Episode 136: The Bourgeois Era (with Deirdre McCloskey)

3,079 views · Published 27 May 2016 · 53:13 · Indexed 18 October 2026

Channel: Libertarianism.org · 2016 · News & Politics

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For most of human history, most people lived in abject poverty and cultural and technological stagnation. Only in the past 200 years or so has humankind seen a flourishing of new ideas that has led to our current state of relative health, wealth, safety, and happiness.

Deirdre McCloskey says the difference lies in the power of market institutions and a burgeoning respect for those that participate in them. Celebrating innovation—not running from it—is the key to explaining this exponential growth.

Show Notes and Further Reading

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce (2007)
http://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Virtues-Ethics-Age-Commerce/dp/0226556646

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2011)
http://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Dignity-Economics-Explain-Modern/dp/0226556743

Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016)
http://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Equality-Capital-Institutions-Enriched/dp/022633399X

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