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125-512: "Traditional" institutionalism rejects the reduction of institutions to simply tastes, technology , and nature (see naturalistic fallacy ). Tastes, along with expectations of the future, habits, and motivations, not only determine the nature of institutions but are limited and shaped by them. If people live and work in institutions on a regular basis, it shapes their world views. Fundamentally, this traditional institutionalism (and its modern counterpart institutionalist political economy ) emphasizes

250-482: A mixer which helped them to hide their cryptocurrency exchanges, to launder over $ 20.5 million in cryptocurrency, from Axie Infinity , and steal over $ 600 million worth of cryptocurrency from the game's owner. Because of this, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Blender.io, which marked the first time it has taken action against a mixer, to try to crack down on North Korean hackers. The privacy of cryptocurrency has been debated. Although many customers like

375-445: A certain material wealth begin to vote against the common good. He uses the term " conventional wisdom " to refer to the orthodox ideas that underpin the resulting conservative consensus. In an age of big business, it is unrealistic to think only of markets of the classical kind. Big businesses set their own terms in the marketplace, and use their combined resources for advertising programmes to support demand for their own products. As

500-527: A certain selection environment. Since then, evolutionary economics, as noted by Nicolai Foss , has been concerned with “the transformation of already existing structures and the emergence and possible spread of novelties.” Economies have been viewed as a complex system, a result of causal interactions (non-linear and chaotic) between different agents and entities with varied characteristics. Instead of perfect information and rationality, Herbert Simon's concept of bounded rationality has become prevailing. By

625-473: A critical role in science , engineering , and everyday life . Technological advancements have led to significant changes in society. The earliest known technology is the stone tool , used during prehistory , followed by the control of fire —which in turn contributed to the growth of the human brain and the development of language during the Ice Age , according to the cooking hypothesis . The invention of

750-462: A dynamic system capable of describing economic development in this way. According to Galor's model, technological advancements in the early eras of the mankind (during the Malthusian epoch, with limited resources and near- subsistence levels of income) would lead to increases in the size of population, which in turn would further accelerate technological progress due to the production of new ideas and

875-642: A founding pillar of thought in modern corporate governance . Like Keynes, Berle was at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 , but subsequently resigned from his diplomatic job dissatisfied with the Versailles Treaty terms. In his book with Gardiner C. Means , The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), he detailed the evolution in the contemporary economy of big business, and argued that those who controlled big firms should be better held to account. Directors of companies are held to account to

1000-472: A generation or two, its families are likely to enjoy higher incomes and amass greater resources.” Galor, his colleagues and contemporaries have also used the evolutionary approach in order to explain the origins of more particular elements of economic and social behavior. Using the genealogical record of half a million people in Quebec during the period 1608-1800, it was suggested that moderate fertility , and hence

1125-624: A new society while disregarding human nature. However, Hayek seemed to see the Darwin theory not as a revolution itself, but rather as an intermediary step in the line of evolutionary thinking. There were other notable contributors to the evolutionary approach in economics, such as Armen Alchian , who argued that, faced with uncertainty and incomplete information , firms adapt to the environment instead of pursuing profit maximization . The publication of An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change by Richard R. Nelson and Sidney G. Winter in 1982 marked

1250-445: A paper "A new framework for analyzing technological change" Journal of Evolutionary Economics 30: 989-1034, in which the author proved that (1) technological change induces the economic growth in the sense that real wage rate increases for all workers and (2) it is the major source of economic growth. The role of evolutionary forces in the process of economic development over the course of human history has been further explored during

1375-416: A process rather than an equilibrium and emphasizes change (qualitative, organisational , and structural ), innovation , complex interdependencies, self-evolving systems , and limited rationality as the drivers of economic evolution. The support for the evolutionary approach to economics in recent decades seems to have initially emerged as a criticism of the mainstream neoclassical economics , but by

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1500-471: A reproductive partner but they also find jobs in commercial and skill-intensive occupations… Now suppose the society in which they live is one where technological development boosts the demand for the services of blacksmiths , carpenters and other trades who can manufacture tools and more efficient machines. This increase in earning capacity would place the Qualy clan at a distinct evolutionary advantage . Within

1625-432: A result, individual preferences actually reflect the preferences of entrenched corporations, a "dependence effect", and the economy as a whole is geared to irrational goals. In The New Industrial State Galbraith argues that economic decisions are planned by a private bureaucracy, a technostructure of experts who manipulate marketing and public relations channels. This hierarchy is self-serving, profits are no longer

1750-482: A result, philosophical and political debates about the role and use of technology, the ethics of technology , and ways to mitigate its downsides are ongoing. Technology is a term dating back to the early 17th century that meant 'systematic treatment' (from Greek Τεχνολογία , from the Greek : τέχνη , romanized :  tékhnē , lit.   'craft, art' and -λογία , 'study, knowledge'). It

1875-410: A rise in extremism, while others see it as an opportunity to usher in a post-scarcity economy . Some segments of the 1960s hippie counterculture grew to dislike urban living and developed a preference for locally autonomous , sustainable , and decentralized technology, termed appropriate technology . This later influenced hacker culture and technopaganism . Technological utopianism refers to

2000-411: A rise in social media's cultural prominence, with potential repercussions on democracy, and economic and social life. Early on, the internet was seen as a "liberation technology" that would democratize knowledge, improve access to education, and promote democracy. Modern research has turned to investigate the internet's downsides, including disinformation, polarization, hate speech, and propaganda. Since

