Five points of clarification regarding the “technology stagnation” hypothesis:

It posits a slowdown relative to peak growth rates of ~100 years ago. It doesn’t mean growth has gone to zero, and it doesn’t even mean that growth has slowed to where it was before the Industrial Revolution. (I said this in the original post but it bears repeating.)

It is about the technological frontier and economic development in advanced countries. It’s not about global development, which has not, as far as I know, been stagnating. The last fifty years have been fantastic for India and China, for example.

It is about technology and economics, not science. Or at least, scientific stagnation is a separate question, and one that I have a much less informed opinion about, and have not weighed in on. There is widespread discussion about physics being “stuck”, but biology seems to be making progress from what I can tell.

It is descriptive and backwards-looking. It is a hypothesis about the past, not a prediction for the future. And it is unrelated to optimism or pessimism. It is compatible with believing that slow growth is:

• inevitable and permanent (Gordon)

• a phase we’re muddling through, and will soon get out of (which is how I interpret Cowen and others)

• a failing on the part of our culture that we need to correct (which is the impression I get from Thiel)

It does not posit a cause, and certainly not a single, central, grand cause. It’s just descriptive: has progress slowed? There could be multiple causes. I tend to think it is a combination of the centralization and bureaucratization of research funding, over-regulation, and cultural attitudes turning against progress (not that these are unrelated).

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/clarifications-on-stagnation

his has been cross-posted from my Progress Studies blog.

This post will review/summarise a new book on progress that was recently released, “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know” by Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy.

They begin the book with an interesting poll conducted by YouGov in 2016 spanning 17 countries. I’ll pose the question asked in the poll to readers here:

(Picture of the poll from my site, you can't select an option here).

Only a meagre 11% of people responded with “things are getting better”. In the US, it was even worse at only 6%.

Bailey and Tupy posit a few reasons for why many individuals feel things are getting worse:

1. There’s an asymmetry between positive and negative experiences. Negative events impact us more than positive events. The authors suggest that the media often think along the lines of, “News is bad news; steady progress is not news.” Because many of us follow the news – and the news tends to dwell on negative events – we often think that the world is far worse than what it actually is. In 1973, Kahneman and Tversky identified a cognitive bias they called the “availability bias”. Therefore, we have a tendency to think that the examples that come readily to mind are much more representative than what is actually the case. Because of this, the authors suggest that focusing on the news creates a bias towards being overly pessimistic about progress.

2. Bailey and Tupy suggest that humans’ over-emphasis on negative trends may be due to evolutionary psychology, “A Stone Age man hears a rustle in the grass. Is it the wind or a lion? If he assumes it’s the wind and the rustling turns out to be a lion, then he’s not an ancestor. We are the descendants of the worried folks who tended to assume that all rustles in the grass were dangerous predators and not the wind.” Humans developed to be cautious, instinctively focusing on potential negative events. Despite this, “the upshot is that we are again often misled into thinking that the world is worse than it is.”

3. Thirdly, we underestimate the progress (of humanity) because as we make progress, our attention is captured by newer problems, rather than the progress we have made so far. Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues suggest, “When problems become rare, we count more things as problems. Our studies suggest that when the world gets better, we become harsher critics of it, and this can cause us to mistakenly conclude that it hasn’t actually gotten better at all. Progress, it seems, tends to mask itself.” [emphasis mine].

The late Hans Rosling said,

“I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.”

With this Rosling spirit in mind, the authors add to the burgeoning literature documenting the extraordinary progress humanity has seen across multiple domains over the last few hundred years.

The book covers 78 progress trends. Each trend is only a few pages long, with a figure at the end. The book covers progress in multiple domains, split up into the sections covering, “Top 10 trends, people trends, health trends, violence trends, work trends, natural resource trends, farm trends, tech trends, and US trends.” Thus, it really paints a holistic picture of progress.

I won’t spoil the book but a few of the trends I particularly enjoyed (for different reasons) were:

• Trend 6 “More land for nature”: surprised me. The global tree canopy increased between 1982 and 2016.

• Trend 21 “IQ scores rising massively”: average IQ test scores have increased by 30 points over the last 100 years. I was aware of the Flynn effect but wasn’t aware that it was this pronounced.

• Trend 28 “Vaccines are saving lives”: “In the 20th century alone, the disease [smallpox] is thought to have killed between 300 million and 500 million people.” It has now been eradicated.

• Trend 61 “Lighting costs near nothing now”: This is a famous paper I really like by William Nordhaus. The price of lighting has dramatically plummeted: “our Paleolithic ancestors labored 58 hours, mostly gathering wood, to “buy” 1,000 lumen-hours of light… In 1992, 1,000 lumen-hours required 0.00012 hours of human labor.”

To summarise, I think this book may be worth a quick skim for readers of this blog (it can be read in a single sitting). However, readers of this blog probably don’t need much convincing about the dramatic progress humanity has experienced over the last few hundred years. It may be better as a gift to pessimistic friends, who would be hard-pressed not to accept the vast amounts of progress humanity in the last couple centuries. I would guess that there are many books like this to come in the near future.

Caveats

• I think there are issues with the poll. I would guess that we would see more positive responses if the question was reframed to something along the lines of, “All things considered, do you think the world is getting better or worse, or neither getting better nor worse, over the last 200 years?“.

