Things that went whizzing by that I want to remember: First: This—Gregory Clark: The Secret History of the Industrial Revolution—is an extremely interesting but ultimately, I think, not fully sustainable paper. In it, Greg Clark does the Greg-thing: taking an unsustainable position, turning all his intelligence and industry to sustaining it, and getting remarkably far.... That last part of the argument may, I think, well be correct: we might well still, today, be in a very impoverished steampunk world. But it is nevertheless the case that the differences in “demand, demography, trade, and geography” made the British Industrial Revolution decisively different than anything that had come before...
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.
I would say rather "not even wrong". The reason that every society comprises both introverts and extroverts, homebodies and explorers, conservatives and innovators is that none of these strategies dominates its converse; but relative success depends on circumstances. "Yankee ingenuity" depends in part on circumstances: an environment where labour is a relatively scarce resource ought to favour innovations that reduce the need for labour. But mainly it is just self-delusion. "Yankee" ingenuity turns out on close inspection to mostly be French ingenuity or Romanian ingenuity or, as the word implies, Dutch ingenuity, expressed by 1st generation immigrants who brought their culture with them rather than absorbing it from an American milieu. Nowadays there is a lot of Indian and Chinese ingenuity.
That seems to be particularly true in Silicon Valley.
One way to think of innovation is to compare it to the evolution of genes, but where innovations are memes. There will be lots of random variations (mutations and crossovers) but only a few offering true benefits and these will be the ones that change things. In this sense, humans are innately innovators, as we know we are great copiers, but the copies may be imperfect. Some leading to improvements and are called "successful innovations". Most changes will be neutral or bad copies. These "innovations" will fail, but that doesn't mean that innovation isn't innate.
A certain amount of conservatism with respect to innovation should expected. This will be particularly true of societies with only bare subsistence. Once an innovation has proven its value in improving subsistence, it will be shipped rapidly.
It may be a self-selected, bias, but we see innovation is rampant today. Almost every software engineer innovates in some small way. People generally look to improve lots of things in small ways, which slowly add up. Some people innovate big things, which seems to create a flowering of small innovations. Just look at the many clever ways people do some things and post them on youtube.
I do think however that culture may have something to do with it, rather than it being some innate feature of human cognition. After all, where does the phrase "Yankee ingenuity" come from?
"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.
"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.
The systemic fix is almost trivial -- income and asset caps at a level where you cannot, individually, exert any political influence with money -- but something of a difficulty to implement.
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.
I would say rather "not even wrong". The reason that every society comprises both introverts and extroverts, homebodies and explorers, conservatives and innovators is that none of these strategies dominates its converse; but relative success depends on circumstances. "Yankee ingenuity" depends in part on circumstances: an environment where labour is a relatively scarce resource ought to favour innovations that reduce the need for labour. But mainly it is just self-delusion. "Yankee" ingenuity turns out on close inspection to mostly be French ingenuity or Romanian ingenuity or, as the word implies, Dutch ingenuity, expressed by 1st generation immigrants who brought their culture with them rather than absorbing it from an American milieu. Nowadays there is a lot of Indian and Chinese ingenuity.
That seems to be particularly true in Silicon Valley.
One way to think of innovation is to compare it to the evolution of genes, but where innovations are memes. There will be lots of random variations (mutations and crossovers) but only a few offering true benefits and these will be the ones that change things. In this sense, humans are innately innovators, as we know we are great copiers, but the copies may be imperfect. Some leading to improvements and are called "successful innovations". Most changes will be neutral or bad copies. These "innovations" will fail, but that doesn't mean that innovation isn't innate.
A certain amount of conservatism with respect to innovation should expected. This will be particularly true of societies with only bare subsistence. Once an innovation has proven its value in improving subsistence, it will be shipped rapidly.
It may be a self-selected, bias, but we see innovation is rampant today. Almost every software engineer innovates in some small way. People generally look to improve lots of things in small ways, which slowly add up. Some people innovate big things, which seems to create a flowering of small innovations. Just look at the many clever ways people do some things and post them on youtube.
I do think however that culture may have something to do with it, rather than it being some innate feature of human cognition. After all, where does the phrase "Yankee ingenuity" come from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_ingenuity
"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.
Not just looting (which surely includes the slave trade), but drug running: tobacco, sugar, tea, rum, opium.
All of those are slave industries in significant degree, sugar and rum and tobacco almost purely so.
It really is all one; the acceptance of lossy conversion of, well, anything, into money. People emphatically not excepted.
Yep, the Brits made their money on slaves and the drugs produced by the slaves. That was their "ingenuity".
"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.
The systemic fix is almost trivial -- income and asset caps at a level where you cannot, individually, exert any political influence with money -- but something of a difficulty to implement.