I took a break from reading a Marxian-infused history telling (#1434507) and snuck in some Deirdre McCloskey essays... pretty decent therapy.

Here's from Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All:

Over the last twenty years, from McCloskey’s florid books and writing to the shortcomings of Piketty and the Nobel Prize co-awarded to Joel Mokyr (#1255776), it has become increasingly clear that ideas, not capital accumulation, made the modern world. Riches came not from piling more stuff onto previous stuff or from extracting materials from the earth, but from unleashing (liberalizing) trade, economically cooperate on larger scales (#1429046), and letting ideas and innovations try their case in a consumer-voting, competitive market test.

"The word needs to be retired from historical and economic thinking, because it misleads people into believing that the modern world... was initiated by the accumulation of capital""The word needs to be retired from historical and economic thinking, because it misleads people into believing that the modern world... was initiated by the accumulation of capital"

Ideas, not sheer investment, initiated economic change.

And honestly, if you just think about it over dinner... the economic pie(!) is miles-miles-miiiiiiiles larger than it was in 1900, in 1800, or 1650. And not just because there's more of us today (8bn+) compared to then (1.6bn, 1bn, 500mil), which on its own would have been an indication that we can produce more food. But Malthus wasn't right, and we've had consistently more stuff, at less effort around us ever since.

...but theft, plunder, taxation-and-extraction, greedy rulers, warfare etc etc have been with us since time immemorial. So how could it be that theft and plunder and slavery, human constants, were responsible for creating something unique and unprecedented in human history?

Westerners didn't steal iPhones from the Congolese or live well at their expense. The great question of "capitalism" is why that positive-sum force emerged, and more interestingly (because we've had minor, short-lived economic flourishing at many times in the past) why this one never stalled out?

...and "accumulation" never made much sense, from a theoretical pow à la Marx or empirically: only political rulers and kings of ages past stacked stuff on top of each other like a real-world Scrooge McDuck. The capital of the rich is used, constantly employed in production
(Yes, yes, I understand monetary premia and how fiat money is siphoning/derailing this process #830458, #1291642)

More Mises, Less Marx pls.