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diff --git a/research/universe-wants-us-poor.rst b/research/universe-wants-us-poor.rst new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6d5c533 --- /dev/null +++ b/research/universe-wants-us-poor.rst @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +Universe wants us to be poor +############################ + +:date: 2024-08-06T07:30:00 +:category: research +:tags: politics, institution, economics, poverty + +While listening to `the new episode of EconTalk`_ on the normalcy +of poverty and how MAGA is just a pure opium of the masses +[#]_ I was enjoying a reminder of the Common Sense reality +and gave me some strength to oppose prevalent fantasies of +the current media. One thing you haven’t mentioned, which +I see as very relevant for the establishing of industrial +modernity, is the institutional framework required for it. The +agricultural lifestyle was horrible in many aspects, but one +thing which it brought to the table (and why it survived and +survives so well) was to some extent independence on others (to +some extent, I know). When you make your own food, clothes, +etc., you can sustain your existence without relying much on +others. However, the moment, you suggest, that some citizen +of the city should give up all their existence and just clean +the shit from streets for living, you have to offer them some +reliability of income. Will be there this job around in the next +year, next ten years? Am I not giving up my only source of income +for fantasy, which will go away with the next administration +coming to power? Will this job survive the next plague or a +wave of famine? Unless there is some institutional certainty, +it is very difficult to start on some division of labour to the +extent you can get some industrial modernity. Yes, I know this +is to a large extent what New Institutional Economists, Douglas +North (and Hernando de Soto) were saying, but it needs to be +emphasized. + +Yes, there were technological reasons (you cannot make a steam +engine until you can make airtight machines, which requires +exact machining unavailable until the eighteenth century, etc.), +but I think there were mostly problems of lack of institutional +framework, which could guarantee a peace required for the +division of labour. + +.. [#] And here apparently I agree with J. D. Vance, who + apparently_ called Trump “cultural heroin” and “an opioid of the + masses.” + +.. _`the new episode of EconTalk`: + https://www.econtalk.org/the-ever-present-challenge-of-escaping-poverty-with-noah-smith/ +.. _apparently: + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people#Modern_comparisons |