1) What caused the Industrial Revolution?
There are multiple reasons that the Industrial Revolution started. It was mostly made possible by a revolution in agriculture, which improved farm productivity. New types of soil, the development of crop rotating, and the invention of new devices, such as the seed drill, all served to increase the quantity and quality of farm produce. This meant that there were less famines, and that women would have stronger babies, so population skyrocketed. Population explosion from both declining death rates and the enclosure movement, in which rich landowners kicked farmers off their land, resulted in more people migrating to the cities to find jobs. This is called urbanization, and it produced more demand and a larger workforce. More people meant that there was more need for food and goods, so people had to find ways to increase production.
2) Describe the views of laissez faire economists a) Adam Smith, b) Thomas Malthus, and c) David Ricardo
Adam Smith's view was that a free market would help everyone, poor and rich alike. It would increase the production of goods so that more would be affordable to everyone. A growing economy would make capitalists invest in new ventures.
Malthus thought that the food supply eventually wouldn't be enough to feed everyone and the war, disease, famine kept population in control. He urged families to not have as much children, because the poor would suffer as long as the population was growing.
Ricardo agree Malthus that people need to stop having as much children. He said higher wages caused people to have more children. However, this created a larger workforce, which meant more unemployment and misery.
3) Contrast the approach...
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...Population explosion, agricultural changes, and the increasing demand for more workers led to urbanization, or the migration of people to cities. The enclosure movement played an important role in urbanization because when the rich landowners would take over the farmers' land, the farmers would be kicked off their own land. Some farmers had to leave because they couldn't keep up with the competition from the landowners. These jobless farmers then migrated to the cities because they could get jobs because of the growing demand for workers. New sources of energy, such as the coal-powered steam engine, helped entrepreneurs change the way their work was done and helped power the Industrial Revolution. Also, declining death rates due to the agricultural revolution decreased famines and led to a population explosion. Thus, large numbers of people migrated to cities.
Adam Smith was a philosopher whose political philosophies was based off of economics. He believed to some extent that there should be a redistribution of wealth, but at the same time there should be a limit to government interference in economy. He wanted the state to end politics that favor industry over agriculture or vice versa, and that business should be left to the business people. He also believed that the government cannot make people virtuous with laws, and that the state should not promote religion or
Oded Galor and David N. Weil’s work, From Malthusian Stagnation to Modern Growth describes three different regimes on society including population, GDP per capita, family, and lifespan. They are the Malthusian model, the Post Malthusian model, and the Modern Growth Era model. The first of these three was the Malthusian model, developed by Malthus in the late 18th century, the Modern Growth is what we have today, and the post Malthusian model is the transition between the two ends of the spectrum.
Now, the ideas of Thomas Malthus generally do not apply to the world today. It is important to understand that Malthus wanted to create a theory that explained the success of people in a population. Like Darwin’s theory of evolution (which was helped formed by Malthus doctrine) it is survival of the fittest. I do bel...
The Industrial Revolution began over two centuries ago and has had a major impact on every current world power. It began in a group of islands off the North West coast of Europe and has been imitated or tried by every nation looking to increase its wealth and power throughout the world. Industrialization came out of the basic ideas of capitalism because it fostered individuals who were willing to take high risks in hopes of high returns on their investments. These investments included factories and machines that would be put to use by people to better their standard of living. These entrepreneurs would return their profits back to the expansion and improvement of their factories and machines.
A major cause for the Industrial Revolution was the enormous spurt of population growth in England. Along side the fast growth in population, medical systems had also improved, thus there was a reduction in the number of epidemics that spread resulting in less of a death toll through lack of medical knowledge. From this, the percentage of children who lived through childhood also began to increase, thus the future workforce would be even large than previously. The increase in population meant that there were more people in surplus from agricultural jobs and they had to find work in industrial factories, which was the basis of the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution was a fundamental change in the production of goods that altered the life of the working class. Similar to most other historical turning points, it had skeptics, or people that doubted the change, and fanatics, people who saw the value in the change being made. The Industrial Revolution and the period that followed shortly after highlight these varying opinions, as people were more conflicted than ever about the costs of industrialization. While Industrialization started in England as an attempt to capitalize on the good fortune they had struck, it quickly developed into a widespread phenomenon that made the product of goods more exact and controlled by higher level people. Many industries, such as the cotton and textile
Thomas Robert Malthus was born on February 13th, 1766, at Dorking, a town south of London. His theory about population was that population growth usually exceeds the amount of food produced for that particular area, so we should try to limit the growth of our population. In his book An Essay on the Principle of Population, As it Effects the Future Improvement of Society, he ...
