HL 10-11-12-13-14 Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World Deirdre N. McCloskey

Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

Deirdre N. McCloskey

Last annotated on Wednesday October 4, 2017

107 Highlight(s) | 63 Note(s)

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10 The Divergence Was Not Caused by Imperialism
Note:10@@@@@@@

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“killer apps”

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Niall Ferguson,

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better science, better (domestic) competition, better property rights, a consumer society, and a European work ethic.
Note:COSA NN SPIEGA

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until the nineteenth century the apps were notably superior outside Europe—medicine was superior in China, for example,
Note:PRIMA DELL 800

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China’s businesses in, say, 1700 faced healthy domestic competition more than those in a Europe broken up by tariffs and mercantilist monopolies.
Note:CINA PIÙ SOMPETITIVA

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Europe’s fragmentation led to a beneficent intergovernmental competition
Note:ORTODOSSIA

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Yet from an economic point of view the quarrel-provoking fragmentation of Europe was as much bad news as good.
Note:DUBBI

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incessant wars.

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Voigtländer and Voth make a strange but not entirely implausible case that the Europeans unusual success at killing each other kept wages high,
Note:LA GUERRA FA BENE?

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Yet the best killing fields, such as Germany in the Thirty Years War, were not where growth flourished.
Note:CONTROESEMPIO

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Chinese property rights were anciently good.
Note:PROP IN CINA

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the chronology of Douglass North and Barry Weingast, which attributes greatly improved property rights to the English Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Note:ORTODOSSIA SULLA SVOLTA PROP

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there is no evidence that 1688 was the turning point

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the killer app of a “consumer society” is, on reflection, an empty category.
Note:UNA CATEGORIA DELLO SVILUPPO...

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to apply to the long run what is only true in the short,
Note:L ERRORE

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every state of society is as luxurious as it can be.
Note:OVVIETÀ

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“Consumerism” is not special to the modern world,

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Mary Douglas and Marshall Sahlins

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European work ethic
Note:ALTRA APP

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everyone works hard, when not debilitated by malaria and the like.

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Protestant Europeans worked harder than Catholic Europeans (such as Bavarians), not to speak of people in Hindu India or Confucian China.
Note:VECCHIA TEORIA DI WEBER

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the apps permitted after 1500 a few European countries “to dominate the Rest [of the world].”
Note:LA TESI DI FERGUSON

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“domination” of India is not the same thing as an enrichment of Britain.
Note:Dei NIO E RICCHEZZA

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To suppose that the hurt from domination must somehow correspond to the economic gain from empire is a persistent error
Note:LA TESI ERRATA DELLO SFRUTTAMENTO

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Mishra,

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prosperity, as India’s vigorous recent experience of it shows, has nothing to do with late nineteenth-century imperialism by Europeans.
Note:L INDIA DI OGGI PROSPERA PERCHÈ IMPERIALISTA

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appeal to “dominance” is a flaw in Jared Diamond’s otherwise splendid book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997).
Note:ALTRO ERRANTE

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power will cause plenty is popular among historians.

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its own betterments at home, not by stealing treasure

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LA MOLLA DELLA RICCHEZZA... INTERNA

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COMMERCI E INNOVAZIONE... DUE MOLLE INCOMPARABILI

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IMPERO IN PERDITA

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Vietnam and the Second Iraq War.

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The bulk of Americans then paid the butcher’s bill

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ALTRA MOLLA... LA CURIOSITÀ

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The British got nothing from “winning” the Boer War—not

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11@@@@@@@@

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piling brick on brick is what made us rich.

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We should replace “capitalism” with the nonsnappy but accurate “trade-tested betterment”—or
Note:NO CAP...SÌ NNOVAZ

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Max Weber and Fernand Braudel
Note:I DUE DIFFUSORI DELL USO IMPROPRIO

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“innovism”
Note:UNI CO NELLA STORIA

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novel about the big size of business or the detailed division of labor, which happened in ancient China
Note:ALTRA FINTA E IRRILEVANTE NOVITÀ

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accumulation of capital, which happened in the Old Stone Age.
Note:ALTRA FINTA NOVITÀ

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William Easterly calls “capital fundamentalists,” those who mistakenly believe that the piling of brick on brick is what poor countries need.
Note:L EQUIVPCO PRESSO GLI ECON DELLO SVILUPPO

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Joel Mokyr,
Note:AMICI DELL INNOVISMO

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Margaret Jacob,

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Jack Goldstone,

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Jane Jacobs, Michael Novak, George Gilder, and Matt Ridley),

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“Our overview of the economic history of the Industrial Revolution,” they declare forthrightly, “rests on Mantoux (1961).”
Note:ACE SI BASA SU FONTI DATATE E INCOMPLETE

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They were economically vital societies,

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The ancient Near East, for example, had “norms and rules of behavior,”

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“Law codes [such as that of Hammurabi of Babylon,

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like saying that a fire in the barn was “caused” by the presence of the barn,
Note:ANALOGIA PROVOCAT...DOVE IL GRANAIO È LA PRO.'.

