Free Market Economics — Season 1, Episode 8: The Hockey Stick
Documentary, Talk • 32 min • 1 season, 10 episodes
Episode synopsis
In lecture eight, we go over Joel Mokyr’s Nobel Prize-winning analysis of the Industrial Revolution and the “hockey stick” pattern of economic growth that transformed human living standards after centuries of stagnation. We analyze how Britain's Industrial Revolution was fueled by the combination of propositional knowledge (why things work) and prescriptive knowledge (how things work), together with the freedoms of trade, labor mobility, and intellectual exchange. Dr. Henderson contrasts Britain’s openness with historical examples of isolation, such as China, and concludes by emphasizing that freedom of inquiry and international openness remain essential for continued innovation and prosperity.
About Free Market Economics
In Free Market Economics, Dr. David Henderson guides us through ten foundational pillars of economic wisdom and the major schools of thought—Austrian, Chicago, UCLA, and Public Choice. Along the way, we explore how markets coordinate through decentralized knowledge, property rights, and voluntary exchange, and why central planning so often falls short. Drawing on vivid historical cases—from the Soviet economic collapse to West Germany’s postwar miracle—the course brings core ideas like subjective value, spontaneous order, and entrepreneurial discovery to life. Ultimately, it shows how economic freedom and open inquiry fuel innovation and prosperity, while government intervention frequently produces unintended consequences and inefficiencies.