2125-517: A role. The invention of writing led to the spread of cultural knowledge and became the basis for history, libraries , schools, and scientific research. Continuing improvements led to the furnace and bellows and provided, for the first time, the ability to smelt and forge gold, copper, silver, and lead – native metals found in relatively pure form in nature. The advantages of copper tools over stone, bone and wooden tools were quickly apparent to early humans, and native copper

2250-509: A source of ideas. Futures research methodologies include survey research , modeling, statistical analysis , and computer simulations . Existential risk researchers analyze risks that could lead to human extinction or civilizational collapse, and look for ways to build resilience against them. Relevant research centers include the Cambridge Center for the Study of Existential Risk , and

2375-481: A turning point in the field of evolutionary economics. Inspired by Alchian's work about the decision-making process of firms under uncertainty and the behavioural theory of the firm by Richard Cyert and James March , Nelson and Winter constructed a comprehensive evolutionary theory of business behavior using the concept of natural selection . In this framework, firms operate on the basis of organizational routines, which they evaluate and may change while functioning in

2500-464: A view that financial systems may follow principles of the efficient market hypothesis as well as evolutionary principles such as adaption and natural selection. The emergence of modern evolutionary economics was welcomed by the critics of the neoclassical mainstream. However, the field, especially the approach by Nelson and Winter, has also drawn critical attitude from other heterodox economists . A year after An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change

2625-509: Is a matter in motion with one's own appetites and desires. Due to these numerous desires and the scarcity of resources, the natural state of a human is a war of all against all : “In such condition there is no place for industry , because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of

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2750-446: Is accompanied by improvements in living standards , the position of the working class as necessary in order to complement technological progress (contrary to Marx and his followers, who predicted its further impoverishment), and the position of women, paving the way for further social and gender equality improvements. Interdependent, these elements facilitate each other, creating a unified process of growth and development, although

2875-466: Is always beneficial, that scientific openness is always preferable, or that they can afford to wait until a dangerous technology has been invented before they prepare mitigations. Emerging technologies are novel technologies whose development or practical applications are still largely unrealized. They include nanotechnology , biotechnology , robotics , 3D printing , blockchains , and artificial intelligence . In 2005, futurist Ray Kurzweil claimed

3000-499: Is an interdisciplinary subfield of ethics that analyzes technology's ethical implications and explores ways to mitigate the potential negative impacts of new technologies. There is a broad range of ethical issues revolving around technology, from specific areas of focus affecting professionals working with technology to broader social, ethical, and legal issues concerning the role of technology in society and everyday life. Prominent debates have surrounded genetically modified organisms ,

3125-407: Is anti-institutional. According to Thaler and Sunstein, a person is not generally best described as an Econ, a person with mainly self-interest in mind, but rather as a Human. Institutional economics, consistent with Thaler and Sunstein, sees humans as social and part of a community, which has been extracted from neoclassical economics. The Metaeconomics Frame and Dual Interest Theory argues that it

3250-444: Is antithetical to Veblen's evolutionary economics.” Another possible shortcoming recognized by the proponents of modern evolutionary economics is that the field is heterogenous, with no convergence on an integrated approach. Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behaviour from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to

3375-731: Is creating both new opportunities and new obligations for us, opportunity for greater productivity and progress; obligation to be sure that no workingman, no family must pay an unjust price for progress." upon signing the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress bill. With the growing reliance of technology, there have been security and privacy concerns along with it. Billions of people use different online payment methods, such as WeChat Pay , PayPal , Alipay , and much more to help transfer money. Although security measures are placed, some criminals are able to bypass them. In March 2022, North Korea used Blender.io ,

3500-421: Is essential to integrate institutional and neoclassical economics. Technology Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals , especially in a reproducible way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools such as utensils or machines , and intangible ones such as software . Technology plays

3625-491: Is founded upon the "continued evolution of human life beyond its current human form" through science and technology, informed by "life-promoting principles and values." The movement gained wider popularity in the early 21st century. Evolutionary economics Evolutionary economics is a school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology . Although not defined by a strict set of principles and uniting various approaches, it treats economic development as

3750-416: Is in many ways a response to the current economic orthodoxy; its reintroduction in the form of institutionalist political economy is thus an explicit challenge to neoclassical economics , since it is based on the fundamental premise that neoclassicists oppose: that economics cannot be separated from the political and social system within which it is embedded. Critics of institutionalism have maintained that

3875-584: Is predated in use by the Ancient Greek word [[[τέχνη|tékhnē]]] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script ( help ) , used to mean 'knowledge of how to make things', which encompassed activities like architecture. Starting in the 19th century, continental Europeans started using the terms Technik (German) or technique (French) to refer to a 'way of doing', which included all technical arts, such as dancing, navigation, or printing, whether or not they required tools or instruments. At

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4000-545: Is the sailing ship ; the earliest record of a ship under sail is that of a Nile boat dating to around 7,000 BCE. From prehistoric times, Egyptians likely used the power of the annual flooding of the Nile to irrigate their lands, gradually learning to regulate much of it through purposely built irrigation channels and "catch" basins. The ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia used a complex system of canals and levees to divert water from

4125-486: Is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies , and analytics into which Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 with John Maynard Smith and George R. Price's formalisation of contests, analysed as strategies, and the mathematical criteria that can be used to predict the results of competing strategies. Evolutionary game theory differs from classical game theory in focusing more on

