Update: from: Knowledge vs. Calculation: But factor 2, technical-causal knowledge, has continued to increase over time (even though impeded and distorted by state patent law). The human race thus can and obviously has accumulated a “fund of experience,” as Hayek calls it, that contributes to human progress and the creation of wealth. 1 It is not conflating correlation with causation, nor minimizing the crucial role of money prices in rational economic calculation, to explain today’s immense prosperity as the result primarily of the accumulation of knowledge, since there has been no obvious and significant improvement in property rights and money price calculation. (My own view is that the industrial revolution happened when the accumulated technical and related knowledge reached a certain tipping point; I agree with Hoppe that other explanations for the IR are wanting but am not persuaded by Hoppe’s theory either; but I am not sure, and this is neither here not there.)
See From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution: An Explanation of Social Evolution (PFS 2009):
A speech given in May 2009 to the fourth annual conference of the Property and Freedom Society at the Hotel Karia Princess in Bodrum, Turkey.
Video by Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance.
Update:
“From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution: An Explanation of Social Evolution,” ch. 4 in The Great Fiction. [latest references: PFP041 | Hans-Hermann Hoppe, From the Malthusian Trap to the Industrial Revolution: An Explanation of Social Evolution (PFS 2009)]
Necessary and Sufficient Causes of the Industrial Revolution: Some Critical Remarks on Mises and His Explanation; The Great Fiction: Property, Economy, Society, and the Politics of Decline.
See also Charles Murray’s review of Nicholas Wade’s recent book, A Troublesome Inheritance: “Then, with courage that verges on the foolhardy, he adds a chapter that incorporates genetics into an explanation of the West’s rise during the past 600 years.”
- See Kinsella, “Hayek’s Views on Intellectual Property,” C4SIF Blog (Aug. 2, 2013); idem, “Intellectual Property and the Structure of Human Action,” StephanKinsella.com (Jan. 6, 2010). See also Kinsella, “Tucker, ‘Knowledge Is as Valuable as Physical Capital,’” C4SIF Blog (March 27, 2017) and George Reisman, “Progress In a Free Economy,” The Freeman (July 1, 1980). See also Julio H. Cole, “Patents and Copyrights: Do the Benefits Exceed the Costs?”, J. Libertarian Stud. 15, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 79–105, p. 84 et seq., discussing the importance of technical progress (not to be confused with patents) to economic growth. Cole cites several studies in n.12. [↩]
