Human History & Economic Thought
The goal of this course is to get a bird's-eye view of all of human history and economic thought. I believe that in order to think clearly about how to best improve the world around us, it is often helpful to understand who we are and how we got here. It is easy to live in a bubble, and to build a biased perspective about humanity and the world as a result. I hope this course can benefit you as much as it benefited me.
The course consists of one lecture and one worksheet per week. Each worksheet is designed to walk you gently through, step-by-step, an important idea about the world.
I have done my best to make this course accessible to a general audience with no university training, while still remaining interesting and useful to the most intelligent and knowledgeable among us. It is a continuing project, and there will certainly be much room for improvement. Please do reach out if you have any comments or if you find any issues or mistakes.
The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.
—John Maynard Keynes
(I'm currently uploading roughly one set per week, but feel free to email me if you are impatient.)
| Week | Period | Lecture | Worksheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | -190,000 to -3,000 | From the Dawn of Humankind to the Agricultural Revolution | The Malthusian Model and the Agricultural Revolution |
| 2 | -3,000 to 1750 | The Bronze Age, Iron Age, Middle Ages, and Renaissance | The Theory of Value and Interest |
| 3 | 1760 to 1870 | The Industrial Revolution: Part I | The Invisible Hand |
| 4 | "" | The Industrial Revolution: Part II | Comparative Advantage |
| 5 | "" | The Industrial Revolution: Part III | Capitalism and Communism |
| 6 | 1870 to 1920 | The Technological Revolution and WWI | The Theory of Perfect Competition |
| 7 | 1920 to 1945 | The Great Depression, Revolutions, and WWII | The Financial Market |
| 8 | 1945 to 2010 | The Cold War and the Digital Revolution | Fechner's Law |
| 9 | 2010 to Present | The Intelligence Revolution | Consumption Smoothing and Intergenerational Wealth |
| 10 | -190,000 to 2026 | The Big Picture |