The Industrial Revolution was an era between 1780 and 1850 where new inventions and machinery flourished, replacing human labor with machines in the production and manufacturing of goods. The Cottage Industry helped give rise to the Industrial Revolution with its inventions such as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule, all of which were mainly operated by women. This opened new opportunities for women in the working industry but this also introduced working class injustices, gender exploitation, and standard-of-living issues. Women 's experiences in factories reflected the profound social changes of the revolution and continuities with traditional working-class ways of life through their poor working conditions, demoralization, and little reward for their hard work.
The impact of the Industrial Revolution was a positive experience for some, but it was a great difficulty for others. Because of the demands for reform and protection for workers arose, government and unions began to take place. That was how the evils of the Industrial Revolution addressed in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
First and foremost, Adam Smith was very conscious of how the wealth was unequally distributed amongst the poor versus the wealthy, and how and if this distribution continued it would leave the poor at a disadvantage, in the sense they will never have the opportunity to move ahead and will always be at the mercy of those who possessed more wealth. Mr. Smith viewed economics contrarily than the mercantilist. Compared to the days of old, the views of economics and mercantilism based wealth on the amount of gold and silver the nation provided, and how the import of goods from other countries would adversely affect the wealth of a country, as the reality was, trade was notably one-sided, it only benefited the seller and not the buyer, and it was believed that countries can only become wealthy by making other nations or countries poorer. However Mr. Smiths’ views were in contrast, believing the wealth of a nation was centered around production and commerce and not gold and silver, his belief also viewed trade as a positive, as it could only increase productivity, and both parties would benefit from the exchange the seller as well as the buyer. (Smith, 1776)
In 1776, Adam Smith completed and published “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, more commonly referred to as simply “The Wealth of Nations”. In this document, Smith analyzed wages, labor, trade, population, rents, and money supply (Andrea, 151). Because of his work, Smith is known as the founder of the academic study of economics and the father of capitalism. The kind of economy Smith envisioned and described in “The Wealth of Nations” resembles capitalism, as well as promoted a free market. Smith also spends a great deal of time arguing against mercantilism, which was largely popular at the time. Throughout Smith’s work, he talks about self-interest, embodying the Enlightenment obsession with human nature and progress. All in all, Smith helped shape the modern views on economics today.
There were times when society as a whole would be living slightly higher than subsistence level, but generally either war, famine, or disease would strike and society as a whole would fall back down to subsistence level. This was explained by Thomas Malthus in an essay he wrote in 1798 called An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus looked back through human history and found that in times of prosperity, populations were low causing incomes to be high, and in times of hardship populations were high and income levels were low. Malthus argued that the advances in technology that caused incomes to increase therefore did not affect the standard of living, but rather just increased population size. For example building the Roman aqueducts did not raise the standard of living for the Romans, it just allowed for a larger population to live at the previous standard of living. Malthus considered this phenomenon to be a trap because though increased incomes could support larger populations – paying for more food, shelter, clothing and so on – the increase in population would eventually lower wages. To defeat this trap, now known in Economics as the Malthusian trap, Malthus argued for population control in order to raise the standard of living. At the time, Malthus’ call for population control was the only foreseeable solution. However, the economists of the 19th century challenged Malthus’ solution and
It added labor and capital to the physiocratic idea of land as factors of production and the major contributors to a nation 's wealth. The laissez-faire philosophy that Smith espoused was somewhat radical as both a political and an economic doctrine. The concept that the individual, pursuing his own desired ends, would thereby achieve the best results for the society overall was a new one. According to Smith and other proponents of this theory, the government may have had a critical role in enforcing laws and contracts, but it should otherwise be left to the “invisible hand” to regulate the marketplace. (Encyclopedia Brittanica,
for the betterment of the economy as Adam Smith argues that an economy shaped by our
Adam Smith expanded his ideas upon the already existing laissez-faire (free trade) ideology. Laissez-faire, a product of the Enlightenment, was conceived to free the commerce of government al restrictions. This doctrine opposes state interference in economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of peace and property rights. Thus, markets become more efficient and society becomes more prosperous when governments “let it be” (deregulation).