Saturday, March 30, 2013

Video: Gary North on the World's Transition to the Modern Economy

Via BBC's Hans Rosling, I have previously posted a video showing the modern economy's dramatic growth transformation which begun during the 18th century, from the agricultural age to the industrial era to today's post industrial information/digital epoch.

In the following video, Austrian economist Gary North expounds on Deidre McCloskey's theme that "ideas" or "rhetoric" or the "Bourgeois Dignity or Virtue" as the major force behind such monumental progress. 

As per Mr. North, Ms. McCloskey's theme signifies as
a change of attitude regarding entrepreneurship, and a change in attitude regarding innovation and personal wealth derived from innovation and entrepreneurship...

The argument is people’s attitude for the first time radically changed on the question of the legitimacy of personal wealth through entrepreneurial activities 
Mr. North adds two additional factors to the ideas or virtues of the pursuit of self-interests: one is ethics (view of right and wrong), which may have played a significant shift in the public's opinion, where acquisition of personal wealth became legitimate. Second is a shift of the view of the future (based on religious influences or what Mr. North calls as the "post millennialist eschatology"). 

In short, people's values and beliefs evolved overtime to reflect on the marginal changes on the course of actions undertaken which compounded to manifest on such progress.

1 comment:

thediktatreporter said...

I comment that Jesus Christ has been operating at the helm of the economy of God, Ephesians, 1:10, to produce The Modern Economy; He worked beginning in the late 1700s, to develop both the British Empire, and later the US, as two iron legs of global hegemony presented in the Statue of Empires seen in Daniel 2:25-45. Furthermore, Jesus Christ worked to bring forth both ethics and post millennialist eschatology, so that money, that is wealth, could become what it is today. And Jesus, is completing the Age of Fiat Wealth, where investment choice ruled supreme; and is bringing forth the Age of Diktat, where diktat reigns supreme in ten zones of fascist regional governance, debt servitude, and totalitarian collectivism, as seen in bible prophecy of Revelation 13:1-4