How hard-wired are modes of economic development?

Started by Queequeg, March 16, 2014, 05:50:22 PM

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Queequeg

March 16, 2014, 05:50:22 PM
Just finished Philbrick's Mayflower, and it struck me just how similar the Native American tribes were to the English, or perhaps rather to what their Celtic or Anglo-Saxon ancestors would have looked like.  No private property, but a dedicated warrior and priest-king caste, mobile agriculture, notions of battlefield glory and violent, Byzantine political conflict.  I'd always assumed the "Naturals" had some kind of Rousseauish 'connection to the land', and were relatively peaceable, but the work challenges both assumptions; New England was extremely intensely cultivated, and it was probably the plague that allowed for the success of English agricultural settlements and gave way to the relatively open America of later conquests.  They are also, frankly, ingenious; they adopt the flintlock while the Pilgrim were still stuck with the matchlock, and the Narraganset managed to build an extremely complex fortress combining local and English techniques. 

This got me thinking about Marxian dialectics of economic development.  I realized that I'd always had some vaguely Marxian (but likely Paradox-assisted) assumption that almost all economies anywhere on the globe with the potential for real development eventually evolved along similar lines, from primitive agricultural settlement to complex tribal society to, well Slavery.  The fact that the English and the Native Americans seem to have very quickly understood each other's politics and economics as fundamentally similar would seem to indicate that as strongly as anything.

Thoughts?  Are there entirely different models of economic progress that I'm missing?  Does this stop at some point and make way for differing models?
Quote from: PDH on April 25, 2009, 05:58:55 PM
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MadImmortalMan

#1
March 16, 2014, 06:10:14 PM
At the core it's just a lot of individuals interacting with other individuals. It's true of economics and politics alike. Humanity itself provides a baseline just because the physical needs of people are the same.
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

Capetan Mihali

#2
March 16, 2014, 11:31:11 PM
Quote from: Queequeg on March 16, 2014, 05:50:22 PM
Thoughts?
No.

QuoteAre there entirely different models of economic progress that I'm missing?
Yes.

QuoteDoes this stop at some point and make way for differing models?
N/A.
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Ideologue

#3
March 17, 2014, 01:59:21 PM
Sure.  Even the Mohicans would eventually have been replaced with machines.
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Ed Anger

#4
March 17, 2014, 02:06:09 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on March 17, 2014, 01:59:21 PM
Sure.  Even the Mohicans would eventually have been replaced with machines.

That would be sad. The last of the Mohican workers.
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Siege

#5
March 18, 2014, 06:34:02 PM
I have been thinking...
Never mind.


"All men are created equal, then some become infantry."

"Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't."

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Eddie Teach

#6
March 18, 2014, 06:58:09 PM
Quote from: Siege on March 18, 2014, 06:34:02 PM
I have been thinking...

A dangerous pastime.
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

sbr

#7
March 18, 2014, 07:41:19 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 18, 2014, 06:58:09 PM
Quote from: Siege on March 18, 2014, 06:34:02 PM
I have been thinking...

A dangerous pastime.

Siege is just getting started, he should be fine for a while.
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