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Economic development in the 21 st century has been a troubled field. From the dotcom bubble to the Great Recession, the global marketplace has been twisting in the throes of a fundamental transition from the industrial era to the knowledge economy. Disruptive technologies, changing global hade patterns, and environmental challenges have all conspired to create upheaval in our local economies and have prompted a major rethink of what economic development is, and what it seeks to achieve. But, in the midst of these discussions, we have perhaps missed one of the most fundamentally transformative forces reshaping the opportunities for communities - an emerging entrepreneurial subculture of hackers, Makers, and doit-yourselfers that are re-inventing the way the economy works.
The Culture - Economics Connection
There's a stoiy that's often told about the American free market advocate Milton Friedman, and a debate he had with a left-leaning Swedish economist. "In Scandinavia," bragged the Swede, "We have no poverty."
"That's interesting," replied Friedman, "because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either."
The stoiy underlines a long-standing debate in economic circles: does culture influence economic outcomes? An enthe field of study - known as cultural economics - has sprung up to explore this connection, focusing on the ways in which the shared beliefs, practices, and perspectives of particular groups may shape economic outcomes. This is not the "high culture" of fine or performing arts, or heritage and literature, but rather the "bedrock culture" of community outlook as shaped by language, tools, religion, environment, politics, and a host of other forces.
The most famous debate about the impact of culture on economics and economic development is probably German economist Max Weber's 1905 concept of the Protestant Work Ethic. In 1555, to end religious wars and strife in the German-speaking areas of Europe, the Peace of Augsburg was enacted. It allowed local princes and authorities to determine whether their territories would be Protestant or Catholic, and permitted the free movement of citizens between these territories, so that Catholics could relocate to Catholic regions, and Protestants could relocate to zones where their confession held sway. This resulted in a fairly tidy patchwork of Catholic and Protestant territories across what is today Germany Writing some 350 years later, however, Max...