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This is extremely ignorant of economics. The innovations and institutions he refers to, like the university, were only made possible by rising levels of product

This is extremely ignorant of economics. The innovations and institutions he refers to, like the university, were only made possible by rising levels of productivity allowing more resources to be spent on specialized endeavors. In the developing world, whether it's the US in 1880 or Guyana in 2019, rising productivity means people able to afford more capital and consumer goods, like insulated walls, menstrual pads, diapers and toilet paper, which collectively make an enormous impact on human health.

mlyle 7y ago
It's not completely ignorant, but you point right to the hole in the argument. He points out that public goods and infrastructure are really important. A capitalist economy provides lots of surpluses to use to pay for significant public goods without having a spartan way of life.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
That entirely misses that the first universities were centuries before the first joint stock company, or consumer goods. There's a few pushing near 1,000 years old, though by the 12th century they were starting to spread across Europe. The innovation and productivity gains came after.
- mlyle 7y ago
  Yah, and could subsistence farming pay for nearly as much of the population to be resident in them? Economic development is important-- we have a greater portion of the population as academics and/or doing R&D than we had centuries ago. And it continues... Total R&D population is up about 60% in the United States in the past 25 years, in a time when the population as a whole has increased by less than 20%.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    But universities were not made possible by rising levels of productivity, as the GP claimed. They were there long, long before. Certainly a greater proportion go to university now than used to. Which came after. Current levels of university attendance are far more down to pushing university as the right tertiary education, in place of apprenticeships; technical and vocational. Many governments have made policy to increase university attendance whilst closing or downplaying those other options.
    - mlyle 7y ago
      I'm not talking about undergraduate university attendance, but the number of people employed in research. When we focus on higher institutions of research, it's what the author of the article was talking about, too. The number of people in that category was miniscule before 1700, and has exploded in the past 300 years. Yes, there were (a comparatively small number of) universities before this time, doing qualitatively different things. But capitalism paid the bills to transform them into institutions driving scientific advancement.
- CryptoPunk 7y ago
  Capitalism predates advanced financial constructs like corporations. The trade networks of medieval and early-modern-age Europe enabled far higher levels of productivity than would otherwise be possible, which gave monarchs and churches the resources necessary to build and support the first universities. As the economy became more advanced, societies were able to allocate even more resources to tertiary sectors like advanced education, and universities became more numerous and sophisticated. Productivity levels are critically important to the production of public goods like universities, and secure private property rights with contract law enables more rapid gains in productivity levels. And all this doesn't even touch on my other point: higher productivity increases consumer power, which directly enhances the standard of living. It's not enough for some technology/knowledge to just exist. It has to be deployed, and that takes resources that more productive societies are more capable of providing.

mlyle 7y ago

It's not completely ignorant, but you point right to the hole in the argument. He points out that public goods and infrastructure are really important. A capitalist economy provides lots of surpluses to use to pay for significant public goods without having a spartan way of life.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

That entirely misses that the first universities were centuries before the first joint stock company, or consumer goods. There's a few pushing near 1,000 years old, though by the 12th century they were starting to spread across Europe. The innovation and productivity gains came after.

mlyle 7y ago
Yah, and could subsistence farming pay for nearly as much of the population to be resident in them? Economic development is important-- we have a greater portion of the population as academics and/or doing R&D than we had centuries ago. And it continues... Total R&D population is up about 60% in the United States in the past 25 years, in a time when the population as a whole has increased by less than 20%.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  But universities were not made possible by rising levels of productivity, as the GP claimed. They were there long, long before. Certainly a greater proportion go to university now than used to. Which came after. Current levels of university attendance are far more down to pushing university as the right tertiary education, in place of apprenticeships; technical and vocational. Many governments have made policy to increase university attendance whilst closing or downplaying those other options.
  - mlyle 7y ago
    I'm not talking about undergraduate university attendance, but the number of people employed in research. When we focus on higher institutions of research, it's what the author of the article was talking about, too. The number of people in that category was miniscule before 1700, and has exploded in the past 300 years. Yes, there were (a comparatively small number of) universities before this time, doing qualitatively different things. But capitalism paid the bills to transform them into institutions driving scientific advancement.
CryptoPunk 7y ago
Capitalism predates advanced financial constructs like corporations. The trade networks of medieval and early-modern-age Europe enabled far higher levels of productivity than would otherwise be possible, which gave monarchs and churches the resources necessary to build and support the first universities. As the economy became more advanced, societies were able to allocate even more resources to tertiary sectors like advanced education, and universities became more numerous and sophisticated. Productivity levels are critically important to the production of public goods like universities, and secure private property rights with contract law enables more rapid gains in productivity levels. And all this doesn't even touch on my other point: higher productivity increases consumer power, which directly enhances the standard of living. It's not enough for some technology/knowledge to just exist. It has to be deployed, and that takes resources that more productive societies are more capable of providing.