
Title: Structure and change in economic history
Author(s): Douglass Cecil North
Publisher: New York : Norton
Pages: 228
Date: 1981
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![]() Title: Structure and change in economic history
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![]() Title: What the Anti-Federalists were for
The Federalists, those in favor of the constitution, wanted a very limited (and non-controverisal) set of first principles+. The Anti-Federalists were concerned about big government, and wanted protections for the individual written into the constitution. The Federalists argued that anything not spelled out in the constitution would be reserved to the states and their laws. The Anti-Federalists were distrusting of big government and insisted on incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the constitution as items explicitly forbidden trespass by the Federal government. The Anti-Federalists won. As a result, the Federal government became the protector of rights as enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and over the centuries of many more rights in many more amendments to the constitution. The Anti-Federalists paradoxically set the stage for the very large Federal government bureaucracy we see today (2011). The more rules you write the more freedom you (eventually) give away. |
![]() Title: Educating the reflective practitioner
Wonderful book on how we should educate professionals (researchers) for work in unpredictable R&D+. This book will definitely be part of the curriculum for our compulsories+. This is reflective practice, where neither the teacher (Stage 2 researcher) nor the pupil (Stage 1 researcher) fully know the answer beforehand, and both contribute and learn in the development of the best answer. Both learn through practice, with the teacher learning both in the subject matter, and in the education of Stage 1 researchers+. The book quotes from Carl Rogers (1952):
Schön addresses these challenges in The Reflective Pratiticioner. |
![]() Title: The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
De Soto argues, based on surveys performed by his graduate students, that many trillions of dollars in 'latent capital' are tied up in the slum tenaments and properties of the poor of the world. These individuals, for example, are unable to take out a home improvement loan, or to get a credit card from Home Depot, because their property rights can only be established within the formal economy as a result of herculean efforts, and often these efforts can be counter-productive. De Soto argues that fundamental changes in property laws, and more importantly, to the institutions and formal practices that secure the rights of individuals to their newly-recognized property, are required to extract this capital, to the great benefit of the individuals and to the economies. De Soto's arguments very closely parallel our efforts to extract working capital+ from intellectual capital+. We need rules, regulations, accounting methods, and reputation that allows investors to view this property in a new light. Investors can purchase rights to IC with confidence their understanding of these rights will be respected. Owners of intellectual capital can leverage their 'property' to obtain loans and credit, with assurance their property will be respected. |
![]() Title: The Economic Theory Of Risk And Insurance The full text of this book (in .pdf) can be found here (archive copy). Marvellous short book that talks about insurance in terms of its influence on capital growth in an economy. Insurance is "capital protecting capital" ... that is we apportion a bit of our national capital to an activity called risk reduction, and this activity is called insurance. In the absence of the institution of insurance, risk 'taints' all other capital, raises the cost of capital, and reduces national productivity. Individuals are mostly risk adverse: a dollar loss hurts much more than the satisfaction from a dollar gained. So we segregate out the losses from the gains in a society, and overall capital becomes productively more employed. Also, certain individuals are better at managing risks, so we segregate these individuals out from the production of consumer goods and set them up as a separate economic activity, providing the risk-reduction services of the insurance industry. Willett's arguments are important since we must insure against mismanagement, fraud, misrepresentation, negligence or/and breach of fiduciary duties in our funding agency+ (i.e., in the 'firm' that oversees Franchise Capital Management+). |
The book professes to be a new approach to the study of economic history (written by a Nobel prize-winning economist). It reads instead like Rousseau's
description of the natural man – full of half-baked speculations and rampant over-generalizations. The gist of the argument:
In general, the book looks to equate economic history with the evolution of property rights, as reflected in the government policies, rules, regulations and practices of these rights.
Apart from the rampant speculation, with which I share a sympathy, the book has two fundamental flaws:
The book is essentially a history of property rights, with a sidenote on the importance of innovations in management that allowed for the decoupling of labor from the final consumer product.
North emphasizes the critical importance of ideology. Build love of institution
and you greatly reduce the costs of ensuring compliance of labor to the intent of management. Our compliance needs are much more intransigent: with creative endeavors there are no overt measures of compliance. Individuals must reach into themselves as the only source of compliance. North's discussion of ideology reveals a few organizational design features we can use to improve compliance without overt mechanisms:
Investments into building love of institution, a sense of community and fairness are very expensive (in time and effort) but in the end are the only sure way to align the interests of labor (researchers) with those of management (funding agents).
In the spirit of rampant speculation, spanning thousands of years, I offer an alternate view of economic history to that given by North. New ideas and new products (e.g., economic advancement) spring from a child-like fascination with things novel. The individual child, either from reading a science-fiction novel, experiencing a personal tragedy or simply overcoming the taunting challenge of friends that something "can't be done" experiences the thrill and delight of having his or her imagination piqued and then satisfied. Economic history advances as more and more of these children are free to pursue their imagination into adulthood, through the elimination of poverty and with the support and backing of fellow dreamers (and family).
Rights to economic output are secondary to braggin' rights: witness those involved in the scaling of Everest, the Apollo moon landing, and undoubtedly those who oversaw the building of the vast network of Egyptian irrigation canals.