Heilbroner Reading

As much as it was a good read, the Heilbroner chapter seems to gloss over a lot of important aspects of historical nuance. It isn't to say that it's wrong in how it interprets economic trends, however, its stark categorization of eras into how strictly they are command economies, or how how opposed to the free market they are ignores the detailed realities of the free market and the aspects in which it effects human economics without the intent of humans.

At the onset of the reading Heilbroner posits that if our "Railroad men became bookkeepers" or vice versa, that there could be catastrophic problems, and the market manages these through forces mediated by supply and demand. But how disastrous would it really be if a large number of bookkeepers decided to change jobs? Are there other forces that would compensate?

What role does the concept of money itself play in the economic development of the industrial revolution? How does the ide of a transferrable token of wealth encourage the capitalistic motion of the revolution?

Does the article describe any ways in which the modern era is actually worse than the past?

This paper provided a very large scale review of the methods in which a capitalist free market allowed for a relatively short term transition from a poor agrarian society to what we see today. It pounded home the point with a multitude of evidence and references to make the argument clear.