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by benbreen
4266 days ago
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The basic premise of the article (that there are three distinct industrial revolutions with "fallow" periods dividing them) seems to me to be very easy to poke holes in. It's not as if some fundamental force of innovation switched on in 1760 and then faded away in 1830, only to reappear forty years later, as the graph in the article implies. Historians of globalization have been thinking about this stuff in a different way for quite some time now (for instance, Jan de Vries and his concept of a 17th and early 18th century "Industrious Revolution" is quite influential and has a lot of merit in my opinion). It also isn't clear to me why the author(s) consider the automation of the 19th and 20th centuries, which they allow to have demolished entire industries and ways of life, to have been less threatening than the present wave of automation. Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that the people who write and read the Economist were those who benefited from the disruptions of the 19th and 20th centuries--and are now in a position to rationalize away their negatives--than with any qualitative shift in how innovation or automation is taking place. |
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Industrialization in 19th and 20th centuries caused suffering in the transition period (1st industrial revolution resulted decrease in average height and drop in expected lifespan in Britain) and the public was able to fully enjoy the benefits of the industrialization only after massive political struggle that included violence (revolutions, unions, strikes, assassinations). The end result was society with new laws and new systems for wealth distribution.
Did living standards improve during the Industrial Revolution? http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/economic...
If we look into history for cues, industrialization should be seen as two step process:
1. New technology brings new opportunities and makes economy more efficient. It also changes power structures in the society and creates massive imbalances.
2. Dramatic technological changes are followed with equally dramatic changes in society that either happen trough political struggle or violence.