The Chinese have put cameras across the street from the door to the MI6 building.
None of the incidences of myopericarditis pooled in the current study were higher than those after smallpox vaccinations and non-COVID-19 vaccinations, and all of them were significantly lower than those in adolescents aged 12–17 years after COVID-19 infection.--Bao-Qiang Guo, Hong-Bin Li, Li-Qiang Yang
Origins of Capitalism
"Before writing this review, I asked Microsoft Bing: “When was capitalism invented?” Bing said: “1776.” Then I turned to Google: “What was the first capitalist country?” Google’s answer: “Great Britain.” I then asked the chatbot Lia27, “Was a strong state necessary to back the formation of capitalism?” It replied: “Yes, strong states are necessary to provide the infrastructure and legal framework that allows capitalism to thrive. Without a strong state, it would be difficult for businesses to operate and for markets to function efficiently.”
These answers are neat, clean, and wrong.
Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden, two economic historians who do not have an obvious political agenda, tell a different story in a deeply researched and well-written new book, Pioneers of Capitalism. Differentiating small-scale markets from capitalism, they argue that a capitalist economy features advanced specialization and trade, the widespread use of wage labor, and financial markets. This sort of economy, they show, was neither invented in 1776 nor inseparable from a strong state. It evolved, from the ground up, over centuries, and Dutch merchants were some of its most important pioneers.
A thousand years ago, a traveling monk, Alpert of Metz, was dismayed by the scale of state collapse around him. In his visit to the merchants of Tiel, he saw, in Prak and van Zanden’s words, that “they enjoyed a certain degree of independence” and self-organized in various ways. They “used drinking societies to strengthen their mutual bonds, fostering trust and thus simplifying mutual trade.” They “also maintained their own system of justice, which deviated from canonical law.” In other words, order was coming from market participants through private governance, rather than being established by a strong state. (This irked Alpert, who was “annoyed by the customs of the merchants, with their own legal rules and pagan drinking societies.”)"
"Before writing this review, I asked Microsoft Bing: “When was capitalism invented?” Bing said: “1776.” Then I turned to Google: “What was the first capitalist country?” Google’s answer: “Great Britain.” I then asked the chatbot Lia27, “Was a strong state necessary to back the formation of capitalism?” It replied: “Yes, strong states are necessary to provide the infrastructure and legal framework that allows capitalism to thrive. Without a strong state, it would be difficult for businesses to operate and for markets to function efficiently.”
These answers are neat, clean, and wrong.
Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden, two economic historians who do not have an obvious political agenda, tell a different story in a deeply researched and well-written new book, Pioneers of Capitalism. Differentiating small-scale markets from capitalism, they argue that a capitalist economy features advanced specialization and trade, the widespread use of wage labor, and financial markets. This sort of economy, they show, was neither invented in 1776 nor inseparable from a strong state. It evolved, from the ground up, over centuries, and Dutch merchants were some of its most important pioneers.
A thousand years ago, a traveling monk, Alpert of Metz, was dismayed by the scale of state collapse around him. In his visit to the merchants of Tiel, he saw, in Prak and van Zanden’s words, that “they enjoyed a certain degree of independence” and self-organized in various ways. They “used drinking societies to strengthen their mutual bonds, fostering trust and thus simplifying mutual trade.” They “also maintained their own system of justice, which deviated from canonical law.” In other words, order was coming from market participants through private governance, rather than being established by a strong state. (This irked Alpert, who was “annoyed by the customs of the merchants, with their own legal rules and pagan drinking societies.”)"
---Ed Stringham – reviewing Maarten Prak’s and Jan Luiten van Zanden’s new book, Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800 – explains that capitalism first emerged from the efforts of Dutch merchants and not from a strong state.
2 comments:
When the Chinese put a camera on your door then worry
We have a friend who was a high up at Microsoft He opined said no silicon VALLEY Operation could change software without Government Approval
Holy smokes.
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