Talk:Gregory Clark (economist)

A poor article

This article presents only a sketchy and not wholly accurate of Clark's intricate argument. It appears to be based mainly on the New York Times article cited.

It would be helpful if people wanting to take up space here discussing it would read Clark's book first. 12.214.62.215 (talk) 21:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Illogical Thesis

From the article: In Britain, however, as disease continually killed off poorer members of society, their positions in society were taken over by the sons of the wealthy, who were less violent, more literate, and more productive.

The wealthy are less violent? Didn't kings depend on violence for gaining, securing and maintaining their thrones, and didn't lords gain their lands through military service on behalf of the King? Didn't those that were successful in violent confrontations gain wealth while those who were unsuccessful lose their lives? It seems that to get to the top level of pre-Industrial British society, being skilled at violence would be quite helpful.

And if the British became industrialized due to their genetic superiority, why did industrialization spread to the rest of Europe, North America and eventually most of Asia? The genes of so much of the World's people couldn't possibly change so much over a few generations, so other factors must be at work.

Anyone who believes Clark's thesis should take a look at the Sunday Times Rich list. Most of the self-made billionaires are foreign born. The Brits aren't even the best at making money in their own country.

Clark's thesis may be "provocative"; but I'm not impressed. It's illogical and seems to be a subtle defense of racism rather than sound economic reasoning. --76.105.3.220 08:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I suspect you didn't read his book. When he speaks of the wealthy, he makes a specific point of excluding the aristocracy and including the more numerous business class; he also tries to empirically demonstrate that they had more offspring surviving to adulthood by analyzing wills of poor and rich.

Your second point also seems to misunderstand him. He only very tentatively suggests that there was any physical or genetic dimension to why the rich surviving was important; he puts much more weight on memetic transmission of values and attitudes of industriousness, avarice, temperance, etc. to offspring. It's pretty obvious that such attitudes could spread to other nations (just compare travelers' accounts of Chinese indolence and sloth to accounts by, say, Thomas Friedman today of their work ethic!). --Gwern (contribs) 05:04 9 December 2007 (GMT)