Institutional Law and Economics: The Legal-Economic Nexus

 On page 242, we see Veblen express something like a hypothesis regarding human mastery of technology. He writes that, "The larger the available body of information of this character, and the more comprehensive and unremitting the share taken by the discipline of the machine process in the routine of daily life, therefore, the greater, other things equal, will be the rate of advance in the technological mastery of mechanical facts." Veblen is pointing to the importance of a "rate" in assessing the relative changes in a society's move from the handicraft era to the machine or mechanical era. Of "this character" to what is he referring to? Here we need to look at what he discussed above. He is referring to the fact that the machine world needs information that is not of a personal or anthropomorphic character. The faster this type of knowledge and information is stripped from the ideas or information of a community, the faster its rate of advance in the

  This section continues Veblen's thinking regarding the evolution of the handicraft era.  The first point he wants to make is that the machine era requires a matter of fact and mechanical approach to work and workmanship as opposed to the era of human dexterity and high touch of the handicraft era. He also notes again how the crafts persons embody the nature of the economy in that era and convince many others that human craftsmanship is the best gauge upon which to assess society. He writs that,  “to serve the needs of this machine technology, therefore, the information which accumulates must in some measure be divested of its naive personal colouring by use and wont; and the degree in which this effect is had is a measure of the degree of availability of the resulting facts for the uses of the machine technology.” (Veblen, pg. 240, 1914). From this point, we observe the shift towards the machine age and perhaps of equal importance the price age.  As Veblen notes on page 243-244, 

 This section starts with Veblen stating that in the handicraft era, the individual craftsman is again the dominant force in the economy.  This in turn implies three key facts that are important to Veblen.  The first key fact is that the instinct of workmanship is an important element in how humans think and act again. we can perhaps think here that the instinct of workmanship is less contaminated by other instincts in the handicraft era. Another key piece is that the "common stock of technological knowledge" is open to all and easily mastered by the individual crafts person. If we recall, Veblen wrote that this technological knowledge is always held in commons by all people but in certain eras it is dominated by a small group of individuals whereas in the handicraft era it is shared by many crafts people. The final key fact is that craft persons can easily understand technical and natural forces as they need to and machines are devised to be in accordance with the needs of c

 Chapter 11, the Era of Handicraft pg. 231-234 Veblen starts this chapter by noting that in his mind Eruope had not been characterized by large scale emperors but generally smaller fiefdoms and kingdoms unlike Asia for example. He felt that the Roman Empire was more of a southern European tradition.  Western and northern Europe developed with small scale industry and the handicraft system in the middle ages in particular.  This eventually changed over time as we have already explored as the technology changed and it became impractical for every small handicraft merchant to own capital. In the handicraft era, the habit was that price should be based on a labor theory of value but this changed to become based on freedom between buyer and seller as the capital intensive nature of industry changed. Over time, the owners became a smaller class of people and the workers, who were originally handicraft based, came under the dominion of the owners of capital.   This marked the transition from