Comment by smath
15 hours ago
This has it backwards. The Victorian elite had a high standard of life because they had an empire that funded their decadent lifestyle - at the expense of their colonies! They were cushioned from negative consequences of their be debaucherous lifestyle.
Such macro effects exist today as well, in certain countries, that enjoy exorbitant privileges.
A focus on STEM is how a up and coming nation builds itself — innovation, and making something the world wants, rather than subjugation or rent seeking.
The ancestry of the Victorian gentry can be traced back to the late medieval period (and some to the Norman conquest), many centuries before Britain had an empire.
The wealth of the merchant class also predated empire by centuries; the empire grew out of a series of alliances and partnerships of both ot these classes, via the landed gentry successfully co-opting mercantile wealth (e.g. see what happened to the East India Company).
That may be, but I think my point about the decadent lifestyle DURING the period of empire still stands.
Victorian era was the time when Britain had consolidated its empire in the east and fruits of industrial revolution were ready. I guess that lowered the incentives for innovation. In contrast, Britain made some good scientific progress in the run up to WW2(and the war also expedited some of it, Alan turing's work for instance).
Missing the forest for the trees. Spain had extreme wealth from colonies, but wasted it on nothing but debauchery.
Britain had wealth from colonies and maintained an empire with very few people and no computers. The British elites were on an entirely different level to the spanish ones, which is the point of the article. Great Britain had an extremely capable and educated bureaucracy that maintained an empire and was first to industrialize as a result.
> bureaucracy that maintained an empire and was first to industrialize as a result.
It's not obvious that's what happened. When the industrial revolution started the British empire was still pretty much ad-hoc and in large part privatized and not administered by the government directly (of course the East India company was not exactly an independent corporation). The British Empire in the way we understand it now wasn't really a thing until the mid 1800s or so.
> Spain had extreme wealth from colonies, but wasted it on nothing but debauchery.
I disagree with this, I don't consider "expensive wars with other European powers" to be debauchery.
Losing the entire Spanish Armada [1] was a very expensive mistake, but the reason the Armada was lost was because the Spanish crown wanted to invade England over religious differences (England being Protestant, Spain being Catholic), not because they decided to throw a huge boat party and got so drunk they accidentally sank everything.
Much like the wars of the French crown which would end up so hurting the country financially that they caused a revolution, the wars of the Spanish crown also had a rather unpleasant effect on national finances.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada
My hypothesis:
1. Empires do not generate wealth, they cost wealth. Or rather they do not generate an economic surplus (the wealth available to the central government via taxation that can be used for whatever the government/elites want). A nation of 10 million will have more economic wealth than a nation of one million, but most of that is needed to keep the 10 million alive and to maintain the infrastructure and pay the local police to keep everyone in line, etc -- only a small fraction of total wealth can be effectively taxed by the empire and spent on arbitrary stuff like increasing the size of the Navy. That is what I mean by surplus.
A nation starts out with an economic surplus (here, I mean a real surplus, not a surplus of silver, but of real wealth) and they use that surplus to get a big army and go conquering. And each time they conquer, a part of that surplus is expended until they reach their maximum extent.
If this was not the case, we'd have a one world government, where the bigger you get, the bigger your surplus and no one can compete with you. But that is not what we see, what we see is that empires expand until they can't afford to keep expanding. Why did England give up its colonies? Because after WW2 it had too many war debts and couldn't keep subsidizing those colonies -- they were too expensive to keep. Same reason for why Rome stopped expanding and had so many financial problems. The check on empire is always bankruptcy. You can look at the trillions the US spends on foreign wars, which far exceeds the economic benefit we get of waging those wars. You can argue, for example, that we got some oil from Iraq, but we still have to pay for that oil, so whatever discount we got on oil comes nowhere near the cost of invading and administering Iraq. That is how all empires work -- France was always better off, financially, just paying market rate for whatever minerals it could get in Africa than the massive resources it spent on trying to control and build infrastructure in Africa. Same thing for England. It doesn't even come close, when you add up the cost of the British Navy and colonial administration to whatever discount it got on raw materials over paying the market rate. Same thing for Rome, etc.
2. The situation with Spain was about financial wealth, not real wealth. They discovered huge silver mines in their colonies and were awash with silver. That dumping of money 1) created massive inflation, and 2) caused Spain to run a huge trade deficit, destroying domestic industry, as the Spanish currency was basically overvalued. It was this economic destruction that leads people to think Spain became lazy and stopped producing. They didn't become lazy, but with so much free money causing such high prices, Spanish industry could no longer be competitive with industry elsewhere. This is called "Dutch disease" as the same thing hit Holland and you also see it in the US with our overvalued currency. So you do not benefit, in terms of real wealth, when you dump a bunch of money on a country. You need just the right amount of money -- too much and you get inflation, too little and you get deflation. There is an optimal amount of money for an economy, and Spain exceeded it.
3. Many have studied the reason why England led the industrial revolution, and it is not a majority view that it had anything to do with the colonies. Most point to things like the availability of coal, development of financial markets, and of course the fact that a lot of the steam engine stuff was invented first in England.
1. War costs wealth not empires by themselves. GB created an empire, because their technological and intelligence advantage was so high, the amount of war needed to get it was small. By intelligence I mean the conquering of India by exploiting its cast system. The colonies were simply civilizations that were out of date and had a huge informational disadvantage. WW2 changed that as it was so expensive it bankrupted everyone but the US.
> Same reason for why Rome stopped expanding and had so many financial problems. The check on empire is always bankruptcy.
The down fall of every empire is hubris and corruption. It is what is bankrupting the US and what bankrupted the Romans. They stopped having kids, spent their time partying and tried to make up for it by importing and relying on barbarians.
2. Yes. But the state did not recognize the trap or simply did not care because it was not interested. I'm not exactly a historian, but Spain was somewhat known for having an inbred idiotic monarchy.
3. All of which are a result of an educated, effective elite and bureaucracy.
Competent leadership is the difference between El Salvador now and 10 years ago. It is the difference between Singapore and Malaysia. Both countries are a result of pure force of will of competent leadership.
4 replies →
Tech and STEM people are currently fully in the subjugate and get rent phase.
you are thinking of capitalists, or do you think Sam Altman and Musk are some tech geniuses?
I do not think they are tech geniuses, but the original statement was not limited to tech "geniuses". Overwhelming majority of STEM people are not geniuses.
But Musk specifically is/was admired and supported by STEM people and culture. He was untouchable for years. Tech people share ideologies and ethical values of Zuckenberg, Musk, Amodei, you name it. Tech educated people spent years developing those philosophies and defending them.
[dead]