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General Economic History (Social Science Classics Series)

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Early economics has been reduced by philosophers to making the relationship of master and slave productive. Max Weber makes fine distinctions in the kinds of relationships that gives the superior powers of life or death, or all powers except life and death, over people who are supposed to be doing the work. The financial system that makes Americans expect huge gains without producing much is like the $84 billion dollars expected to modernize the nuclear weapons systems in the next ten years: with the power to wipe out life on earth, Americans don't expect any powerful objections to setting up whatever form of collective financial suicide is likely to result from the marginal thinking of millionaires and billionaires.

People survived without electricity and indoor plumbing for most of recorded history, but basic expectations like transportation, as in Chapter XV:

Technical Requisites for the Transportation of Goods

had rowing and sailing instead of planes and airports for going long distances.

Chapter XI had Disintegration of the Guilds. We may discover news ways to arrive at domestic industry.