Tag: industrial revolution
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The Consequences of Machine Intelligence
Atlantic: The Consequences of Machine Intelligence Moshe Vardi If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? … Bill Joy's question deserves therefore not to be ignored: Does the future need us? By this I mean to ask, if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans…
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The Good Old Days Before the Industrial Revolution
A frequent meme I encounter when discussing economic issues is how destructive industrialization and capitalism have been to human flourishing. We once lived in an Edenic serenity, in tune with nature and each other. But humanity rebelled, embracing market ideologies and industrialization. Now we have wrecked human life and the planet. We must repent and…
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The industrial revolution: Why it started in Britain
The Economist: The industrial revolution: Why it started in Britain The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. By William Rosen. Random House; 400 pages; $28. Jonathan Cape; £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk “REVOLUTION” is an overused word; the latest footling change often hyped into the biggest revolution since…
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Theologians & Economists: The Rise of Unprecedented Prosperity (2)
[Series Index] (Continued) Economic Growth When most people think of economic disparity, they usually think in terms of income. Income is correlated with other factors that empower us to survive and thrive. What can we say about per capita income on a historical basis? Comparing income across eras is difficult. Inflation and other variables make…
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Industrious Revolutions Make Hardworking Households
Gruntled Center: Industrious Revolutions Make Hardworking Households I am working through C. A. Bayly's The Birth of the Modern World. The most interesting idea that he has introduced me to so far is that before there could be an Industrial Revolution, there had to be an "industrious revolution." This concept comes from Jan de Vries'…
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Four Keys to Modern Prosperity: Capital Markets (Part 2)
Renaissance to Enlightenment Most of Europe was a collection of feudal agrarian societies before the Renaissance. Serfs paid rent to a lord for the use of land. That lord paid rent to a higher lord, who paid rent to a King. Lack of clear title for land ownership made exchanges in real estate very difficult.…
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Why Didn’t China Have an Industrial Revolution Before the West
Great clip from the Acton Institute featuring Rodney Stark on why China didn't have an industrial revolution before the West. This ties in closely with my post yesterday on property rights.
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MEC: Exhausting Scarce Resources?
I've made the case that Everything Must Change suffers from a parochialism of the present. It fails to see the trajectory society has been moving. But there is another way this parochialism is at work. It merely projects the present into the future. It fails to sufficiently consider future adaptations in human behavior and technology.…
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Living Simply in Abundance (14)
“Material abundance is (A) rapidly depleting our resources and (B) destroying our environment.” This has become the refrain of a new generation of neo-Malthusian environmentalists in our day. It’s widespread in Mainline (National Council of Churches denominations) and is the dominant viewpoint among influential emerging church notables (Brian McLaren’s “Everything Must Change” is a prime…
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Living Simply in Abundance (5)
The biblical narrative was revealed into specific historical-cultural contexts. If we go back into the world of the Old Testament, we find a distinctly agricultural society. Unlike our Enlightenment/Modernist-influenced culture, "rights" did not begin with the individual or the state. The emphasis was on relatedness. God owned all that is, and humanity was made stewards…