weekly quote #14: Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke December 28, 2007
Posted by ocmpoma in : economics, society , trackbackI’m finishing up Bruce Caldwell’s Hayek’s Challenge, but I couldn’t wait to start in on Power and Plenty, by Findlay and O’Rourke. It could be pithily summed up as an economic history of the world from 1000 to 2000CE, but part of the reason I became more interested in it (despite the possibility of a pass, albeit an after-I’ve-read-it pass, from Arnold Kling), is that one of its main points seems to be about how much effective war is responsible for effective trade. Here’s a relevant line from the preface, page XXV of my edition:
“It is natural to suspect that the accumulating economic and geopolitical tensions unleashed in the course of each period of peace, prosperity, and trade culminate in successive rounds of conflict, so that wars, rather than being exogenous or external shocks to the world system, have been inherent in its very nature as it has evolved over the past millennium.”
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?