HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018301.jpg

conflict, established in its aftermath a new balance that let each King select the religion of his subjects. Cuius regio, eius religio as the agreements of Westphalia decided in 1648 - or Whose realm, whose religion. This produced some stability, but not for long. You could read that line, after all, very personally and see what it demanded next: My realm, my religion. In a sense, this revolutionary tumult was necessary to pull power froma comfortable, established asymmetric arrangement, in which a few people controlled so much, and into something more symmetric. Luther’s Reformation thinking made God directly, instantly accessible to anyone. (Just as Copernicus’ scientific way of thinking gave us, eventually, the ability to question if God existed at all.) Individuals — and the very birth of the idea of individualism was another heretical slap at the old institutions - could balance and contend and argue as equals. The notion that men were “created equal” became increasingly evident in this generation, even as establishing that equality triggered the French Revolution, the American Civil War and countless similar conflicts. Democratic systems aspired to enshrine this new balance, shifting countries from rule-by-birth to rule-by-majorities. In economics, markets reflected the new picture of power too. How good is that product? What is the price? Is there demand? became the essential questions, not Which Lord controls that field. Releasing power into the busy arms of businessmen, politicians, scientists and artists meant ideas, politics and innovations contended one against the other. They got better. They evolved. And the sum of all these interacting pieces made sustained economic growth into a reality for the first time in history. Ina “commercial society,” Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations, “Every man lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant.” Smith didn’t mean everyone was really a merchant, rather that in a world of markets each of us - our labor, our ideas, our capital - is a commodity. We are liberated, but only to compete. For votes, for jobs, for resources. If the old faiths and institutions couldn't stand the pressures of these powerful, equalizing forces, then new ones had to be built. “The scaffolds humans erect,” the Nobel prize-winning economist Douglass North called these foundations.> The idea of equality of influence or power - not merely opportunity - demanded new containers: voting booths, congresses, unions. Rule of law was one of the most urgently essential: a single code that could be laid down evenly across a society, demanding that principles of order outweighed the habitual advantages of prominence or power or birth. Law aspired to make men equal in front of courts. This, in turn, suggested a new degree of fairness up and down the social order. Broader literacy, the standardization of measurements or the birth of universal credit and currencies were all tools for spreading access. Museums, scientific congresses and industrial fairs helped turn sparks of theoretical knowledge into the 94 In a commercial society: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 32 °5 “The scaffolds humans erect”: Douglass C. North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010) 48 69 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018301