Reddit mentions of Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

holy shit

P U R E

>The big economic story of our times is not the Great Recession. It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long



but wait there's more
>For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.

>McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois. Can you be virtuous and bourgeois? Do markets improve ethics? Has capitalism made us better as well as richer? Yes, yes, and yes, argues McCloskey, who takes on centuries of capitalism’s critics with her erudition and sheer scope of knowledge. Applying a new tradition of “virtue ethics” to our lives in modern economies, she affirms American capitalism without ignoring its faults and celebrates the bourgeois lives we actually live, without supposing that they must be lives without ethical foundations.

i think im going to die from an overdose of ideology

Deirdre McCloskey professor Economics UI Chicago (not the University of Chicago although she proudly describes herself as a Chicago economist, and she means the Friedmans, not the city) has published a trilogy, a magnum opus, which although obviously repetitive is magnificent and also magnificently readable.

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

If you want to use that word in 2017 you maybe might want to at least read a couple of Ms. McCloskey's blog posts. When the 3rd one was published I posted a link in r/economics but nobody over there liked it so it definitely ain't for everybody. The three together come in at over 2000 pages and they are not light.

I agree. The economist Deirdre McCloskey argues that the elevation of respect for human dignity is what allowed the industrial revolution to happen. The necessary economic tools were around for hundreds of years before it happened, but it was the elevation of human dignity that allowed them to catch fire.

I don't know how widely that hypothesis is accepted by other economists, but she's very well respected in the profession.

https://smile.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Dignity-Economics-Explain-Modern/dp/0226556743

Sorry for this late reply; maybe you weren't expecting this.

I don't know if this is cognitive dissonance, or moving the goalposts, to claim:

• Your view may be technically correct in accordance with the definition you gave, but you're not addressing the way the term is actually used.
  
  
• Ok, sometimes the term is used in the way you describe, but I'm not defending people who do that.
  
  
• Ok, a lot of the time dislike of Muslims is confused with dislike of Islam, but not all of the time.
  
  I don't know what more I can say. In theory, Islamaphobia is sound. In practice, the term Islamaphobia creates problems.
  
  > So you don't think that there are people who are actually bigoted towards Islam?
  
  No. It is impossible to be "bigoted" towards an idea. It is only possible to be bigoted towards people.
  
  > See, this is kind of where I suspected your view was coming from, which is why I was probing you about why you actually believed this. It's based on your view that Islam is somehow an objectively worse ideology than others, as if there is one Islam with one way to practice it.
  
  My view is correct independent of the state of the Muslim world. Stop making things unnecessarily complicated. There is no ignoring the fact that Islam is a set of underdeveloped, stone-age prescriptions about how to live.
  
  > Second, correlation does not equal causation. Just because these places are majority Muslim doesn't mean that it is Islam that is causing the problems you're talking about. Have you considered that perhaps the parts of the world that "abide by enlightenment values" have the luxury to do so because they are flourishing?
  
  I understand your point, but there is causation here. The industrial revolution kicked off after enlightenment values took root. Equality before the law. https://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Dignity-Economics-Explain-Modern/dp/0226556743
  
  > Sure, Islam plays a part, but there's no way it's responsible for all of it.
  
  Ok, so you are conceding to my point.
  
  > you're not claiming that people are calling Bill Maher an Islamophobe because he has "a dislike or prejudice against Islam or Muslims"
  
  I think they are, but that's besides the point. Let's take the emphasis off Bill Maher and onto Sam Harris (also in the clip). I am completely certain that Harris hates Islam, but has absolutely no animus towards individual Muslims because they're Muslim. Yet, he's called an Islamaphobe and other bastions of left-wing hate.
  
  Let's look at this exchange
  
  > Is my view at least accurate if we're going by that definition?
  
  > > No, because by going by that definition, you're not really addressing how the word is actually used.
  
  That is a non sequitur. For the sake of argument, suppose you're right, and that the definition I gave is one that is never used. That wouldn't change that I'm right IF we're abiding by the definition I gave.
  
  Also, there's another thing you didn't really respond to. How does it help that there is a word for bigotry, for which the root word is "Islam", which is a belief set not an identity? Wouldn't it be infinitely better if we instead used the term "anti-Muslim bigotry", where the root word is Muslim, which is an identity.
  
  > There are different levels of dislike for Islam.
  
  Ok, but that is separate from dislike of Muslims. They're correlated, but so are a lot of things. One can love Islam and hate Muslims, or hate Islam and love Muslims. Point to as many examples of Muslim-haters you want.

they paid that in 1988, after asians were already rich. and the amount was 1.6B. Pretty sure poor african americans have been given multiples of that number through housing subsidies, welfare etc etc.

What causes a people to get rich is not capital. it is the way they think...the way they act...the values they hold.

i suggest this book for more of my thoughts:

http://www.amazon.com/Bourgeois-Dignity-Economics-Explain-Modern/dp/0226556743/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=13F7AMGZX4W2B2BYS99Q