4250-481: Is the largest cause of long-term economic growth. Throughout human history, energy production was the main constraint on economic development , and new technologies allowed humans to significantly increase the amount of available energy . First came fire, which made edible a wider variety of foods, and made it less physically demanding to digest them. Fire also enabled smelting , and the use of tin , copper, and iron tools, used for hunting or tradesmanship . Then came

4375-442: Is the utility function, which may essentially be represented as the fitness evolutionary function. There have been efforts to apply the insights of evolutionary psychology to understand economic behavior. An important part of this effort has been to use evolutionary psychology to analyze and add structure to the human utility function. "Rubin, P. H. (2008). "Folk Economics." Southern Evonomic Journal Evolutionary game theory

4500-802: The Golden Age , the Silver Age , the Bronze Age , the Heroic Age , and the Iron Age – following from divine existence to toil and misery. Modern scholars consider his works as one of the sources for early economic thought. The concept is also present in the Metamorphoses by an ancient Roman poet Ovid . His Four Ages include technological progress: in the Golden Age, men did not know arts and craft, whereas by

4625-588: The Information Age and the birth of the Internet . The Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, and later the launch of crewed missions to the moon in the 1960s. Organized efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence have used radio telescopes to detect signs of technology use, or technosignatures , given off by alien civilizations. In medicine, new technologies were developed for diagnosis ( CT , PET , and MRI scanning), treatment (like

4750-545: The Minoans on the Greek island of Crete built a 50 km road leading from the palace of Gortyn on the south side of the island, through the mountains, to the palace of Knossos on the north side of the island. Unlike the earlier road, the Minoan road was completely paved. Ancient Minoan private homes had running water . A bathtub virtually identical to modern ones was unearthed at

4875-600: The Tigris and Euphrates rivers for irrigation. Archaeologists estimate that the wheel was invented independently and concurrently in Mesopotamia (in present-day Iraq ), the Northern Caucasus ( Maykop culture ), and Central Europe. Time estimates range from 5,500 to 3,000 BCE with most experts putting it closer to 4,000 BCE. The oldest artifacts with drawings depicting wheeled carts date from about 3,500 BCE. More recently,

5000-602: The World Economic Forum 's "The Future of Jobs Report 2020", AI is predicted to replace 85 million jobs worldwide, and create 97 million new jobs by 2025. From 1990 to 2007, a study in the U.S. by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu showed that an addition of one robot for every 1,000 workers decreased the employment-to-population ratio by 0.2%, or about 3.3 workers, and lowered wages by 0.42%. Concerns about technology replacing human labor however are long-lasting. As US president Lyndon Johnson said in 1964, "Technology

5125-864: The dialysis machine , defibrillator , pacemaker , and a wide array of new pharmaceutical drugs ), and research (like interferon cloning and DNA microarrays ). Complex manufacturing and construction techniques and organizations are needed to make and maintain more modern technologies, and entire industries have arisen to develop succeeding generations of increasingly more complex tools. Modern technology increasingly relies on training and education – their designers, builders, maintainers, and users often require sophisticated general and specific training. Moreover, these technologies have become so complex that entire fields have developed to support them, including engineering, medicine, and computer science ; and other fields have become more complex, such as construction, transportation, and architecture. Technological change

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5250-402: The lever , the screw , and the pulley ) were combined into more complicated tools, such as the wheelbarrow , windmills , and clocks . A system of universities developed and spread scientific ideas and practices, including Oxford and Cambridge . The Renaissance era produced many innovations, including the introduction of the movable type printing press to Europe, which facilitated

5375-456: The shareholders of companies, or not, by the rules found in company law statutes. This might include rights to elect and fire the management, require for regular general meetings, accounting standards, and so on. In 1930s America, the typical company laws (e.g. in Delaware ) did not clearly mandate such rights. Berle argued that the unaccountable directors of companies were therefore apt to funnel

5500-399: The smelting of ores, along with the use of a wind-drafted clay kiln , which released lead into the atmosphere and the sediment of rivers. Philosophy of technology is a branch of philosophy that studies the "practice of designing and creating artifacts", and the "nature of the things so created." It emerged as a discipline over the past two centuries, and has grown "considerably" since

5625-537: The wheel in the Bronze Age allowed greater travel and the creation of more complex machines. More recent technological inventions, including the printing press , telephone, and the Internet , have lowered barriers to communication and ushered in the knowledge economy . While technology contributes to economic development and improves human prosperity , it can also have negative impacts like pollution and resource depletion , and can cause social harms like technological unemployment resulting from automation . As

5750-406: The 1970s, technology's impact on the environment has been criticized , leading to a surge in investment in solar , wind , and other forms of clean energy . Since the invention of the wheel, technologies have helped increase humans' economic output. Past automation has both substituted and complemented labor; machines replaced humans at some lower-paying jobs (for example in agriculture), but this

5875-429: The 1970s. The humanities philosophy of technology is concerned with the "meaning of technology for, and its impact on, society and culture". Initially, technology was seen as an extension of the human organism that replicated or amplified bodily and mental faculties. Marx framed it as a tool used by capitalists to oppress the proletariat, but believed that technology would be a fundamentally liberating force once it

6000-482: The 1990s, as put by Geoffrey Hodgson , “it was possible to write of an international network or ‘ invisible college ’ of ‘evolutionary economists’ who, despite their analytical differences, were focusing on the problem of analyzing structural, technological, cultural and institutional change in economic systems… They were also united by their common dislike of the static and equilibrium approaches that dominated mainstream economics.” In 2020, Yoshinori Shiozawa published

