ONE SLIDE: Working on the Summary Review Materials for Econ 135: History of Economic Growth: The Post-1870 MEG-Economy
DRAFT of one single slide I want my students to be able to refer to, now, while writing the exam, and far into the future...
DRAFT of one single slide I want my students to be able to refer to, now, while writing the exam, and far into the future...
Perhaps three-quarters of all of the $6.2 quadrillion of human economic activity since the perhaps semi-speciation event of 75,000 years ago has taken place since 1870, since the beginning of what Simon Kuznets labeled “Modern Economic Growth.
I need to put together a single summary slide on the post-1870 history of economic growth. It should be something that my students can refer to now, on the exam, and afterwards during their lives.
It can be very busy.
It should balance itself and cover both the political-economic and the econo-technical.
Below the fold is my first—highly inadequate—stab at a draft.
Suggestions for edits very welcome:
The Workings & Consequences of Post-1870 Modern Economic Growth
As the Rate of Human Technological Prowess Accelerates to & Beyond the Benchmark of 2%/Year…
Toward—or Is It Beyond?—the Great Filter
Where are they? Why don’t we see them out there? What does that mean for us?
Anders, Drexler, & Ord (2018) say—correctly—that the Drake equation properly understood dissolves the paradox—that the existence of a Great Filter is not very surprising.
But it is still rather important to figure out what the Great Filter is, and whether it is in our past or in our future
Attention Info-Bio Tech Society (from 2007 into the future)
First commercial iPhone shipment on June 29, 2007
In the crosshairs of the downside of Schumpeterian creative-destruction: ???? those who can be easily replaced by infobots or robots
Long-term consequences of information technology & biotechnology academia as GPTs
The renewed fight over systems and orders
Globalized Value-Chain Society (from 1970 to present)
Fifteen working container ports in 1970; 3000 today
In the crosshairs of the downside of Schumpeterian creative-destruction: Dover Circle Plus semi-skilled workers; males of ethnicities of privilege without higher educational chops
Long-term consequences of containerization, telecommunications, first-class jetliner seats, & Ritz-Carlton hotels as GPTs
Thus the “quilted” development & convergence of Richard Baldwin
The Neoliberal Order
Mass-Production Society (from 1908 to 1980)
Henry Ford’s first Model T manufactured on September 27, 1908
In the crosshairs of the downside of Schumpeterian creative-destruction: the heirs of the Belle Époque élites
The Great Compression of income and wealth
Long-term consequences of the electrification GPT
The social-democratic New Deal Order
Big Labor, Big Business, Big Government, & Big Social Movement
Applied-Science Society (from 1870 to 1940)
Edwin Drake drills the first commercial oil well on August 27, 1859, in Titusville, PA
In the crosshairs of the downside of Schumpeterian creative-destruction: farmers, landlords, and skilled industrial workers with rule-of-thumb experiential knowledge
Second Industrial Revolution GPTs
The Demographic Transition underway
The Gilded Age plutocracy
Mass communication as a GPT creating mass as opposed to network politics
The associated rise of ethnocentrism as the most powerful organizing principle for politics
The fight over systems and orders—Reaction, PCSL, Communism, Fascism, Populism, Progressivism, groping for other ways…
The development of underdevelopment à la W. Arthur Lewis
The great Europe-ruled colonial empires
The Coming of Modern Economic Growth (from 1850 to 1890)
First transoceanic telegraph cable in 1866
In the crosshairs of the downside of Schumpeterian creative-destruction: élites outside of the Dover Circle Plus
The Belle Époque & the merging of landlord-social-bureaucrat & market-industrial-bureaucrat upper classes with the transformation of status into property & of wealth into class-network
The limits of Socialism as unattractive to those who have something, even if it is not much
Pseudo-Classical Semi-Liberalism
1870: The industrial research lab
1870: The modern corporation
1870: The global market economy
Steampower Society (from 1730 to 1880):
Thomas Newcomen’s first atmospheric steam engine installed at the Conygree Coalworks near Dudley Castle in Staffordshire, England in July 1712
In the crosshairs of the downside of Schumpeterian creative-destruction: spinners and weavers
The British conquest of India
1830: GPT: The engineering profession
1830: GPT: The machine tool industry
1800-1850: Bob Allen’s four policies:
Banks
Schools
Railroads, and other infrastructure
“Appropriate” tariffs
1750: Laws to be changed for general utility
1750: Laws not to be changed for the powerbrokers’ benefit
1730: GPT: Steampower
References:
Baldwin, Richard. 2016. The Great Convergence: Information Technology & the New Globalization. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. <https://archive.org/details/greatconvergence0000bald>.
Kuznets, Simon. 1966. Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, & Spread. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. <https://archive.org/details/moderneconomicgr0000kuzn_z5q7>.
Levinson, Marc. 2006. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller & the World Economy Bigger. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. <https://archive.org/details/boxhowshippingco0000levi>.
Sandberg, Anders, Eric Drexler, & Toby Ord. 2018. "Dissolving the Fermi Paradox." arXiv. <https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404>.
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Just shew one ape-an barely holding themselves somewhat above a muck of sewage in which they and their fellows are immersed whilst the rest of them yell through barely-surfaced heads 'No!, this is where we _belong_, this is _great_.'.