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I believe that Anton Howes' comment is more or less totally incorrect. One of the prime differentiators of H. Sapiens from prior versions of the genus homo is extreme innovation. Comparing the toolkit of modern humans with the Neanderthal toolkit, makes it abundantly clear that innovation is "in the blood" of H. Sapiens. This was true at the time our modern ancestors displaced our Neanderthal ancestors, at least for those of us whose ancestry is not exclusively African.

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"And what mortal ever heard, any good of George the Third?"

In 1760, the King of England is engaged in standard European princely competition; somewhat more far-flung, somewhat more maritime, than usual; England has been the Pirate Kingdom since the reign of Elizabeth Gloriana, but does not yet derive really major amounts of revenue from the piracy. (It remains _respectable_ to loot.)

In 1820, the United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, and in order to not lose -- in order to not be crushed mercilessly by a triumphant Napoleon -- the great and good of England have agreed to another society where it's not merely respectable to loot, it's respectable to trade. (Though if you ask any scholar of colonialism you're going to get an earful about how trading and loot are not distinguishable concepts in the colonial era.)

You can't make the industrial revolution make sense without war. Consistent sheaf-blocks and cheaper sails and many, many nails from a single large customer with a large budget don't so much pay for things -- though the RN certainly did both pay for things and figure out how to do stuff -- as provide an alternative social order where your birth _is_ an accident and the thing has to work. (Without real risk, that goes away; the Victorian Royal Navy is something of a joke, because it starts promoting captains by connections. But for the crucial time in the reign of George III, it had to work, by strong consensus.) It takes that real fear of utter destruction to permit major change in the social order; otherwise any innovation gets quietly strangled into directly whatever money it produces into incumbent hands. (Look at the internet in our lifetimes.)

Afterwards, they couldn't stop; elite competition for greater wealth means greater loot and it means greater trade. Mammonism as respectability, as distinct from land tenure as respectability, is a feedback loop now. And the Pirate Kingdom is out in front. Everyone else with the option realizes that they have to somehow keep up, or else.

The really unique thing about the British industrial revolution is that their elites believed they were at risk of death -- there would be no deals for the losers -- and that they won after a generational struggle. A quicker win would have seen the genie back in the bottle. Not winning would have seen a replacement of elites, and not likely elites whose view of looting held it fundamentally respectable. But it took long enough that there was no possibility of returning; the economy (in effect) stayed on a war footing thereafter.

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"It would be easy to get a job. But would it be easy to get a good job—your best possible job—right now? That is not so clear to me. So labor demand in the sense that it matters may not be all that high right now."

I would argue that it hasn't been possible for a long time. Qualification creep has been just ridiculous, moreso when those qualifications have to be paid for just to get a job that one is vastly overqualified for. I recall back in the 1980s how the uS maintained a high unemployment ratio compared to the UK and Europe, which may well have supported the mantra of "education is the ticket to success" which clearly was not entirely true and led inexorably to the grifting of poor quality private post K-12 education establishments and the expansion of community colleges and universities turning out graduates unable to get a "proper job" despite the lack of a recession or depression to justify such a state, but putting a drag on the economy with excessive student debt which only suits the financial institutions and the fee-paying education institutions.

IDK how to fix this, but it is a terrible waste of brainpower, made worse by employers keeping down wages, squeezing out what was once one of the US' defining accomplishments - a large and vibrant middle-class.

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