6125-399: The 19th century, who viewed economic and political systems as products of social evolution (in contrast to the notions of natural rights and morality ). In his book What is Property? , Pierre-Joseph Proudhon noted: “Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached.” The approach

6250-866: The Iron Age people had learnt and discovered agriculture , architecture , mining , navigation , and national boundaries , but had also become violent and greedy. This concept was not exclusive to the Greek and Roman civilizations (see, for instance, Yuga Cycles in Hinduism , the Three Ages of Buddhism , Aztecs’ Five Suns ), but a common feature is the path towards misery and destruction, with technological advancements accompanied by moral degradation. Medieval views on society, economics and politics (at least in Europe and Pax Islamica ) were influenced by religious norms and traditions. Catholic and Islamic scholars debated on

6375-605: The Neolithic but was originally used in the preceding Mesolithic in some areas such as Ireland. Agriculture fed larger populations, and the transition to sedentism allowed for the simultaneous raising of more children, as infants no longer needed to be carried around by nomads . Additionally, children could contribute labor to the raising of crops more readily than they could participate in hunter-gatherer activities. With this increase in population and availability of labor came an increase in labor specialization . What triggered

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6500-662: The Palace of Knossos. Several Minoan private homes also had toilets, which could be flushed by pouring water down the drain. The ancient Romans had many public flush toilets, which emptied into an extensive sewage system . The primary sewer in Rome was the Cloaca Maxima ; construction began on it in the sixth century BCE and it is still in use today. The ancient Romans also had a complex system of aqueducts , which were used to transport water across long distances. The first Roman aqueduct

6625-465: The Paleolithic era include clothing and shelter. No consensus exists on the approximate time of adoption of either technology, but archaeologists have found archaeological evidence of clothing 90-120 kya and shelter 450 kya. As the Paleolithic era progressed, dwellings became more sophisticated and more elaborate; as early as 380 kya, humans were constructing temporary wood huts. Clothing, adapted from

6750-548: The Quanty and the Qualy… Suppose that Quanty households bear on average four children each, of whom only two reach adulthood and find a reproductive partner. Meanwhile, Qualy households bear on average only two children each, because their budget does not allow them to invest in the education and health of additional offspring [sic!] , and yet, thanks to the investment that they do make, both children not only reach adulthood and find

6875-488: The Stanford Existential Risk Initiative. Future technologies may contribute to the risks of artificial general intelligence , biological warfare , nuclear warfare , nanotechnology , anthropogenic climate change , global warming , or stable global totalitarianism , though technologies may also help us mitigate asteroid impacts and gamma-ray bursts . In 2019 philosopher Nick Bostrom introduced

7000-603: The academic discipline, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In the 20th century, as a result of scientific progress and the Second Industrial Revolution , technology stopped being considered a distinct academic discipline and took on the meaning: the systemic use of knowledge to practical ends. Tools were initially developed by hominids through observation and trial and error . Around 2 Mya (million years ago), they learned to make

7125-437: The actions of diverse agents with bounded rationality who may learn from experience and interactions and whose differences contribute to the change. The idea of human society and the world in general as subject to evolution has been following mankind throughout its existence. Hesiod , an ancient Greek poet thought to be the first Western written poet regarding himself as an individual, described five Ages of Man –

7250-493: The agricultural revolution: humans no longer needed to hunt or gather to survive, and began to settle in towns and cities, forming more complex societies, with militaries and more organized forms of religion. Technologies have contributed to human welfare through increased prosperity, improved comfort and quality of life, and medical progress , but they can also disrupt existing social hierarchies, cause pollution, and harm individuals or groups. Recent years have brought about

7375-460: The alteration of matter at the atomic and molecular level in various disciplines including computer science, engineering, and biology. And engineering ethics deals with the professional standards of engineers, including software engineers and their moral responsibilities to the public. A wide branch of technology ethics is concerned with the ethics of artificial intelligence : it includes robot ethics , which deals with ethical issues involved in

7500-477: The ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products of other adaptive traits. Economic concepts can also be viewed through these lenses. For instance, apparent anomalies in decision-making, such as violations of the maximization principle, may be a result of the human brain evolution. Another concept suitable for evolutionary analysis

7625-461: The atmosphere, causing the greenhouse effect . This continues to gradually heat the earth, causing global warming and climate change . Measures of technological innovation correlates with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Pollution, the presence of contaminants in an environment that causes adverse effects, could have been present as early as the Inca Empire . They used a lead sulfide flux in

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7750-410: The beginning of the 21st century it had become part of the economic mainstream itself. Evolutionary economics does not take the characteristics of either the objects of choice or of the decision-maker as fixed. Rather, it focuses on the non-equilibrium processes that transform the economy from within and their implications, considering interdependencies and feedback. The processes in turn emerge from

7875-490: The belief that technological development is a moral good , which can and should bring about a utopia , that is, a society in which laws, governments, and social conditions serve the needs of all its citizens. Examples of techno-utopian goals include post-scarcity economics , life extension , mind uploading , cryonics , and the creation of artificial superintelligence . Major techno-utopian movements include transhumanism and singularitarianism . The transhumanism movement

