Learning isn’t necessarily cumulative. Human experience over the centuries provides lessons, some clearer than others. But each generation has to learn lessons anew, and some do not.
The lessons about economic growth taught over the long run of history are clear. Growth is not inevitable, and while riches may be accumulated, or appropriated, by the few in high positions, the lives of the very large majority throughout the centuries have been nasty, brutish, and short.
The exception, the Great Enrichment, began some three centuries ago around the North Sea in the Dutch Republic and in England, according to economic historian Deirdre McCloskey, in societies when people began respecting and encouraging commerce rather than resenting and scorning it.
They discovered that when people exchanged goods and services in free markets, with property rights secured by limited…
