Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Ebook365 pages5 hours
Heavens on Earth: How to Create Mass Prosperity
By J. P. Floru
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
The world's economy is in crisis. Public spending has reached dizzying heights, national debts are crippling governments and economic growth is lacklustre or non-existent. It has been suggested that this is an unavoidable phase in the world's economic development. Not so, says J. P. Floru. Rather, we in the West have sleepwalked our way into a culture that condemns us to economic decline while savvier nations flourish. Heavens on Earth offers both a manifesto for creating prosperity and a fascinating tale of global growth. It takes a sweeping view of traditions across the world and across the centuries, introducing us to the remarkable individuals who made it all happen. Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Chile, the United States, post-war Germany, China and the Industrial Revolution in England all turned the tide from misery to plenty. Across time and space, the economic disease and the cure were remarkably similar. Heavens on Earth is a book for optimists: if we apply the successful formula of the past, the scope for economic prosperity is limitless.
Unavailable
Related to Heavens on Earth
Related ebooks
When the New Deal Came to Town: A Snapshot of a Place and Time with Lessons for Today Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Return of the Public: Democracy, Power and the Case for Media Reform Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBack on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSilken Slippers and Hobnail Boots Surviving the Decline and Fall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Richard Wolff's Democracy at Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemocracy and Economic Power: Extending the ESOP Revolution through Binary Economics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Politics, Then & Now: And Other Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Right Talk: How Conservatives Transformed the Great Society into the Economic Society Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fedzilla vs. the Constitution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Memoirs of Herbert Hoover - The Great Depression, 1929-1941 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBalanced Budgets, Fiscal Responsibility, and The Constitution: (Cato Public Policy Research Monograph No. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemocracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inequality and the Global Economic Crisis Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5From Freedom to Fascism Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Servant Economy: Where America's Elite is Sending the Middle Class Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Politics, Economics and Investments: Don's Thoughts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsContinued Comments Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary Of "The New Deal: The Conservative Results Of The Liberal Reforms" By Barton Bernstein: UNIVERSITY SUMMARIES Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Noam Chomsky's Profit Over People Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlobal Fracture: The New International Economic Order Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Political Theory: US Social Contract Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImperfect Partners Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFdr’s “New Deal”: Acclamation or Condemnation? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Tony Judt's Ill Fares the Land Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAs a Matter of Fact... Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Industries For You
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncanny Valley: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe to Turn your Passion into Profit Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary and Analysis of The Case Against Sugar: Based on the Book by Gary Taubes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline: WMG Writer's Guides, #6 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living From Your Creativity Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Summary and Analysis of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals 1: Based on the Book by Michael Pollan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYouTube 101: The Ultimate Guide to Start a Successful YouTube channel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Energy: A Beginner's Guide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Disney's Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business & Beyond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Heavens on Earth
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The social sciences provide few controlled experiments; there is no Cern Laboratory for sociology or economics. But the 20th century provided something rather close.
The impoverished, war-torn Korean peninsula was split in two, the North trying communism and the South opting for capitalism. After 60 years South Koreans are on average three inches taller than North Koreans and live 12 years longer.
Germany and its capital city were split down the middle in 1945, the west going capitalist and the east going communist. The architects of the Workers’ Paradise in the east had to build walls to stop the unappreciative proles escaping to the west to be exploited. And then the Workers’ Paradise collapsed.
The results of these experiments have proved problematic for statists. In recent years the economist Ha-Joon Chang has become popular on the left for arguing that the economic success of West Germany and South Korea relative to their eastern and northern neighbours is not because of a lack of state intervention but because they had just the right kind of intervention in just the right amount. For Chang there is nothing inherently wrong with a Gosplan, you just have to make sure you have the right boffins drawing it up.
In his new book, Heavens on Earth, JP Floru utterly rejects this argument. He takes eight case studies, from Britain’s Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries to Singapore’s journey to prosperity, and argues that the spectacular results achieved came from the release of market forces. Where Chang prescribes intensive government involvement in the economy, Floru recommends that politicians and bureaucrats set up a solid legal framework then get out of the way.
Economically speaking, the source of the increase in wealth these countries experienced was increasing productivity, the production of as much with less or more with as much. The increase in the quantity of goods and services available for consumption which this permits is the essence of increasing wealth.
The Theory of Comparative Advantage, outlined by David Ricardo 200 years ago, extends this worldwide. As a unit a country will grow rich if it produces goods or services for which the inhabitants of other countries are willing to exchange the goods and services they have produced. And countries will see their terms of trade improve the more efficient, or productive, they are.
Floru’s argument echoes that of Douglas Carswell’s recent book The End of Politics, its central feature the ‘Hayekian Knowledge Problem’. Economics is, as Alfred Marshall wrote, “a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life. It examines that part of individual & social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of material requisites of well-being”.
It is not, as much mainstream neo-classical economics would suggest, the study of the allocation of given resources among known ends via some identified production function. It is, in fact, the study of the process of the discovery of all these things; resources, ends, and means.
The knowledge of how best to produce cars, linen, or financial services does not exist in some one place where one of Ha-Joon Chang’s Platonic philosopher kings can simply go and get it prêt-à-porter. It is lurking somewhere, probably dispersed, in the vast collective brain made up of each individual in the wider economy, and it has to be discovered.
A free market economy is far better at tapping this collective brain and efficiently discovering and coordinating the hidden, dispersed information it contains than a state command system which relies on the brains of a handful of experts. That is the lesson of Korea and Germany.
There is an incredible amount of economic gloom as debts rocket, growth stagnates, and incomes fall in the developed world. But, as the United Nations recently reported,
“The world is witnessing a epochal 'global rebalancing' with higher growth in at least 40 poor countries, helping lift hundreds of millions out of poverty and into a new 'global middle class'. Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast”.
Thanks to free market capitalism more people are living better than ever before.
Since at least 1798, when Ricardo’s friend Thomas Malthus predicted a destiny of misery for mankind, there have been people warning of an imminent end to our material progress. But whatever the situation with regard to his material resources, one truly inexhaustible resource man possesses is his (or her) ingenuity, or human capital in the economists’ terminology. A system which allows for the maximum exploitation of this ingenuity, of its discovery and coordination, remains humanity’s best hope for the ever more prosperous future which is on offer.
In 1776 Adam Smith wrote that “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice”. JP Floru’s excellent new book performs the vital service of reaffirming this fundamental lesson.