Comment by wredcoll
11 days ago
Things people did, sure, but not why they did them here and not there is a bit trickier. There's a variety of theories, easy access to coal is my favorite, but some people like to blame the magna carta or something.
11 days ago
Things people did, sure, but not why they did them here and not there is a bit trickier. There's a variety of theories, easy access to coal is my favorite, but some people like to blame the magna carta or something.
Check out Destiny Disrupted. It covers how the Middle East and China both had technology opportunities much earlier but were missing the right economic incentives at the time to handle the disruption to the labor force that came with the Industrial Revolution.
Essentially the major societies before ended up in local maximums because they didn’t have the ruthlessness of capitalism or the economic desperation to adopt technologies that in the short term would unemploy large portions of society and wipe out old power structures.
Jared diamonds an idiot and “guns germs and steel” is among the worst books written in human history - right up there with Republic and whatever the hell sam Harris is doing.
I hope I wasn't coming off as quoting/endorsing that book, but easy access to a major fuel source has got to be at least somewhat relevant