Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Culture and Economics
Deirdre McCloskey argues that a revolution in living standards ultimately stemmed from a change in attitude towards commerce and the pursuit of wealth. “By the new pro-bourgeois talk, the positive-sum game was freed partly from zero-sum politics.”
Cultural barriers had kept innovation hemmed in. When these dissolved, ideas were finally free to proliferate. So the new culture made all the difference between ideas forming slowly and in isolation; or quickly, and together. In return, the merchants made Britain stunningly rich. The newly respectable middle class bought and sold and invented a new type of economy. They built machines and cities and they made Britain the centre of the world.
I advocate that, in a similar way, a change from representative to Interactive Democracy would free-up innovation in the political sphere.
Labels:
culture,
Deirdre McCloskey,
economics,
interactive democracy,
money week
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