Was 1800 (approximately) A Pivotal Year In Human History? Robert Fogel, Francis Fukuyama, And Deirdre McCloskey All Seem To Think So

Robert Fogel is a Nobel Prize Winning Economist. Here is something he said recently:

"Technology rescued humankind from centuries of physical maladies and malnutrition, Mr. Fogel argues. Before the 19th century (1800), most people were caught in an endless cycle of subsistence farming."

See Technology Advances; Humans Supersize.

Francis Fukuyama, author of the famous book The End of History and the Last Man, has a new book out. wrote another book in 2014 called Political Order and Political Decay. Here is an excerpt from a review of that book:

"Most of the world is still bent on “getting to Denmark” — Fukuyama’s shorthand phrase for an effective, accountable, tolerant and law-bound society.

Getting even close to Denmark took a long time. In his 2011 book The Origins of Political Order, Fukuyama surveyed the development from prehistoric times to the year 1800 of the three institutions he argues are indispensable for a decent polity: an effective state, the rule of law and democratic accountability."

"Democratic accountability grew from England’s Magna Carta in 1215 but had made only limited progress in Europe by Origins’ 1800 cutoff date.

The going has remained hard because, in Fukuyama’s words, “All good things do not necessarily go together.” His three goals are often in tension with one another."

See Does the End of History Result in Political Decay? by Michael Barone.

Deirdre McCloskey is a highly respected economic historian who wrote the book Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World. Here are some quotes from her: 

See "Joyful Innovators," a review of Bourgeois Dignity. Here are some quotes from her: 

"Modern economic growth—that stunning increase from $3 a day in 1800 worldwide to now upwards of $130 a day in the richest countries, and anyway $30 as a worldwide average—can’t be accounted for in the usual and materialist ways. It wasn’t trade, investment, exploitation, imperialism, education, legal changes, genes, science. It was innovation, such as cheap steel and the modern university, supported by an entirely new attitude towards the middle class, emerging from Holland around 1600. (It has parallels in classical music and mathematics and politics, in all of which the Europeans burst out, 1600-1800.)"

See From Aid Watch: "Don't be snobbish towards merchants and entrepreneurs, and you'll develop". 

"Economics of the usual sort, whether Samuelsonian or Marxist, can’t get at why Europeans and then the rest of us started around 1800 to become insanely innovative. A new dignity for innovation and its market applications can: that’s a sociological change, supporting sensible economic policies."

What you can learn from the history is that stasis reigned until we discovered dignity and liberty for ordinary people, and in particular for the disturbing, irritating class of entrepreneurs."