like this one, I never would have thought to do this chapter by chapter review! That is not because this chapter is bad, but it did challenge me….
Bourgeois Equality
The Right’s Story of Economic Growth is Wrong, Too
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 13 “But Neither Can Poverty Be Overcome from the Right by Implanting Institutions” OK, now McCloskey is coming for me! The textbook I use for my intro macroeconomics class has a chapter on the source of economic growth, and the quality of the institutions is one…
Bourgeois Equality
Knowledge Is the True Key
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 12 “‘Accumulate, Accumulate’ Is Not What Happened in History” Last chapter McCloskey explored reasons the word “capitalism” should be replaced with a term that captures the source of the Great Enrichment, such as “trade-tested betterment.” Now she continues along the same path in this chapter…
Bourgeois Equality
Capitalism — I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 11 “Poverty Cannot Be Overcome from the Left by Overthrowing ‘Capitalism’” I will admit, I struggled with this chapter, not because I think she is wrong but because there is a lot of nuance to the matter. Her basic argument is the word, “capitalism,”…
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…
Economic Thought
It Was Never Only About Profits
A Discussion “The Social Responsibility of Business: Milton Friedman Reconsidered” As an economics professor, I know I have some misconceptions to overcome every semester a new crop of students appear in my intro microeconomics course. Economics is about greed. It is immoral. Capitalism is bad. Elrick and Thies (2018) offer…
Economic Thought
Capitalism: Value, People, and Planet
A discussion of “Revisiting the Purpose of Business” I am an economist and a lot of what drew me to the field early on is the Adam Smith story of the Invisible Hand. Briefly, it is the idea that our self-interested nature is channeled, as if by an all-knowing Invisible…