> The Long 20th Century began around 1870, when the triple emergence of globalization, the industrial research lab, and the modern corporation in the context of the market economy
Especially for your 1870 start date, you're leaving out "metallic cartridge firearms".
The late 19th was the period of greatest relative advantage (and thus greatest expansion, and greatest economic consequence) of colonial powers; the early calendar 20th was the period of greatest social change in North Atlantic societies as the custom of empire collapsed under an inability to transition away from horse, guns, and foot to "anything you can see, the guns can grind up" and the linked needs of fielding as many rifle regiments as possible and achieving the greatest industrial mobilization possible. This requirement is politically powerful for roughly the hundred years from 1870 to 1970: If you wanted to exercise state power -- Great Power, hegemonic power, colonial power, it all came down to an inescapable need to get the population in on it.
To exercise state power, your politics had to address widely shared concerns. Maybe not share power, but a much wider distribution of economic benefit.
The Century of the Common Man arises from the sound of a breech block closing, and the Long Twentieth ends as oligarchical concerns again become completely politically dominant as the needs of war collapse back into being something that can be expended without the effort of mobilization. (To the great and consistent and expected detriment of the economy, as the wider concerns stop having political meaning.)
Was John Stuart Mill wrong? Perhaps not. Child licenses will eventually be required, if only to stop psychotic right-wing cultists from abusing children under the name of "raising" them. Birth control is the direct reason birth rates dropped, and birth control expanded due to the direct efforts of Margaret Sanger and her organizations funding birth control research.
I wonder how much of the jump revolved around the ruling classes need to deal with the political unrest of the 19th century. There were violent revolutionary actions in the 1830s, 1840s and beyond. They could be suppressed, but this had a cost when competing with other great powers. A modern war could not be fought by peasants nor could a modern factory operate with too low a grade of employee.
So, does the post-1870 revolution of economy and society represent a Singularity in the sense of Vernor Vinge? I'd already identified in a professional paper the emergence of steam powered transportation as sparking a Singularity. Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech involved traveling hundreds of miles from the prairie of Illinois to Manhattan. That's a far cry from the subsistence agriculture which was his father's life.
"We are no longer in anything that we could call “the realm of necessity”. So one would think we humans ought to be in “the realm of freedom”: something that is and that we recognize as a Utopia. But we aren’t there."
My fuzzy thoughts...Perhaps we are stuck in our desires and our thoughts in an income-elasticity "realm of luxury goods" --in that people (and political parties) need not concern themselves with normal policy and companies need not concern themselves with normal goods because luxury goods (whether they be the latest mostly useless app or the latest mostly useless food or the latest mostly useless political shiny object) get sold to those with full bellies and fat wallets. Are there still poor people with real suffering and real needs? Unfortunately, yes, but there are even more not-poor people who seem to get a Jones buying now-affordable products that really don't make them materially better off and buying now-affordable ideas that give them reasons to be angry and own someone else with a crushing Twitter zing because at least then they feel something (Jim Kirk to the Platonians who got anything they wanted with a mere thought, "You're half dead, all of you!"). Does moving from 70% below extreme poverty to 9% change the economic and political landscape to the detriment of those who actually want to have sound laws that will help those 9%, not because of the wishes of the rich 1% but because of the rich-enough 50%? Whodathunkit?
And if I squint, I worry that I it's fuzzy what gets us from here to "the realm of freedom." Once I thought that might be technology. Pass. Education? I worry that people are saying, "Yeah, I'm full there, too."
Well, that's a downer. I'll try to get more optimistic. 70% to 9% should be something heralded. "We did something good here!" Ought to be something to throw back in the face of a cold universe.
> The Long 20th Century began around 1870, when the triple emergence of globalization, the industrial research lab, and the modern corporation in the context of the market economy
Especially for your 1870 start date, you're leaving out "metallic cartridge firearms".
The late 19th was the period of greatest relative advantage (and thus greatest expansion, and greatest economic consequence) of colonial powers; the early calendar 20th was the period of greatest social change in North Atlantic societies as the custom of empire collapsed under an inability to transition away from horse, guns, and foot to "anything you can see, the guns can grind up" and the linked needs of fielding as many rifle regiments as possible and achieving the greatest industrial mobilization possible. This requirement is politically powerful for roughly the hundred years from 1870 to 1970: If you wanted to exercise state power -- Great Power, hegemonic power, colonial power, it all came down to an inescapable need to get the population in on it.
To exercise state power, your politics had to address widely shared concerns. Maybe not share power, but a much wider distribution of economic benefit.
The Century of the Common Man arises from the sound of a breech block closing, and the Long Twentieth ends as oligarchical concerns again become completely politically dominant as the needs of war collapse back into being something that can be expended without the effort of mobilization. (To the great and consistent and expected detriment of the economy, as the wider concerns stop having political meaning.)
Can't wait to read your book!
Was John Stuart Mill wrong? Perhaps not. Child licenses will eventually be required, if only to stop psychotic right-wing cultists from abusing children under the name of "raising" them. Birth control is the direct reason birth rates dropped, and birth control expanded due to the direct efforts of Margaret Sanger and her organizations funding birth control research.
I wonder how much of the jump revolved around the ruling classes need to deal with the political unrest of the 19th century. There were violent revolutionary actions in the 1830s, 1840s and beyond. They could be suppressed, but this had a cost when competing with other great powers. A modern war could not be fought by peasants nor could a modern factory operate with too low a grade of employee.
Just gonna go ahead and add this book to my xmas/birthday list. Thank you!
So, does the post-1870 revolution of economy and society represent a Singularity in the sense of Vernor Vinge? I'd already identified in a professional paper the emergence of steam powered transportation as sparking a Singularity. Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union speech involved traveling hundreds of miles from the prairie of Illinois to Manhattan. That's a far cry from the subsistence agriculture which was his father's life.
"We are no longer in anything that we could call “the realm of necessity”. So one would think we humans ought to be in “the realm of freedom”: something that is and that we recognize as a Utopia. But we aren’t there."
My fuzzy thoughts...Perhaps we are stuck in our desires and our thoughts in an income-elasticity "realm of luxury goods" --in that people (and political parties) need not concern themselves with normal policy and companies need not concern themselves with normal goods because luxury goods (whether they be the latest mostly useless app or the latest mostly useless food or the latest mostly useless political shiny object) get sold to those with full bellies and fat wallets. Are there still poor people with real suffering and real needs? Unfortunately, yes, but there are even more not-poor people who seem to get a Jones buying now-affordable products that really don't make them materially better off and buying now-affordable ideas that give them reasons to be angry and own someone else with a crushing Twitter zing because at least then they feel something (Jim Kirk to the Platonians who got anything they wanted with a mere thought, "You're half dead, all of you!"). Does moving from 70% below extreme poverty to 9% change the economic and political landscape to the detriment of those who actually want to have sound laws that will help those 9%, not because of the wishes of the rich 1% but because of the rich-enough 50%? Whodathunkit?
And if I squint, I worry that I it's fuzzy what gets us from here to "the realm of freedom." Once I thought that might be technology. Pass. Education? I worry that people are saying, "Yeah, I'm full there, too."
Well, that's a downer. I'll try to get more optimistic. 70% to 9% should be something heralded. "We did something good here!" Ought to be something to throw back in the face of a cold universe.