[ci5er]

That's certainly depressing. I'm going to have to go w/ McCloskey and push some pencil on some of that.

I would have put it on the plague, the protestant revolution, the magna carta and the printing press. All pre-dated the industrial revolution - but that itself had to be enabled by something (otherwise - the Romans would have done it, right?)

[danieltillett]

I am not sure why you think it is depressing unless you mean what life was like for the vast majority of people before the industrial revolution.

I would really encourage you to read the book, not so much for the hypothesis Clark proposes, but for all the amazing background and data on this topic he provides in a way that is accessible to the layman.

[ci5er]

I tend to agree. I've lived in Indonesia - when the Nike plants paying several cents/day and had hunreds of people line up for those horrible jobs that Americans were boycotting Nike for.

I've seen the jockeying at the line any time one of those factory workers committed suicide.

But does not that make us wonder if we could do better? (I'm not an equality warrier - more of a let's do better down here warrior - and I have to say Nike does pretty good in that regard)