3. From Aristocracy To Monarchy To Democracy
In the following I want to briefly describe a historical puzzle or riddle that I will then try to solve and answer in some detail.
But before that, it is necessary to make a few brief general theoretical observations.
IV. Implications and Outlook
Several implications and suggestions follow from this. First, the theory of social evolution sketched here entails a fundamental criticism of the egalitarianism rampant within the social sciences generally but also among many libertarians. True, economists allow for human “differences” in the form of different labor productivities. But these differences are generally interpreted as the result of different external conditions, i.e., of different endowments or training. Only rarely are internal, biologically anchored characteristics admitted as possible sources of human differences.
III. History Explained
Why did it take so long to get out of the Malthusian trap; and what happened that we finally succeeded? Why did it take so long until we gave up a hunter-gatherer existence in favor of an existence as agricultural settlers? And why, even after the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry, did it take more than another 10,000 years until mankind’s seemingly final escape from the Malthusian trap? Economic theory, or what I have said about it, does not and cannot answer these questions.
II. Economic History: The Problem
The problem to be explained in the following has been captured by two charts depicting world population growth on the one hand and the development of per capita income (average living standards) on the other.
2. From The Malthusian Trap To the Industrial Revolution: Reflections on Social Evolution
I. Economic Theory
For economic theory the question of how to increase wealth and get rich has a straightforward answer.
Mises Daily Thursday: Understanding True Credit and False Credit
Mises Daily Thursday by Frank Shostak:
True credit can only expand if the stock of real savings and real wealth expands. Unfortunately, fractional reserve banking and central banks facilitate the expansion of false credit which diverts resources from true wealth producing activities.
III. The Solution: Theory and History
The technological invention, then, that solved (at least temporarily33 ) the problem of a steadily emerging and re-emerging “excess” of population and the attendant fall of average living standards was a revolutionary change in the entire mode of production. It involved the change from a parasitic lifestyle to a genuinely productive life.
II. The Problem: Theory
About 35,000 years ago, i.e., 15,000 years after the initial exodus from Africa, practically all of Europe, Asia, Australia and, of course, Africa itself had been occupied by our ancestors, the modern humans, and archaic humans: homo neanderthalensis and homo erectus, were on the verge of extinction. About 12,000 years ago, humans had also spread all across the Americas.
