false economy a surprising economic history of the world

'bread and circuses.' The largesse was paid for by the conquered provinces.' he result: hordes of idle Romans hanging around the city, demanding welfare. ' Rome was not about to set up an elaborate series of soup kitchens throughout Italy, the grain was distributed only to those who came to Rome to receive it. And that is what Rome became – a parasitic city of rentiers, bureaucrats, and hangers-on – as much as a center of commerce and industry.' a single city, could extract rent from half the civilized world. to industrialize.Ĭhapter 2 is about cities and asks why Washington, D.C., did not institute voting.Īncient Rome,'.

The same benefits that boosted farming in the U.S. Their badly paid employees did not get a the share of wealth that would have contributed to the kind of consumer-industrialization that was rising in the United States. They spent it on imports or bought more land. In the early decades of agricultural commercialization – the 1860s and 1870s – 'the landowners regarded rural life and the actual practice of agriculture with disdain.'Ī boom of exports from Argentina to Europe in the early 20th century put a lot of money in the hands of the owners of huge swaths of pasture. He writes that to New England came people with a 'tradition of skilled farmers on small homesteads,' and Argentina 'had a history of a few rich landowners on great estates left by the Spanish, and the aristocratic elitism that came with it.'Įuropean emigrants to Argentina had escaped a landowning aristocracy at home only to re-create it in the New World. It suggests a means to a society's economic success: avoid being too isolationist or completely self-sufficient plan don't copy what works for others who live with different circumstances but does not necessarily work for you support property rights and the rule of law don't let interest groups discourage beneficial development and poorer nations should avoid customs procedures and corruption that discourages trade and investment.Ĭhapter 1 compares Argentina and the United States, from the 18th to the 21st century. But the book is less a history than it is an economics lecture. The dots he connects are few, described by one favorable reviewer at Amazon as 'bits and pieces.' Sequence has its revelations, and there is some sequence in his work. The text of Beattie's economic history of the world is a mere 301 pages, which means his history is much more spotty than some other histories of the world. As of now, 2009, he is trade editor for the Financial Times.

False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World, by Alan BeattieĪlan Beattie has a BA degree in history from Balliol Colege, Oxford, and a masters in Eeconomics from Cambridge.

False economy a surprising economic history of the world