IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/16805.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bourgeois dignity and liberty: Why economics can’t explain the modern world

Author

Listed:
  • McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen

Abstract

Two centuries ago the world’s economy stood at the present level of Chad. Two centuries later the world supports more than six-and-half times more people. Starvation worldwide is at an all-time low, and falling. Literacy and life expectancy are at all-time highs, and rising. How did average income in the world move from $3 to $30 a day? Economics mattered in shaping the pattern but to understand it economists must know the history and historians must know the economics. Material, economic forces were not the original and sustaining causes of the modern rise, 1800 to the present. Ethical talk runs the world. Dignity encourages faith. Liberty encourages hope. The claim is that the dignity to stand in one’s place and the liberty to venture made the modern world. An internal ethical change allowed it, beginning in northwestern Europe after 1700. For the first time on a big scale people looked with favor on the market economy, and even on the creative destruction coming from its profitable innovations. The world began to revalue the bourgeois towns. If envy and local interest and keeping the peace between users of old and new technologies are allowed to call the shots, innovation and the modern world is blocked. If bourgeois dignity and liberty are not on the whole embraced by public opinion, the enrichment of the poor doesn’t happen. The older suppliers win. The poor remain unspeakably poor. By 1800 in northwestern Europe, for the first time in economic history, an important part of public opinion came to accept creative accumulation and destruction in the economy. People were willing to change jobs and allow technology to progress. People stopped attributing riches or poverty to politics or witchcraft. The historians of the world that trade created do not acknowledge the largest economic event in world history since the domestication of plants and animals, happening in the middle of their story. Ordinary Europeans got a dignity and liberty that the proud man’s contumely had long been devoted to suppressing. The material economy followed.

Suggested Citation

  • McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen, 2009. "Bourgeois dignity and liberty: Why economics can’t explain the modern world," MPRA Paper 16805, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:16805
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/16805/2/MPRA_paper_16805.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Bank, 2008. "The Little Data Book 2008," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 12271, December.
    2. Easterlin,Richard A., 2006. "The Reluctant Economist," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521685115.
    3. Weingast, Barry R. & Wittman, Donald, 2008. "The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199548477.
    4. Deirdre McCloskey, 2004. "The Bourgeois Virtues," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 5(3), pages 1-16, July.
    5. Virgil Storr, 2008. "The market as a social space: On the meaningful extraeconomic conversations that can occur in markets," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 135-150, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Klein, Daniel B., 2009. "Knowledge Flat-talk: A Conceit of Supposed Experts and a Seduction to All," Ratio Working Papers 140, The Ratio Institute.
    2. Alberto Chilosi, 2010. "Poverty, Population, Inequality, and Development: the Historical Perspective," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 7(2), pages 469-501, December.
    3. Rachel L. Mathers & Claudia R. Williamson, 2011. "Cultural Context: Explaining the Productivity of Capitalism," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(2), pages 231-252, May.
    4. Morles, Gustavo, 2010. "The Rhetoric of Economics: Why Words Are Important," MPRA Paper 22821, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised May 2010.
    5. Irina Rosa Espana Eljaiek & Fabio Sánchez Torres, 2010. "Industrialización regional, café y capital humano en la primera mitad del siglo XX en Colombia," Documentos CEDE 7723, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrea Migone, 2011. "Embedded markets: A dialogue between F.A. Hayek and Karl Polanyi," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 355-381, December.
    2. John Meadowcroft & Mark Pennington, 2008. "Bonding and bridging: Social capital and the communitarian critique of liberal markets," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 119-133, September.
    3. Karina Acosta-Ordoñez & Julio E. Romero-Prieto, 2017. "Cambios recientes en las principales causas de mortalidad en Colombia," Chapters, in: Jaime Bonet & Karelys Guzmán-Finol & Lucas Wilfried Hahn-De-Castro (ed.), La salud en Colombia: una perspectiva regional, chapter 4, pages 79-119, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    4. Skoufias, Emmanuel & Narayan, Ambar & Dasgupta, Basab & Kaiser, Kai, 2011. "Electoral accountability, fiscal decentralization and service delivery in Indonesia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5614, The World Bank.
    5. Drakopoulos, Stavros, 2011. "Hierarchical Needs, Income Comparisons and Happiness Levels," MPRA Paper 48343, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Fabio Fiorillo & Agnese Sacchi, 2012. "The Political Economy of the Standard Level of Services: The Role of Income Distribution," CESifo Working Paper Series 3696, CESifo.
    7. De Donder, Philippe & Hindriks, Jean, 2007. "Equilibrium social insurance with policy-motivated parties," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 624-640, September.
    8. Hubert Tworzecki, 2019. "Poland: A Case of Top-Down Polarization," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 681(1), pages 97-119, January.
    9. Gantner, Anita & Horn, Kristian & Kerschbamer, Rudolf, 2019. "The role of communication in fair division with subjective claims," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 72-89.
    10. Markus Leibrecht & Hans Pitlik, 2014. "Generalised Trust, Institutional and Political Constraints on the Executive and Deregulation of Markets," WIFO Working Papers 481, WIFO.
    11. Stanley L. Winer & George Tridimas & Walter Hettich, 2007. "Social Welfare and Collective Goods Coercion in Public Economics," Carleton Economic Papers 07-03, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    12. Victor, Afari-Sefa & Gockowski, James & Agyeman, Nana Fredua & Dziwornu, Ambrose K., 2010. "Economic Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Certified Sustainable Cocoa Production In Ghana," 2010 AAAE Third Conference/AEASA 48th Conference, September 19-23, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa 97085, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    13. Jeffry Frieden & Stefanie Walter, 2019. "Analyzing inter-state negotiations in the Eurozone crisis and beyond," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 134-151, March.
    14. Mansoob Murshed, 2006. "Indivisibility, Fairness, Farsightedness and their Implications for Security," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-28, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Steven Brams & D. Kilgour & Christian Klamler, 2012. "The undercut procedure: an algorithm for the envy-free division of indivisible items," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(2), pages 615-631, July.
    16. Anna Kurowska & Michal Myck & Katharina Wrohlich, 2012. "Family and Labor Market Choices: Requirements to Guide Effective Evidence-Based Policy," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1234, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    17. Sutirtha Bagchi, 2013. "The Effects of Political Competition on the Funding and Generosity of Public-Sector Pension Plans," 2013 Papers pba941, Job Market Papers.
    18. Wildasin, David E., 2007. "Pre–Emption: Federal Statutory Intervention in State Taxation," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 60(3), pages 649-662, September.
    19. repec:wea:worler:v:2012:y:2012:i:1:p:7 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Anne Case & Angus Deaton, 2009. "Health and Well-Being in Udaipur and South Africa," NBER Chapters, in: Developments in the Economics of Aging, pages 317-349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Karina Acosta-Ordoñez & Julio E. Romero-Prieto, 2017. "Estimación indirecta de la tasa de mortalidad infantil en Colombia, 1964-2008," Chapters, in: Jaime Bonet & Karelys Guzmán-Finol & Lucas Wilfried Hahn-De-Castro (ed.), La salud en Colombia: una perspectiva regional, chapter 3, pages 39-77, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economics; innovation; industrial revolution; bourgeoisie; modern world;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B1 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:16805. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.