Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember: First: Appreciating & Reviewing Patrick Wyman: The Verge: Sometimes debt plays a different role. Sometimes—sometimes debt plays a different role. Sometimes debt plays a role analogous to the role that money plays as a way of triggering crowdsourcing solutions to the market economy’s problem of getting the right commodities to those with the demand. Sometimes debt is a way of getting people with ideas for things to do but no control over resources into contact with people with control over resources but no idea what to do with them. Sometimes debt greatly amplifies the entrepreneurial energies of a society vastly beyond previous imagining—an amplification for both good and ill. And this brings us to Patrick Wyman: The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Verge/CyQLEAAAQBAJ>
"Hydrologic stationarity" is climate scientist for "it rains at predictable times" (and all the consequences thereof).
That's being lost; researchers at Simon Fraser, for example, have gone on record as saying British Columbia has already lost hydrologic stationarity and this makes some infrastructure rebuilding effectively impossible. ("how high can it flood here?" needs a quantified answer; if the only honest answer is "we have no idea", that means "no road".)
China is not magically immune to this; they're perhaps especially vulnerable to it. It's hard to imagine that the 2020s will have any issue other than food security. (Well, food security and various consequent genocidal and violent attempts to have both food security and the Holocene status quo.) Lack of economic growth isn't great for legitimacy; lack of food removes it anywhere.
It's interesting to contrast your discussion of 'The Verge' and my reading of Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers'. One important point in the latter was that Europe is a hard continent to conquer. There was a serious mountain range right in the middle and the rivers, all relatively short, ran to salt water on at least three out of four sides. It wasn't the lack of top down development. Most major development in Europe was top down as it was elsewhere. It was just that no sovereign could control all that much territory if only for logistical reasons.
I wouldn't consider 1490 a critical year. The Portuguese government had been probing the African cost for generations by then, and their ships built on innovations made by the Vikings. Gunpowder had changed the course of warfare over a century before. A new technical military category meant rising costs both in gold and in the need for higher quality soldiers. Other parts of the world were subject to the same forces, but geography in Europe made it hard to conquer and hold territory. Other parts of the world could achieve stasis. Europe could not.
Polanyi's categories don't seem all that well informed. Did a serf pay his taxes out of fear of his lord or in exchange for protection from things more dire? I'm guessing there was some of both. We know from artifacts that there were extensive trade networks before the development of money. Were they driven by force of arms or kinship relations since exchange seems to be predicated on the existence of money? I probably should read some Polanyi and find out what points I am missing.
"Hydrologic stationarity" is climate scientist for "it rains at predictable times" (and all the consequences thereof).
That's being lost; researchers at Simon Fraser, for example, have gone on record as saying British Columbia has already lost hydrologic stationarity and this makes some infrastructure rebuilding effectively impossible. ("how high can it flood here?" needs a quantified answer; if the only honest answer is "we have no idea", that means "no road".)
China is not magically immune to this; they're perhaps especially vulnerable to it. It's hard to imagine that the 2020s will have any issue other than food security. (Well, food security and various consequent genocidal and violent attempts to have both food security and the Holocene status quo.) Lack of economic growth isn't great for legitimacy; lack of food removes it anywhere.
It's interesting to contrast your discussion of 'The Verge' and my reading of Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers'. One important point in the latter was that Europe is a hard continent to conquer. There was a serious mountain range right in the middle and the rivers, all relatively short, ran to salt water on at least three out of four sides. It wasn't the lack of top down development. Most major development in Europe was top down as it was elsewhere. It was just that no sovereign could control all that much territory if only for logistical reasons.
I wouldn't consider 1490 a critical year. The Portuguese government had been probing the African cost for generations by then, and their ships built on innovations made by the Vikings. Gunpowder had changed the course of warfare over a century before. A new technical military category meant rising costs both in gold and in the need for higher quality soldiers. Other parts of the world were subject to the same forces, but geography in Europe made it hard to conquer and hold territory. Other parts of the world could achieve stasis. Europe could not.
Polanyi's categories don't seem all that well informed. Did a serf pay his taxes out of fear of his lord or in exchange for protection from things more dire? I'm guessing there was some of both. We know from artifacts that there were extensive trade networks before the development of money. Were they driven by force of arms or kinship relations since exchange seems to be predicated on the existence of money? I probably should read some Polanyi and find out what points I am missing.