{"id":51140,"date":"2024-02-29T01:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T06:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=51140"},"modified":"2024-02-28T10:00:21","modified_gmt":"2024-02-28T15:00:21","slug":"qotd-the-fallacy-of-engineering-economic-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/02\/29\/qotd-the-fallacy-of-engineering-economic-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The fallacy of &#8220;engineering&#8221; economic growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>[The] ability to achieve the commercial exploitation of new scientific knowledge is heavily dependent also upon \u2013 as Deirdre McCloskey explains \u2013 people&#8217;s attitudes toward market-tested innovation, creative destruction, and progress.<\/p>\n<p>Economic growth \u2013 while it is made possible by, and itself makes possible, countless impressive mechanical and technological feats \u2013 is not itself a mechanical, technological feat. Sustained economic growth cannot be engineered as can successful missions to the moon. The economic, legal, and social institutions required for there to be sustained growth are many, indescribably intricate and complex, and largely unseen (and, hence, unappreciated). To observe with one&#8217;s senses, statistics, and measuring instruments a successful economy, or even just a successful firm within a successful economy, is to observe only the surface of economic and social reality. A vast, deep ocean of complex attitudes and margins of adjustments swirls beneath.<\/p>\n<p>Among the many, typically unappreciated implications of this reality is this: even if people in country B manage to acquire, by whatever means, all of the intellectual property belonging to the people of economically successful country A, the people of country B do not thereby gain any sure means of successfully &#8220;growing&#8221; their economy.<\/p>\n<p>Don Boudreaux, <a href=\"https:\/\/cafehayek.com\/2019\/08\/quotation-of-the-day-2889.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Quotation of the Day&#8230;&#8221;, <em>Caf\u00e9 Hayek<\/em>, 2019-08-19.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[The] ability to achieve the commercial exploitation of new scientific knowledge is heavily dependent also upon \u2013 as Deirdre McCloskey explains \u2013 people&#8217;s attitudes toward market-tested innovation, creative destruction, and progress. Economic growth \u2013 while it is made possible by, and itself makes possible, countless impressive mechanical and technological feats \u2013 is not itself a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[262,1026],"class_list":["post-51140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-culture","tag-microeconomics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-diQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87764,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51140\/revisions\/87764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}