Historical Superstitious Beliefs Functioned as Substitute Technologies for Social Governance
Peter Leeson · a16z Podcast | The Why Behind the Weird · Jan 2, 2019 · at 10:52
Peter Leeson, an economist, explains to host Hannah how historical institutions used religious beliefs and legal rituals as tools for social control.
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“You can kind of think about, in part, beliefs as a substitute technology for the sort of physical technologies that we take for granted in the modern world, many of which, as you point out, historically didn't exist. So naturally, they relied more on beliefs as a form of a tool or technology to produce outcomes instead of What we ordinarily think about as technology.”
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