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They want the story of the Great Enrichment—the
Note:SI VUOLE UNA STORA SPIEGATA DAGLI INCENTIVI... ECONOMISTI

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to be one of “institutions,” predictable in their “incentives.”
Note:cccccc

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Norms are ethical
Note:NORME E REGOLE

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Rules are, well, rules, such as that bribes are illegal in Delhi,

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The rules of bribery in Stockholm are probably the same as in Delhi,
Note:STOCCOLMA E DEHLI

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The difference is ethics.

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Tim Parks,

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Italy

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The “culture of ambiguous rules”
Note:ITALIA

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He gives the example of il furbo,

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jumps the queue

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“informal institutions.”
Note:L ETICA

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“Norms” are one thing, “rules” another.
Note:XCHÈ LA BUONA ISTITUZIONE FALLISCE

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They are unwilling to bring ethics seriously
Note:NEOISTITUZIONALISTI

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James Davis

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“without a proper understanding of the morality and social conventions of the marketplace, the historian cannot understand the influence of formal institutions,”
Note:TESI

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printing still leaves a gigantic area in an economy for custom
Note:STAMPA E COSTUME

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Law is a conversation. Or, I say, a dance.

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a dance can be reduced to formulaic steps,
Note:POSIZ ISTITUT

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Nicomachean Ethics,

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Exodus

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Mahabharata

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choice as a painful exercise in identity,
Note:SCEGLIERE È IDENTITÀ PRIMA CHE INCENTIVO

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S variables of speech, stories, shame, the Sacred,
Note:L INCENTIVO DELLA VARIABILE S

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14 Because Ethics Matters, and Changes, More
Note:14@@@@@@@@@@

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swift recovery of San Francisco from the earthquake of 1906

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political institutions of the city were shoved aside.

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committee of business and civic leaders

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It was the ethics,

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in 2005 it was private companies such as Walmart and Home Depot
Note:KATRINA

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Williamson wants to reduce ethics to incentives:
Note:COME OGNI ISTOTUZIONALISTA

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ethics always changes slowly.
Note:IL DOGMA DELL ECONOMISTA...SCETTICO SULLE SPIGAZ ETICHE

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The ethics of labor-force participation by married women,
Note:ESEMPI DI ETICA MUTATA REPENTINAMENTE

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The ethics of the Roman state in the late first century BCE

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from republican to imperial.

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German Christianity in the early sixteenth century

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from a relaxed régime of indulgences to a rigorous Protestantism

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British ethics evaluating trade and betterment in the late eighteenth century did not change from contempt to admiration slowly.
Note:LA SVOLTA CHE A NOI PREME

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changed quickly, not the institutional environment.
Note:CAMBIÒ PIÙ VELOCEMENTE DELLE IST

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The law courts worked as they had
Note:LAMENTO DI DICKENS

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Property rights had not changed. Criminal law was still fiercely slanted against the poor.

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Consider the upright prosecutors and judges in Italy who went after the Mafia in the early 1990s,
Note:CAMBIO VELOCE MAFIA ANNI 90

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Ideological change

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North reduces ideas to matter, and then to the biological stimuli

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humanities since 2000 BCE
Note:STORIA VS BRAIN SCIENCE

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brain sciences since 1980 CE.

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DI SOLITO

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MA NN SI È CAPITO BENE COSA SIA LA CULTURA

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overlooks that the rules are under discussion.

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The “broken windows” tactic

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you can recognize an obligation

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Game theory in economics

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GIOCO VS LINGUAGGIO

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To call a man “dishonest” in a bourgeois society requires a suit for libel.

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ONORE BORGHESE

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Human agreement

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a society is glued together by conjective facts of the sort “X counts as Y in context C.”

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always contestable

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such a thing as “social preference” resides in our language

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the “between” in Buberian talk,

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COOPERARE

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humanities, and higher culture generally, can shed light on “institutions.”

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If the science of economics, as the economist Virgil Storr argues (2008), needs meaning, it needs, deontically, not merely rules of the game or a phrenological version of brain science
ECONOMIA DEONTOCA. DEONTICA: DOVERE CHE NASCE DALLA ISTITUZ CHE NASCE DALLA CULTURA