[jmalicki]

The economy went from 0% growth for 100s of years to 3% growth that lasted many hundreds of years.

Yes, at each step keeping the 3% growth needed things to keep going, but the big thing was unleashing the nonzero growth rate, to get unstuck from the local minimum.

[marcosdumay]

Several other places have had non-zero growth in history, yet only one had an industrial revolution.

[jmalicki]

And that is super interesting!

This is history not science so it is super incomplete.

We definitely know that the trajectory of the industrial revolution was kicked off at the plague.

We don't fully understand why there major growth periods at other times that quickly fizzled out, and what is different.

What separates those periods from the plague to the industrial revolution is a super interesting question for economic theory.

Yet, the causal chain is clear that the plague kicked off a period where investment and compound interest began to pay off, that continues to today.