8000-557: The city-state of Ur dates to around 3,429 BCE, and even older fragments of wheel-thrown pottery have been found in the same area. Fast (rotary) potters' wheels enabled early mass production of pottery, but it was the use of the wheel as a transformer of energy (through water wheels , windmills, and even treadmills) that revolutionized the application of nonhuman power sources. The first two-wheeled carts were derived from travois and were first used in Mesopotamia and Iran in around 3,000 BCE. The oldest known constructed roadways are

8125-519: The communication of knowledge. Technology became increasingly influenced by science, beginning a cycle of mutual advancement. Starting in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, the discovery of steam power set off the Industrial Revolution , which saw wide-ranging technological discoveries, particularly in the areas of agriculture , manufacturing, mining, metallurgy , and transport, and

8250-519: The concept of "institution" is so central for all social science that it is senseless to use it as a buzzword for a particular theoretical school. And as a consequence, the elusive meaning of the concept of "institution" has resulted in a bewildering and never-ending dispute about which scholars are "institutionalists" or not—and a similar confusion about what is supposed to be the core of the theory. In other words, institutional economics has become so popular because it means all things to all people, which in

8375-539: The creation of monopolies. Businesses protect their existing capital investments and employ excessive credit, leading to depressions and increasing military expenditure and war through business control of political power. These two books, focusing on criticism first of consumerism , and second of profiteering, did not advocate change. Through the 1920s and after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 Thorstein Veblen's warnings of

8500-444: The design, construction, use, and treatment of robots, as well as machine ethics , which is concerned with ensuring the ethical behavior of artificially intelligent agents . Within the field of AI ethics, significant yet-unsolved research problems include AI alignment (ensuring that AI behaviors are aligned with their creators' intended goals and interests) and the reduction of algorithmic bias . Some researchers have warned against

8625-458: The distribution as well as the existence of wealth. Its force exists only in direct ratio to the number of individuals who hold such wealth. Justification for the stockholder's existence thus depends on increasing distribution within the American population. Ideally the stockholder's position will be impregnable only when every American family has its fragment of that position and of the wealth by which

8750-503: The end of the day is the meaning of nothing. Indeed, it can be argued that the term "institutionalists" was misplaced from the very beginning, since Veblen, Hamilton and Ayres were preoccupied with the evolutionary (and "objectifying") forces of technology and institutions had a secondary place within their theories. Institutions were almost a kind of "anti-stuff"; their key concern was on technology and not on institutions. Rather than being "institutional," Veblen, Hamilton and Ayres’ position

8875-427: The face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In order to overcome this natural anarchy , Hobbs saw it necessary to impose an ultimate restraint in the form of a sovereign . Further theoretical developments relate to the names of prominent socialists of

9000-448: The first part of the 20th century, including such famous but diverse economists as Thorstein Veblen , Wesley Mitchell , and John R. Commons . Some institutionalists see Karl Marx as belonging to the institutionalist tradition, because he described capitalism as a historically bounded social system; other institutionalist economists disagree with Marx's definition of capitalism, instead seeing defining features such as markets, money and

9125-553: The first stone tools by hammering flakes off a pebble, forming a sharp hand axe . This practice was refined 75 kya (thousand years ago) into pressure flaking , enabling much finer work. The discovery of fire was described by Charles Darwin as "possibly the greatest ever made by man". Archaeological, dietary, and social evidence point to "continuous [human] fire-use" at least 1.5 Mya. Fire, fueled with wood and charcoal , allowed early humans to cook their food to increase its digestibility, improving its nutrient value and broadening

9250-662: The formation of a future-oriented mindset in corresponding contemporary societies. Key concepts related to behavioural economics , such as risk aversion and loss aversion , were also studied through evolutionary lenses. For instance, Galor and Savitsky (2018) provided empirical evidence that the intensity of loss aversion may be correlated with historical exposure to climatic shocks and their effects on reproductive success, with greater climatic volatility in some regions leading to more loss-neutrality among contemporary individuals and ethnic groups originating from there. As for risk aversion , Galor and Michalopoulos (2012) suggested there

9375-479: The fruits of enterprise profits into their own pockets, as well as manage in their own interests. The ability to do this was supported by the fact that the majority of shareholders in big public companies were single individuals, with scant means of communication, in short, divided and conquered. Berle served in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 's administration through the depression, and

9500-517: The fur and hides of hunted animals, helped humanity expand into colder regions; humans began to migrate out of Africa around 200 kya, initially moving to Eurasia . The Neolithic Revolution (or First Agricultural Revolution ) brought about an acceleration of technological innovation, and a consequent increase in social complexity. The invention of the polished stone axe was a major advance that allowed large-scale forest clearance and farming. This use of polished stone axes increased greatly in

9625-441: The hypothetical risk of an AI takeover , and have advocated for the use of AI capability control in addition to AI alignment methods. Other fields of ethics have had to contend with technology-related issues, including military ethics , media ethics , and educational ethics . Futures studies is the systematic and interdisciplinary study of social and technological progress. It aims to quantitatively and qualitatively explore

9750-492: The ideas of Thorstein Veblen with a dichotomy of "technology" and "institutions" to separate the inventive from the inherited aspects of economic structures. He claimed that technology was always one step ahead of the socio-cultural institutions. Ayres was heavily influenced by the philosophy of John Dewey. Dewey and Ayres both utilized the instrumental theory of value to analyze problems and propose solutions. According to this theory, something has value if it enhances or furthers

