Comment by konschubert
5 hours ago
> Prior to the industrial revolution, the natural world was nearly infinitely abundant.
The opposite is true. Central Europe was almost devoid of trees. Food was scarce as arable land bore little fruit without fertiliser.
Society was Malthusian until the Industrial Revolution.
Can we interpret "abundant" in a Darwinian sense e.g. diversity of life? I would think the industrial farming revolution decreased crop variety over time same for animal lineages aside from the rapid increase in mixed poodle breeds.
To add, I don’t think my ancestor Spaniards for example needed the help of machines to deplete mines in America. They also came already equipped with all kinds of legal systems, including the Requerimiento, which they read out loud to natives in preposterous spectacle.
In general the transition from feudalism to capitalism, including the formation of the legal systems that supported the latter, happened gradually for maybe up to four or five centuries before the steam engine had been invented.
Sure, the Industrial Revolution further accelerated the development of property rights, mercantile, and civil laws, but all in all I don’t think there’s much truth that machines were the primary cause of such developments.
Not really Malthusian. Agricultural societies had adapted to keep the population stable during normal times and bounce back in a generation or two after bad times. Those cultural adaptations stopped working when childhood mortality declined.
Useful land was a scarce resource in more civilized regions, while labor was cheap. Given enough land, subsistence farmers could easily feed themselves outside particularly bad years. But much of the land belonged to local elites, and commoners had to work that land to fund the pursuits of the elites.