Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'bourgeois virtues'

November 16, 2015

Bourgeois Equality: The Modern World Can’t Be Explained By Material Causes

Economist Deirdre McCloskey is set to release the long-anticipated conclusion of the Bourgeois Era trilogy sometime next spring. The book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, will build on her thesis that our newfound prosperity is not primarily due to systems, tools, or materials, but the ideas and rhetoric behind them. Continue Reading...
May 08, 2014

Deirdre McCloskey on Ethics and Rhetoric in the ‘Great Enrichment’

In a marvelous speech on the origins of economic freedom (and its subsequent fruits), Deirdre McCloskey aptly crystallizes the deeper implications of her work on bourgeois virtues and bourgeois dignity. For example, though many doubted that those in once-socialistic India would come to see markets favorably, eventually those attitudes changed, and with it came prosperity. Continue Reading...
June 16, 2008

Encouraging a true culture of thrift

Picking up on themes we’ve touched on here, here, and here, last week NYT columnist David Brooks weighed in on the culture of debt in the United States. “The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined,” he writes. Continue Reading...