9875-403: The increase in demand for them. At some point technological advancements would require higher levels of education and generate the demand for educated labour force . After that, an economy would move into a new phase characterised by demographic transition (given that investment into less children, although more costly, would yield higher returns) and sustained economic growth . The process

10000-482: The introduction of skyscrapers accompanied by rapid urbanization. Communication improved with the invention of the telegraph , the telephone, the radio, and television. The 20th century brought a host of innovations. In physics, the discovery of nuclear fission in the Atomic Age led to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power . Analog computers were invented and asserted dominance in processing complex data. While

10125-504: The invention of vacuum tubes allowed for digital computing with computers like the ENIAC , their sheer size precluded widespread use until innovations in quantum physics allowed for the invention of the transistor in 1947, which significantly compacted computers and led the digital transition. Information technology, particularly optical fiber and optical amplifiers , allowed for simple and fast long-distance communication, which ushered in

10250-404: The issue more thoroughly; others fear that directed evolution could lead to eugenics or extreme social inequality. Nanotechnology will grant us the ability to manipulate matter "at the molecular and atomic scale", which could allow us to reshape ourselves and our environment in fundamental ways. Nanobots could be used within the human body to destroy cancer cells or form new body parts, blurring

10375-432: The legal foundations of an economy (see John R. Commons ) and the evolutionary, habituated, and volitional processes by which institutions are erected and then changed (see John Dewey , Thorstein Veblen , and Daniel Bromley ). Institutional economics focuses on learning, bounded rationality , and evolution (rather than assuming stable preferences, rationality and equilibrium). It was a central part of American economics in

10500-407: The life process of mankind. Therefore, this should become the criterion to be utilized in determining the future courses of action. It can be argued that Ayres was not an "institutionalist" in any normal sense of the term, since he identified institutions with sentiments and superstition and in consequence institutions only played a kind of residual role in this theory of development which core center

10625-690: The line between biology and technology. Autonomous robots have undergone rapid progress, and are expected to replace humans at many dangerous tasks, including search and rescue , bomb disposal , firefighting , and war. Estimates on the advent of artificial general intelligence vary, but half of machine learning experts surveyed in 2018 believe that AI will "accomplish every task better and more cheaply" than humans by 2063, and automate all human jobs by 2140. This expected technological unemployment has led to calls for increased emphasis on computer science education and debates about universal basic income . Political science experts predict that this could lead to

10750-432: The moral appropriateness of certain economic practices, such as interest . The subject of changes was thought of in existential terms. For instance, Augustine of Hippo regarded time as a phenomenon of the universe created by God and a measure of change, whereas God exists outside of time. A major contribution to the views on the evolution of society was Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes . A human, according to Hobbes,

10875-556: The need for taking into account cultural variation in his economic approach; no universal "human nature" could possibly be invoked to explain the variety of norms and behaviours that the new science of anthropology showed to be the rule rather than an exception. He also argued that social institutions are subject to selection process and that economic science should embrace the Darwinian theory . Veblen's followers quickly abandoned his evolutionary legacy. When they finally returned to

11000-453: The new developments in the economic theory of organizations, information , property rights, and transaction costs , an attempt was made to integrate institutionalism into more recent developments in mainstream economics , under the title new institutional economics . The vacillations of institutions are necessarily a result of the very incentives created by such institutions, and are thus endogenous. Emphatically, traditional institutionalism

11125-417: The next technological revolution would rest upon advances in genetics , nanotechnology , and robotics , with robotics being the most impactful of the three technologies. Genetic engineering will allow far greater control over human biological nature through a process called directed evolution . Some thinkers believe that this may shatter our sense of self, and have urged for renewed public debate exploring

11250-419: The notion of a vulnerable world , "one in which there is some level of technological development at which civilization almost certainly gets devastated by default", citing the risks of a pandemic caused by bioterrorists , or an arms race triggered by the development of novel armaments and the loss of mutual assured destruction . He invites policymakers to question the assumptions that technological progress

11375-443: The number of foods that could be eaten. The cooking hypothesis proposes that the ability to cook promoted an increase in hominid brain size , though some researchers find the evidence inconclusive. Archaeological evidence of hearths was dated to 790 kya; researchers believe this is likely to have intensified human socialization and may have contributed to the emergence of language . Other technological advances made during

11500-500: The oldest-known wooden wheel in the world as of 2024 was found in the Ljubljana Marsh of Slovenia ; Austrian experts have established that the wheel is between 5,100 and 5,350 years old. The invention of the wheel revolutionized trade and war. It did not take long to discover that wheeled wagons could be used to carry heavy loads. The ancient Sumerians used a potter's wheel and may have invented it. A stone pottery wheel found in

11625-525: The opportunity to develop individuality becomes fully actualized. John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) worked in the New Deal administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although he wrote later, and was more developed than the earlier institutional economists, Galbraith was critical of orthodox economics throughout the late twentieth century. In The Affluent Society (1958), Galbraith argues voters reaching

11750-517: The pace may be different for different societies. Galor's theory also refers to other fields of science, including evolutionary biology . He invokes, among other things, the sophisticated human brain and the anatomy of the human hand as key advantages that bolstered the development of humans (both as a species and as a society). In The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality (2022) Galor provides some statements that exemplify his evolutionary approach: “Consider… two large clans:

11875-505: The past few decades, primarily by Oded Galor and his colleagues. A pioneer of the Unified Growth Theory , Galor depicts economic growth and development throughout human history as a continuous process driven by technological progress and the accumulation of human capital as well as by the accumulation of those biological, social and cultural features that favour further development. In Unified Growth Theory (2011), Galor presents

