Comment by jmalicki
20 hours ago
I will try to steelman watwut, a lot of people presume compound exponential economic growth is basically inevitable as a law, so you can always go back to some point in time.
However, economic growth was basically flat before the Black Plague, and increases were basically random events that went back to Malthusian dynamics.
Only since the Black Plague has the world enjoyed exponential economic growth.
Most people talk about the industrial revolution, a lot of other comments talk about the british agricultural revolution before that, but economic historians have identified the inflection point at the black plague - that's where compound interest really started to be a driver of growth, it barely existed before that, at least on long time scales.
The Justinian Plague was as bad or worse, but rather than result in flourishing it ushered in the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire and the start of the so-called Dark Ages. So maybe the Black Plague was an important element, but if so also had to have happened at the confluence of other critical events.
According to William Rosen in "Justinian's Flea," this plague also led to an agricultural revolution and population explosion in Western Europe.
<quote> One cannot, of course, “know” this in the same way that one can know the date of the battle of Poitiers; applying economic analysis to the spotty record of commerce during late antiquity is a tricky business. However, as can be seen in a subtly reasoned 2003 paper by two development economists, Ronald Findlay of Columbia and Mats Lundahl of the University of Stockholm, it is compelling, as well, despite its reliance on a number of simplifications. </quote>
That's a super interesting question and I agree! I am only saying the modern period of compound economic growth clearly started at the black plague with good explanations as to why.
Why other events did not have the same effects are very interesting questions for economic history.