Comment by HSO
3 hours ago
This is a persistent mythology of western economic history to "cleanwash" the past and "explain" the present inequality (or what was the present until recently)
Think about the components of all those innovations from the past and if they would have been possible (to scale) without violent and forcible extraction of resources from around the globe, incl forced labor.
Think about when GDP was constructed and how, and from which point stuff got counted into it (ie from which point in the production chain it added to a country´s gdp). If you take raw materials X and Y from somewhere, by force and for cheap, then make sth like a out of it and only count that topline, now you have a big gdp, congrats.
Eg even the "US" was not even "settled" (forcible land expansion) until the late 19th or early 20th century. So you have a steady influx of cheap/free land to support a growing population that keeps adding to the "gdp". Lo and behold, soon after this dynamic stopped, financial bubble and bust ensues.
The main lesson for me is that progress and growth are completely separate things/concepts. You can absolutely progress without "growing" (bloating) your gdp, if you change some things. You can absolutely regress while "growing" (bloating) your gdp. Look at "US" today.
Chicken are coming home to roost. This is why first instinct of Trump and his cohorts is now to expand again "US" borders. Go back to extraction to "grow", since they are institutionally and mentally incapable of progress without extraction. More importantly, without "growth" the system as it is will collapse. It behaves like a cancer that has close to killed its host. It´s over, and anyone who can see knows it on some level.
The west didn't get rich from colonizing the world.
It got rich domestically through industrialism. Then the newly rich countries went on to colonize the world, because now they could. If and how much the colonies made them even richer is debatable, but it was probably a net cost on average.
This is one of several insights counter to "common sense" that economists have figured out.
May be progress is as simple as making energy very cheap, ensuring a diverse manufacturing capability with most efficient methods while making sure 1 or 2 inputs do not bottleneck you.
Larger and bigger powers can control different parts of 'supply chain' (for lack of a better word) and make it difficult to progress without them getting a royalty. In their minds they are justified as they made progress first and others are simply copying their IP
This is in line with Pommeranz (a western economic historian) and most of the whole "Great divergence" litterature.