12000-479: The picture of stepping from penthouse villas on to unpaved streets, from landscaped gardens to unkempt public parks. In Economics and the Public Purpose (1973) Galbraith advocates a "new socialism" ( social democracy ) as the solution, with nationalization of military production and public services such as health care , plus disciplined salary and price controls to reduce inequality and hamper inflation. With

12125-414: The prime motivator, and even managers are not in control. Because they are the new planners, corporations detest risk, requiring steady economic and stable markets. They recruit governments to serve their interests with fiscal and monetary policy. While the goals of an affluent society and complicit government serve the irrational technostructure, public space is simultaneously impoverished. Galbraith paints

12250-553: The privacy of cryptocurrency, many also argue that it needs more transparency and stability. Technology can have both positive and negative effects on the environment. Environmental technology , describes an array of technologies which seek to reverse, mitigate or halt environmental damage to the environment. This can include measures to halt pollution through environmental regulations, capture and storage of pollution, or using pollutant byproducts in other industries. Other examples of environmental technology include deforestation and

12375-534: The private ownership of production as indeed evolving over time, but as a result of the purposive actions of individuals. A significant variant is the new institutional economics from the later 20th century, which integrates later developments of neoclassical economics into the analysis. Law and economics has been a major theme since the publication of the Legal Foundations of Capitalism by John R. Commons in 1924. Since then, there has been heated debate on

12500-417: The progression from early Neolithic villages to the first cities, such as Uruk , and the first civilizations, such as Sumer , is not specifically known; however, the emergence of increasingly hierarchical social structures and specialized labor, of trade and war among adjacent cultures, and the need for collective action to overcome environmental challenges such as irrigation , are all thought to have played

12625-409: The range of plausible futures and to incorporate human values in the development of new technologies. More generally, futures researchers are interested in improving "the freedom and welfare of humankind". It relies on a thorough quantitative and qualitative analysis of past and present technological trends, and attempts to rigorously extrapolate them into the future. Science fiction is often used as

12750-401: The reversing of deforestation. Emerging technologies in the fields of climate engineering may be able to halt or reverse global warming and its environmental impacts, although this remains highly controversial. As technology has advanced, so too has the negative environmental impact, with increased release of greenhouse gases , including methane , nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide , into

12875-512: The role of law (a formal institution) on economic growth. Behavioral economics is another hallmark of institutional economics based on what is known about psychology and cognitive science, rather than simple assumptions of economic behavior. Some of the authors associated with this school include Robert H. Frank , Warren Samuels , Marc Tool, Geoffrey Hodgson , Daniel Bromley , Jonathan Nitzan , Shimshon Bichler , Elinor Ostrom , Anne Mayhew, John Kenneth Galbraith and Gunnar Myrdal , but even

13000-537: The sociologist C. Wright Mills was highly influenced by the institutionalist approach in his major studies. Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) wrote his first and most influential book while he was at the University of Chicago , on The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). In it he analyzed the motivation in capitalism for people to conspicuously consume their riches as a way of demonstrating success. Conspicuous leisure

13125-523: The stone-paved streets of the city-state of Ur, dating to c.  4,000 BCE , and timber roads leading through the swamps of Glastonbury , England, dating to around the same period. The first long-distance road, which came into use around 3,500 BCE, spanned 2,400 km from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea , but was not paved and was only partially maintained. In around 2,000 BCE,

13250-485: The tendency for wasteful consumption and the necessity of creating sound financial institutions seemed to ring true. Thorstein Veblen wrote in 1898 an article entitled "Why is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science?" and he became the precursor of current evolutionary economics . John R. Commons (1862–1945) also came from mid-Western America. Underlying his ideas, consolidated in Institutional Economics (1934)

13375-591: The tendency towards investment in child quality, was beneficial for the long-run reproductive success, reflecting the quality-quantity tradeoff observed and discussed in earlier works. A natural experiment regarding the expansion of the New World crops into the Old World and vice versa during the Columbian exchange led to the conclusion that beneficial pre-industrial agro-climatic characteristics may have positively affected

13500-471: The time, Technologie (German and French) referred either to the academic discipline studying the "methods of arts and crafts", or to the political discipline "intended to legislate on the functions of the arts and crafts." The distinction between Technik and Technologie is absent in English, and so both were translated as technology . The term was previously uncommon in English and mostly referred to

13625-527: The use of robotic soldiers, algorithmic bias , and the issue of aligning AI behavior with human values. Technology ethics encompasses several key fields. Bioethics looks at ethical issues surrounding biotechnologies and modern medicine, including cloning, human genetic engineering, and stem cell research. Computer ethics focuses on issues related to computing. Cyberethics explores internet-related issues like intellectual property rights , privacy , and censorship . Nanoethics examines issues surrounding

13750-524: The use of the term “evolutionary”, they referred to development and change in general, without its Darwinian meaning. Further researchers, such as Joseph Schumpeter , studied entrepreneurship and innovation using this term, but not in the Darwinian sense. Another prominent economist, Friedrich von Hayek , also employed the elements of the evolutionary approach, especially criticizing “ the fatal conceit ” of socialists who believed they could and should design

