The greatest event in history was the coming of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. He is the reason we divide time by his birth into BCE and CE, originally BC and AD. The second greatest was the Industrial Revolution because through it humans escaped millennia of mass starvation from famines. The Nobel committee summarized what it accomplished:
Over the last two centuries, for the first time in history, the world has seen sustained economic growth. This has lifted vast numbers of people out of poverty and laid the foundation of our prosperity. This year’s laureates in economic sciences, Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, explain how innovation provides the impetus for further progress.
Half the prize went to Joel Mokyr “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.” Half went to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.” Of course, these ideas aren't new. Economists of the past have written similar things. But the Nobel must go to a living economist.
The Industrial Revolution should be celebrated in national holidays the world over because nothing has impacted humanity so much, other than the coming of Christ. David Kotter wrote in the Washington Times, "Consider one of history’s most remarkable transformations: In 1800, 90% of humanity lived in subsistence poverty. Today, that figure has flipped, and according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 90% of all people have escaped poverty’s grip."
The World Bank credits slightly freer markets in Asia for lifting over 500 million from starvation in the past generation. A glimpse of the change accomplished by the Industrial Revolution can be found in the hockey stick graph of per capita GDP. Per capita GDP is the best measure of living standards. Imagine, people in 1800 lived very much like Egyptians in 3,000 BC! Higher standards of living mean less poverty, which all Christians should celebrate.
Why don't more people know about this? Why is it not celebrated? It's not because socialists have succeeded in rewriting history to cast the Industrial Revolution as an evil event that enslaved millions in factories and poverty. Marx and his sycophants lied about pre-industrial life, painting it as idyllic and wholesome when in reality millions starved to death in the winter and in frequent famines. F.A. Hayek's book, Capitalism and the Historians and Emma Griffin's Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution provide the true history.
Still, the Nobel Prize winning economists don't explain how the Industrial Revolution happened. They describe what happened for the most part. Mokyr credits a Europe fractured by many countries that allowed entrepreneurs to move to those in which innovation was welcome. But he doesn't explain how countries existed that would welcome innovation and entrepreneurs.
Deirdre McCloskey in his trilogy (Bourgeois Virtues; Bourgeois Dignity; Bourgeois Equality) and Max Weber in his classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism prove that before the Industrial Revolution, all of Europe had a culture that despised commerce and a major cultural change was needed before innovation was welcome. Helmut Schoeck in his classic, Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior, shows that envy is the enemy of innovation. Only Christianity has managed to suppress it enough to allow for innovation and entrepreneurship, but not until the 16th century.
McCloskey doesn't attempt to explain how the cultural change happened. He only describes it happening in the Dutch Republic of the 16th century. Jonathan Israel in his book The Dutch Republic, wrote that the Dutch culture shocked the rest of Europe with its freedoms. Jan deVries claimed that the Industrial Revolution began in the Dutch Republic in his book, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815. Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations asserted that the Dutch had most fully implemented his system of natural liberty, later called capitalism. When Mokyr says the fractured politics of Europe allowed entrepreneurs to move to a country that respected them, he meant the Dutch Republic.
How did the Dutch Republic pull off such an amazing accomplishment that changed history forever? They embraced the economic and political theology of the scholars at the University of Salamanca, which they distilled during the Reformation. The Netherlands was part of Spain during the Reformation and the Salamancan theologian Leonardo Lessio took the university's political theology to the Netherlands.
That theology included the rights of individuals to life, liberty and property that governments couldn't violate. It limited government to providing courts to settle disputes, national defense and punishing criminals. It said that if the state collected more in taxes than necessary for its limited role, it committed theft. It promoted the rule of law, equality before the law and more.
They had arrived at the necessity for free markets after centuries of debating just prices, deciding that a just price can only be approximated in a market free of coercion. Also, the right to property requires free markets because property doesn't exist without the owner having complete control over it in buying, selling and use.
The Dutch didn't implement those Biblical principles of government because they thought they would make them rich. No one thought improving living standards was possible. After all, living standards hadn't changed for 10,000 years. The Dutch implemented them because they were Godly principles of government. They were as surprised as all of Europe when they became the richest and most powerful country while the once mighty Spain faded into insignificance. Kings around Europe tasked their wisest people with finding out how the Dutch had done it and gave birth to the science of economics.
Without knowing it, the Nobel committee has honored the Godly theologians of the University of Salamanca of the 16th and 17th centuries and
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