DRAFT: Time to Start Thinking About What to Teach in the Fall!
I need a new framework for & I have a new title for Econ 135: “‘The Enlargement of the Human Empire, to the Effecting of All Things Possible’: A History of Economic Growth”; the quote is from Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis”…
Econ 135: Fall 2024
‘The Enlargement of the Human Empire, to the Effecting of All Things Possible’: A History of Economic Growth
Proposed Course Themes:
How a bunch of jumped-up monkeys more-or-less accidentally became an anthology intelligence, and then hunted frantically for institutions to make that work…
Along the way, we fell into a Malthusian Trap, in which we turned aside from societies-of-cooperation to societies-of-domination…
Then we developed the institutions of Modern Economic Growth, which made us rich at a dizzying rate by doubling every generation our technological capabilities to manipulate nature and coöperatively organize ourselves…
But what exactly those institutions of Modern Economic Growth truly are is a complex, cloudy, and disputable thing…
As are the details as to how to rewrite the cultural-social-political-organizational software code of society to run on the underlying rapidly changing forces-of-production hardware…
And, unfortunately, that Modern Economic Growth rate of technological progress and corresponding speed of structural economic transition were much too fast for any societa; process of gradient-descent institutional evolution to cope without repeated disastrous crashes…
Now we face the truly big problem: that of building institutions for managing us, as an anthology intelligence and a society, that will actually enable us to live wisely and well…
Proposed Course Readings:
Henrich, Joseph. 2015. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, & Making Us Smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press. <https://archive.org/details/secretofoursucce0000henr>.
Crone, Patricia. 1989. Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. <https://archive.org/details/isbn_2901851683115>.
Gellner, Ernst. 1988. Plough, Sword, & Book: The Structure of Human History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. <https://archive.org/details/ploughswordbooks0000gell>.
Wyman, Patrick. 2021. The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, & Forty Years That Shook the World. New York: Twelve. <https://www.twelvebooks.com/titles/patrick-wyman/the-verge/9781538701171/>.
Kennedy, Gavin. 2005. Adam Smith: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <https://academic.oup.com/book/407>.
Koyama, Mark, & Jared Rubin. 2021. How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Polity Press. <https://www.howtheworldbecamerich.com/>.
Allen, Robert C. 2011. Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <https://archive.org/details/globaleconomichi0000alle>.
DeLong, J. Bradford. 2022. Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the 20th Century. New York: Basic Books. <https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/j-bradford-delong/slouching-towards-utopia/9780465019595/?lens=basic-books>.
PRELIMINARY: Course Schedule & Topics:
2024-08-28 We 10:00 PDT: Introduction: “The Enlargement of the Human Empire, to the Effecting of All Things Possible”
====
I: Long Prehistory, -3,000,000 to -3000—how humans evolved and adapted to different environments, how they developed tools and technologies, how they organized themselves into bands and tribes, how they traded and exchanged; prestige, reciprocity, redistribution, dominance
2024-08-30 Fr 10:00 PDT: Before History: Anthology Intelligence: Reciprocity, Redistribution, & Prestige…