Can I read Bourgeois Equality : How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World on EtoBox?

Bourgeois Equality : How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Bourgeois Equality : How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World about?

There's little doubt that most humans today are better off than their forebears. Stunningly so, the economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey argues in the concluding volume of her trilogy celebrating the oft-derided virtues of the bourgeoisie. The poorest of humanity, McCloskey shows, will soon be joining the comparative riches of Japan and Sweden and Botswana. Why? Most economists—from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to Thomas Piketty—say the Great Enrichment since 1800 came from accumulated capital. McCloskey disagrees, fiercely. “Our riches,” she argues, “were made not by piling brick on brick, bank balance on bank balance, but by piling idea on idea.” Capital was necessary, but so was the presence of oxygen. It was ideas, not matter, that drove “trade-tested betterment.” Nor were institutions the drivers. The World Bank orthodoxy of “add institutions and stir” doesn't work, and didn't. McCloskey builds a powerful case for the initiating role of ideas—ideas for electric motors and free elections, of course, but more deeply the bizarre and liberal ideas of equal liberty and dignity for ordinary folk. Liberalism arose from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, yield

Author

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

Publisher

The University of Chicago Press

Published

2016

Language

EN

ISBN

9780226334042

Subjects

Business, History, Science

Rating

4.12 / 5 (42 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-13