ECON 108 HW#2 Economic Revolution

A.

In the piece titled The Economic Revolution by Robert Heilbroner, he talked about the world and the changes that it has gone through over time in values, struggles, economics, as well as other things. Something that I found very interesting in this piece was the amount of progression that happens in such a short amount of time through out the world.  Humans have been on earth for about 200,000 years, and in just a few hundred years, the whole wiring of the human mind has changed. In Shakespeare’s living era that was just 400-450 years ago, the goal of mankind wasn’t to raise his/her social and financial status, but to maintain the one that they were born into. Money was not any type of incentive to work harder. It was noted in the 17^th century by Sir William petty that people who aren’t money driven would not increase their work output if wages were raised to do so. It was said in the reading that the idea of gain wasn’t around until recently. Rather than increasing income to buy things, people would trade for products that they needed. Exchanging products with another has been around for as long as man has lived. I also like the idea that was presented that everyday the possibility of breakdown is an issue with every community caused the human unpredictability. This is an interesting thought that most people don’t think about. Usually people take it for granted that most people relations work well and that mass chaos doesn’t break out. At the same time, know one knows what is going to happen on any given day. An event could occur that drives all of man kid into chaos causing their community to break down. Something that seemed counter intuitive to me was that in medieval times, most people didn’t sell their land. It was passed down from generation to generation. I did not know this before reading this excerpt form the book. This is because thousands of property tradeoffs occur every day in the US. I had always assumed that trading land has been a tradition for a long time.

B. 

The world’s general decisions and regulations for thousands of years had been a result of tradition and command. Why do you think that such simple reasoning took control of economic decisions for such a long period of time?

Adam Smith is the first recognized economist in mankind. What do you feel were the reasons that kingdoms did not have economists in them before to help improve quality of living and help to make them economically superior to rival kingdoms?

C.

 The main point of this piece is to describe the progress man has made throughout the economic revolution. For thousands of years the average income of earthlings was almost the same. It wasn’t until Adam Smith and other economists came around that the GDP of the world began to rapidly increase and technological developments came into play. Values of humans have changed as well. In the 18^th century, gold was considered to give someone power. Though gold is valuable today too, the amount that someone has will not determine who has the power. Plenty of poor people like Abe Lincoln and Herbert Hoover did not have a lot of money but still obtained the most powerful position that can be held in the United States.