13875-506: The value judgments that shape technology. Cultural critic Neil Postman distinguished tool-using societies from technological societies and from what he called "technopolies", societies that are dominated by an ideology of technological and scientific progress to the detriment of other cultural practices, values, and world views. Herbert Marcuse and John Zerzan suggest that technological society will inevitably deprive us of our freedom and psychological health. The ethics of technology

14000-527: The widespread application of the factory system . This was followed a century later by the Second Industrial Revolution which led to rapid scientific discovery, standardization, and mass production. New technologies were developed, including sewage systems , electricity, light bulbs , electric motors , railroads, automobiles , and airplanes. These technological advances led to significant developments in medicine, chemistry , physics , and engineering. They were accompanied by consequential social change, with

14125-529: Was "freed from societal deformations". Second-wave philosophers like Ortega later shifted their focus from economics and politics to "daily life and living in a techno-material culture", arguing that technology could oppress "even the members of the bourgeoisie who were its ostensible masters and possessors." Third-stage philosophers like Don Ihde and Albert Borgmann represent a turn toward de-generalization and empiricism, and considered how humans can learn to live with technology. Early scholarship on technology

14250-633: Was a key member of the so-called " Brain trust " developing many of the New Deal policies. In 1967, Berle and Means issued a revised edition of their work, in which the preface added a new dimension. It was not only the separation of controllers of companies from the owners as shareholders at stake. They posed the question of what the corporate structure was really meant to achieve. Stockholders toil not, neither do they spin, to earn [dividends and share price increases]. They are beneficiaries by position only. Justification for their inheritance... can be founded only upon social grounds... that justification turns on

14375-424: Was a reversal in the course of human history, with risk-tolerance presenting an evolutionary advantage during early stages of development by promoting technological advancements, and with risk-aversion being an advantage during later stages, when risk-tolerant individuals channel less resources towards children and natural selection favours risk-averse individuals. Andrew Lo proposed the adaptive market hypothesis,

14500-469: Was also employed by Karl Marx . In his view, over the course of history superior economic systems would replace inferior ones. Inferior systems were beset by internal contradictions and inefficiencies that made them impossible to survive in the long term. In Marx's scheme, feudalism was replaced by capitalism , which would eventually be superseded by socialism. The term "evolutionary economics" might have been first coined by Thorstein Veblen . Veblen saw

14625-507: Was an American economist known for his empirical work on business cycles and for guiding the National Bureau of Economic Research in its first decades. Mitchell's teachers included economists Thorstein Veblen and J. L. Laughlin and philosopher John Dewey. Clarence Ayres (1891–1972) was the principal thinker of what some have called the Texas school of institutional economics. Ayres developed on

14750-418: Was another focus of Veblen's critique. In The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), Veblen distinguished the motivations of industrial production for people to use things from business motivations that used, or misused, industrial infrastructure for profit, arguing that the former is often hindered because businesses pursue the latter. Output and technological advance are restricted by business practices and

14875-560: Was built in 312 BCE. The eleventh and final ancient Roman aqueduct was built in 226 CE. Put together, the Roman aqueducts extended over 450 km, but less than 70 km of this was above ground and supported by arches. Innovations continued through the Middle Ages with the introduction of silk production (in Asia and later Europe), the horse collar , and horseshoes . Simple machines (such as

15000-513: Was compensated by the creation of new, higher-paying jobs. Studies have found that computers did not create significant net technological unemployment . Due to artificial intelligence being far more capable than computers, and still being in its infancy, it is not known whether it will follow the same trend; the question has been debated at length among economists and policymakers. A 2017 survey found no clear consensus among economists on whether AI would increase long-term unemployment. According to

15125-536: Was probably used from near the beginning of Neolithic times (about 10 kya). Native copper does not naturally occur in large amounts, but copper ores are quite common and some of them produce metal easily when burned in wood or charcoal fires. Eventually, the working of metals led to the discovery of alloys such as bronze and brass (about 4,000 BCE). The first use of iron alloys such as steel dates to around 1,800 BCE. After harnessing fire, humans discovered other forms of energy. The earliest known use of wind power

15250-425: Was published, Philip Mirowski expressed his doubts that this framework represented genuine evolutionary economics research (i.e., in the vein of Veblen) and not just a variant of neoclassical methodology, especially since the authors admitted their framework could include neoclassical orthodoxy. Some Veblenian institutionalists claim this framework is only a “protective modification of the neoclassical economics and

15375-649: Was split between two arguments: technological determinism , and social construction . Technological determinism is the idea that technologies cause unavoidable social changes. It usually encompasses a related argument, technological autonomy, which asserts that technological progress follows a natural progression and cannot be prevented. Social constructivists argue that technologies follow no natural progression, and are shaped by cultural values, laws, politics, and economic incentives. Modern scholarship has shifted towards an analysis of sociotechnical systems , "assemblages of things, people, practices, and meanings", looking at

15500-425: Was that of technology. Ayres was under strong influence of Hegel and institutions for Ayres had the same function as "Schein" (with the connotation of deception, and illusion) for Hegel. A more appropriate name for Ayres' position would be that of a "techno-behaviorist" rather than an institutionalist. Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) was one of the first authors to combine legal and economic analysis, and his work stands as

15625-498: Was the concept that the economy is a web of relationships between people with diverging interests. There are monopolies, large corporations, labour disputes and fluctuating business cycles. They do however have an interest in resolving these disputes. Commons thought that government should be the mediator between the conflicting groups. Commons himself devoted much of his time to advisory and mediation work on government boards and industrial commissions. Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948)

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