History of Economic Thought

    Respond to the prompt   1.Human communities have existed for approximately 2.4M years. Markets have existed for nearly as long. And, yet, it is only within the last seven centuries (.03 per cent) of human existence that social life has come to be mediated by equal units of abstract time. D Landes, G Arrighi, and K Polanyi each tackle a different slice of capitalism, the emerging social system. Drawing upon their research, explain why capitalism appeared so recently, why it might have spread so rapidly, and why the recent appearance of capitalism (as a social form) might be of interest to economic thinking today. 2.The world of the utilitarians was barbaric. Children filled the streets of industrial cities. Opioids filled the snuff jars of the investor class. Prostitution was rampant. Disease spread rapidly in the crammed tenements of industrial cities. Homeless vagrants wandered between cities and day jobs. To such terrifying conditions most utilitarians attempted to give a positive spin. Drawing upon the works of J Mill, JS Mill, 1 Bentham, N Senior, and 1-B Say explore why (or even whether) any of these thinkers found the new economic system the least problematic, how they justified these deplorable circumstances, and how (if necessary) they felt the problems of industrialization might be overcome.