Comments on: Deirdre McCloskey at the AEA http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/deirdre-mccloskey-at-the-aea/ taking the most charitable view of those who disagree Mon, 21 Dec 2020 16:18:52 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.32 By: Vacslav http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/deirdre-mccloskey-at-the-aea/#comment-463325 Sat, 16 Jan 2016 09:30:11 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=6407#comment-463325 I don’t find McCloskeyan framework incompatible with Norhean.

The former: “Ideas, not capital or institutions, made the modern world”.

The latter, in the “modestly subtitled” book: “We summarize the characteristics of an open access order as follows….1. A widely held set of beliefs about the inclusion of and equality for all citizens. 2. Entry into economic, political, religious, and educational activities without restraint. 3. Support for organizational forms in each activity that is open to all (for example, contract enforcement). 4. Rule of law enforced impartially for all citizens. 5. Impersonal exchange. ”

These all are institutions but they all are ideas as well. It is a belief that you can’t beat your servant and it is a belief that a prime minister is not above the law. Institutions are rules and constraints because they are beliefs, rules — which as Wittgenstein contends, we follow blindly.

]]> By: Conscience of a Citizen http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/deirdre-mccloskey-at-the-aea/#comment-463323 Sat, 16 Jan 2016 04:54:00 +0000 http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/?p=6407#comment-463323 McCloskey as usual ignores Clark and anything to do with biology. Among other things this deprives McCloskey of a good explanation for the aristocratic disdain for achievement, as when discussing the Medicis at some length. The explanation is genetic reversion toward the mean– founders of fortunes are anxious to advantage their offspring but cannot count on those offspring displaying the founders’ talents. Naturally they wish to spare their offspring the trouble of competing with upstarts from other lineages, so they affect a disdain for such competition (“the taint of trade”) and promote the notion of inherited nobility.

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