Cowen takes issue with Greg
Clark, who has an interesting thesis – that world economic history
can be explained by a move from a Malthusian world where the most successfully
violent were the most reproductively successful, to a capitalist world where
the richest were the most reproductively successful. Here’s the chart:
Cowen’s problem is that Clark hasn’t explained a particular advantage for England,
where the industrial revolution was born, over the rest of Europe. But I don’t
see this as a problem. I see Clark’s thesis as explaining the economic history
of all of Europe, not as trying to explain why England’s growth rate took off
marginally earlier than other countries’ growth rates.
I’m quite convinced by Clark, actually, because his thesis fits neatly into
that of Dan Gilbert, of
Stumbling on Happiness fame. We’re genetically bound to strive to make money,
and to believe that making more money will make us happier. And maybe the real
hope for a country like Bhutan, which seeks to maximize "gross national
happiness" rather than GDP, is that its population doesn’t have the same
genetic makeup and therefore doesn’t have the same urge to destroy the commons
in the search for wealth.
What we will probably never get to know is that is which species died off suddenly as a result of evolution deformations that could not be corrected (on biological scale). Perhaps capitalism killed the dinosaurs.
Consciousness night not turn out to be an advantagous trait. In 10,000 years, we have grown quickly as a species, but perhaps capitalism is on the last stage of (now social) violence, expanding to resource destruction in addition to the massive inequities it forces upon the majority of humans.
Nature doesn’t really establish value beyond longevity, right (the last one alive wins, perhaps)? I’m sure there’s lots of philosophy on this I don’t know about, but even though our social structures have gotten more complex, there are examples of other species (ants come to mind) where socially complex systems with large populations are far more sustainable.
Oh, and what about that study that show, was is the Danes, as more content than most, only because they has experienced so little success?
thank you for bringing the thought of genetic captialism up for discussion …
your blog comments have been based on to these various locations … https://www.kitcomm.com/showthread.php?t=2882 …
http://www.investorsiraq.com/showthread.php?p=293523#post293523 … http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_N/threadview?m=tm&bn=36020&tid=53&mid=254&tof=1&frt=2 … very interesting idea … but … there is also this thought …
“For material civilization is not adequate for the needs of mankind and cannot be the cause of its happiness.”
(Abdu’l-Baha, Abdu’l-Baha in London, p. 29)
Doesn’t this thesis that “the richest are the most reproductively successful” have a little problem called “all the demographic data everywhere in the world”?
Yes, I daresay it does, although we are talking about the Industrial Revolution here, and apparently it actually held up, back then.