The Divergent Dynamics of Economic Growth: Studies in Adaptive Economizing, Technological Change, and Economic Development [Hardcover]

This book offers a synthesis of classical economics with contemporary concepts of adaptation and economic evolution.The essays collected in this volume all deal one way or another with four intertwining themes: (1) new technology and economizing induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, and labor utilization; (ii) these changes underlie the global explosion of human numbers, resource utilization, and environmental transformation; (iii) they cause drastic reallocations of people among industries, rural areas, and cities; (iv) to understand all this, scientific economic theory must be based on principles of economic behavior out-of-equilibrium, especially on concepts of adaptation and evolution.The essays collected in this volume all deal one way or another with four intertwining themes: (1) new technology and economizing induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, and labor utilization; (ii) these changes underlie the global explosion of human numbers, resource utilization, and environmental transformation; (iii) they cause drastic reallocations of people among industries, rural areas, and cities; (iv) to understand all this, scientific economic theory must be based on principles of economic behavior out-of-equilibrium, especially on concepts of adaptation and evolution.This volume explains how changing technology and economizing behavior induce vast changes in productivity, resource allocation, labor utilization, and patterns of living. Basing his work on a new and original synthesis of classical economics and contemporary concepts of adaptation and economic evolution, Richard Day asserts that economic growth, viewed from a long-term perspective, must be characterized as an explosive process, interpreted by turbulent transitions in social and political life as societies adapt to new life styles and opportunities and to the vast increase and redistribution of human populations.Preface; Acknowledgments and comments; 1. The adaptive, evolul(