Comments on: Aberrations

By: Luke Lea

Luke Lea — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 21:54:20 +0000

Minor addendum: it was no accident that the West became the world’s first free society in history. Our ancestorsworked hard, saved, and invested in the future because they thought that was the way to get to heaven. They were “sending up the timber” in the words of that old negro spiritual: assembling the materials with which to build their heavenly mansions when they died. Max Weber called it the Protestant Ethic. But that is not quite right. It was the Christian ethic, the ethic of self-sacrifice for the sake of the future as the only escape from scarcity, servitude, and oppression. Those poor blokes believed. They figured that if there was a God, they would get their reward in the end. “Thy will be done, thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” Whether we share their faith or not, we should be thankful. And mindful, too. ‘Twould be a shame if we blew it all.

By: Tom Bridgeland

Tom Bridgeland — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 12:46:17 +0000

One minor quibble.

You said…Places that were never colonized and which have no legacy of western institutions at all are even worse off….

Thailand was never colonised or controlled by any western power. But it is one of the most developed and best ordered societies in Asia, after Japan. It is a long step down from Japan in wealth, but progressing very rapidly.

By: light seeking light

light seeking light — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 09:55:07 +0000

Shannon Love on Western Exceptionalism

Unfortunately, childish romanticism seems to be the default position in the historical profession these days. It is fashionable to minimize or denounce the western achievement, to assert the long term superiority of other traditions, to blame the exi…

By: Mitch

Mitch — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 17:54:47 +0000

This nonsense about Western capitalism causing Third World poverty was preached as gospel by 20th century Marxists. When the predicted immiseration of the working class didn’t happen (in fact, they prospered most where markets were freest), it had to be explained somehow. An error by Marx was unthinkable. So in what might be considered an early example of offshoring, the Marxist theoreticians looked around for misery, found it overseas, and ascribed it to capitalism.

Don’t bother trying to explain this to an anti-globalist. It will only puzzle or annoy them without denting their certainty.

By: jv

jv — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 16:26:43 +0000

Every competent economic historian (with training in economics) believes and teaches some variant of what you said. [China may be the exception as it got the closest to what we call the IR with clearly non-Western institutions.] Yet the most violent reactions are heard from members of the public who are still being taught that the West is rich because the rest of the world is poor.

This has been disproved on so many levels and discussed in so many prominent books (take Rosenberg and Birdzell or North and Thomas for starters, not to mention Mokyr, Landes, McCloskey, etc.) Even within my own university, students come to my classes hearing the opposite from other disciplines. They are quickly disabused, but it is a great problem.

The number of people who’ve swallowed unhistoric gar bazzhh about economic history seem to outnumber by far the ones we reach with careful teaching.

Other groups are deeply invested in the notion that slavery or colonialism “paid for” Western growth, no matter how mistaken the notion is.

What to do, what to do.

By: Isaac Schrödinger

Isaac Schrödinger — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 10:57:26 +0000

What is Natural Today?

Jonathan Wilde:Where governments have allowed markets to function and trade to exist – Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and more recently

By: Ginny

Ginny — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 02:02:26 +0000

I’ve always figured my old boyfriend whose specialty was medievalism (his specialty was Sienna) did not have it exactly right when he thought that the worse thing that had happened in all history was the Reformation. And I don’t think it was an accident that he also had a somewhat medieval view of women’s (and men’s) roles.

Thanks Shannon. This is the kind of thing that has to be pointed out to my children every once in a while as they come back from their U.T. courses in anthropology longing for the time of the hunterers and gatherers, when they think they would have been happy. (Actually they probably would have been dead by the age they have already reached – though of course if they were alive they wouldn’t be bothered by my opinions because for sure I’d be dead.) I always figured that life expectancy trumps a hell of a lot.