Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey; Art Carden

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden

Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich

How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World

University of Chicago Press | 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226739830

Overview
Contents

About this book

The economist and historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has been best known recently for her Bourgeois Era trilogy, a vigorous defense, unrivaled in scope, of commercially tested betterment. Its massive volumes, The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity, and Bourgeois Equality, solve Adam Smith’s puzzle of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, and of the moral sentiments of modernity. The world got rich, she argues, not chiefly by material causes but by an idea and a sentiment, a new admiration for the middle class and its egalitarian liberalism.

For readers looking for a distillation of McCloskey’s magisterial work, Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich is what you’ve been waiting for. In this lively volume, McCloskey and the economist and journalist Carden bring together the trilogy’s key ideas and its most provocative arguments. The rise of the west, and now the rest, is the story of the rise of ordinary people to a dignity and liberty inspiring them to have a go. The outcome was an explosion of innovation after 1800, and a rise of real income by an astounding 3,000 percent. The Great Enrichment, well beyond the conventional Industrial Revolution, did not, McCloskey and Carden show, come from the usual suspects, capital accumulation or class struggle. It came from the idea of economic liberty in Holland and the Anglosphere, then Sweden and Japan, then Italy and Israel and China and India, an idea that bids fair in the next few generations to raise up the wretched of the earth. The original shift to liberalism arose 1517 to 1789 from theological and political revolutions in northwest Europe, upending ancient hierarchies. McCloskey and Carden contend further that liberalism and “innovism” made us better humans as well as richer ones. Not matter but ideas. Not corruption but improvement.

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich draws in entertaining fashion on history, economics, literature, philosophy, and popular culture, from growth theory to the Simpsons. It is the perfect introduction for a broad audience to McCloskey’s influential explanation of how we got rich. At a time when confidence in the economic system is under challenge, the book mounts an optimistic and persuasive defense of liberal innovism, and of the modern world it has wrought.

Author information

Deirdre Nansen McCloskey is distinguished professor emerita of economics and of history, and professor emerita of English and of communication, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her two dozen books include The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce; Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World; Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World; Economical Writing: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose; The Secret Sins of Economics; and Crossing: A Transgender Memoir, all also published by the University of Chicago Press. Art Carden is professor of economics at the Brock School of Business at Samford University and a frequent contributor to Forbes.com among other popular magazines and scholarly journals.

Reviews

"Read this book and learn why you must know the truth, what truth you need to know, and why the freedom it brings has made almost everyone better off than their parents and grandparents."

— Vernon L. Smith, Chapman University and 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics

"If you are feeling down about the state of the world or pessimistic about its prospects then this is the book to cheer you up. Carden and McCloskey show how much off everyone is today compared to everyone who lived before, and how this is explained not bye the usual suspects such as institutions, or capitalism or the profits of slavery and colonialism, or the exploitation of natural resources, but simply by the practice of liberty, letting people be and allowing them to do their thing (and, crucially, to innovate). They also show how fashionable pessimism about the future is wrong in all its modish variants—as it has been since 1798. This is a work for economists, historians, and anyone who wants to understand why the world has become so much better for human beings in the last two hundred and fifty years and is set to continue doing so."

— Stephen Davies, Institute of Economic Affairs

“There is nobody writing today who mixes erudition and eloquence, or wit and wisdom as richly as McCloskey. Togetherwith Carden, she has now found another virtue: brevity. This is the book I want all young people to read to understand how and why they are so much better off than any previous generation.”

— Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works and The Rational Optimist

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Preface Free access PDF PDF	xi
Part One. POVERTY IS ON THE RUN
1. Liberalism Liberated Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	3
2. It’s the End of the World as They Knew It, and You Should Feel Pretty Good Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	11
3. Nostalgia and Pessimism Worsen Poverty Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	17
4. Under Liberalism the Formerly Poor Can Flourish Ethically and Spiritually Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	24
5. Consider the Possibility That Your Doubts Might Be Mistaken Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	35
6. Pessimism Has Been since 1800 a Rotten Predictor Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	43
7. Even about the Environment Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	50
8. In Fact, None of the Seven Old Pessimisms Makes a Lot of Sense Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	57
9. Nor Do the Three New Ones Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	62
10. So to Get Better, the World Had Better Keep Its Ethical Wits about It Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	68
11. And True Liberalism Celebrates a Life Beyond Wealth Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	75
Part Two. ENRICHMENT DIDN’T COME FOR THE REASONS YOU IMAGINE
12. Liberal Ideas, Not European Horrors or Heroism, Explain the Great Enrichment Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	83
13. Liberalism Supported Innovism and the Profi t Test Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	89
14. The Great Enrichment Did Not Come from Resources or Railways or Property Rights Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	96
15. Nor Thrift or “Capitalism” Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	102
16. Schooling and Science Were Not the Fairy Dust Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	107
17. It Wasn’t Imperialism Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	118
18. Nor Slavery Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	122
19. Nor Wage Slavery Ended by Unions and Regulation Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	128
Part Three. IT CAME BECAUSE IDEAS, ETHICS, RHETORIC, AND IDEOLOGY CHANGED
20. The Talk and the Deals Changed in Northwestern Europe Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	135
21. That Is, Ethics and Rhetoric Changed Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	143
22. “Honest” Shows the Change Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	149
23. And “Happiness” Itself Changed Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	155
24. The Change in Valuation Showed in English Plays, Poems, and Novels Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	161
Part Four. THE CAUSES OF THE CAUSES WERE NOT RACIAL OR ANCIENT
25. Happy Accidents Led to the Revaluation Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	171
26. And Then Old Adam Smith Revealed / The Virtues of the Bourgeois Deal Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	176
Acknowledgments Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	191
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	193
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	211

Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich

How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World

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