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 protecting people 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)

Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World (2011)

Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.