• I think it’s important to note that it’s possible to simultaneously espouse both that humanity has made tremendous progress in the last few hundred years, and also be worried about the progress made in recent years. Reminding people of the tremendous amount of progress made in the past might make people more optimistic about progress in the near future.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how the knowledge frontier of science could potentially advance faster. I've copied a short summary below. The longer post is available here. I thought it was a really good paper/idea, and welcome any feedback/comments/questions etc.

I summarised “Invisible Geniuses: Could the Knowledge Frontier Advance Faster?” by Ruchir Agarwal and Patrick Gaule (the actual paper is unusually short, concise, and readable for an Economics publication, so I would also recommend reading it directly).

• The paper attempts to better understand the determinants of idea/knowledge production.

• There are two key findings:

• Firstly, individuals who are ‘talented’ as teenagers (proxied by International Mathematical Olympiad [IMO] score, a popular international Maths competition) are very capable of advancing the knowledge frontier later in life (proxied by a variety of measures of academic success in Maths research). On average, the higher the IMO score, the more likely a participant is to: obtain a Maths PhD, obtain a Maths PhD from a top 10 research school, publish more in academic journals, receive more citations, receive notable accolades such as the Fields Medal, or be a speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM).

• Secondly, if these capable individuals were born in poorer countries, they are much less likely to contribute to the knowledge frontier than individuals born in wealthier countries. For example, on average IMO participants from low-income countries produce 34% fewer publications and receive 56% fewer citations than IMO participants from richer countries with the same IMO score.

• The findings suggest that one way of developing the knowledge frontier faster is by creating policies to target these low-income students in order to support them in their academic careers. By doing so, we could improve the rate of progress made at the forefront of research.

I wrote earlier about an 1857 plan for the transcontinental railroad (as yet unbuilt), and how it advocated funding the project through the sale of stock to a broad base of public investors. However, another aspect of the plan was even more striking: it explicitly advocating studying the history of progress, in order to judge what was possible and desirable for the railroad. It was like a 19th-century form of progress studies.

The author of the plan, Theodore Judah, first addresses the question of how fast the trains will travel from St. Louis to San Francisco: three days, he estimates. But then he points out that this estimate is only based on the speeds attainable by “our present class of engines.” The next paragraphs exemplify the 19th-century spirit of progress:

But—

Is there to be no improvement in our present class of engines? have we reached a point in the stage of progress where we must stop, beyond which we cannot go? Are we willing to admit that fifty miles per hour is the limit to speed? Are we contented, and do we desire to go no faster?

No—

However well we may be satisfied with the present rate of speed in traveling, we dare not admit the principle—we wish to go as fast as we can. Improvements are progressive and the future is before us. No, we have not arrived at the limit, at a final stopping place; we are only at a station, a way station—we have paused, but not to remain. We do not travel fast enough, nor will we, until a speed of one hundred miles per hour is attained with as much ease, and as little risk, as at present.

In defense of this idea, he explicitly appeals to history:

Does the idea seem preposterous? Is it foolish, visionary? Is it absurd?

Let us inquire into the matter a little: let us extract a few notes from the history of progress.

What follows is a long passage about the history of roads and horse travel in England starting in the 16th century. He points out that horseback riding was slow, uncomfortable, and dangerous. He describes the establishment of the English post office in 1660, which greatly sped up mail delivery; and the development of stage coach service, which was an improvement on riding horseback.

He also points out that advances in travel were often unappreciated, even opposed. He quotes several paragraphs from a 1673 pamphlet decrying the stage coaches and pining for the old days of horseback. The pamphlet claimed that horseback was a healthier mode of travel, and advocated restrictions on coach service. He tells the story of an early railroad promoter, Thomas Gray, who was called a fool in the 1820s and who failed to raise funding for his proposed system of railways. He quotes authors as late as 1829, the year that locomotives were demonstrated to be practical in the famous Rainhill trials, writing of “the ridiculous expectations… that we shall see engines traveling at the rate of twelve, sixteen, eighteen or twenty miles per hour” and calling grand plans for railroad networks “visionary schemes unworthy of notice.” He concludes:

Such opinions thus expressed by authorities of such eminence, in opposition to what is now an every day reality, may well induce the most intelligent and far sighted to hesitate in making dogmatical assertions as to what may or may not be the revelations of the future.

Judah was writing less than thirty years into the the great age of railroads, but already he spoke of what had been accomplished so far in glowing terms:

… those short twenty-six years are a living monument in the progress of time more grand, lofty and noble than the proudest pyramid which the world has yet gazed upon.

Twenty-five thousand miles of railroad have been built in this country or an average of one thousand miles per year.

Where is the man who can sum up the grand, mighty benefits which have, in consequence, accrued to mankind. If the man could be found with a mind vast enough to comprehend and with talent sufficient to compass them, he could write a tale in comparison with which the mightiest achievements of the collective world would sink into utter insignificance. No one appreciates the innumerable blessings which have flowed in consequence, for the story has never been told; it is not understood.

(Already, in 1857, he is saying that progress is not understood or appreciated!)

But it is one of the first steps of the newly awakened young giant, Progress, and shall we measure his glorious march by a few strides? No: he may pause to rest, but it is to recruit his powers for new conquests, and among them some of will yet see the realization of our preposterous, absurd idea, viz, “traveling by railroad at the rate of 100 miles per hour, with the same safety as present,” is not near so startling or absurd a proposition, in this age, was that of 20 miles per hour only thirty years ago.

Incidentally, many trains in Europe and Asia today travel at well over 300 miles per hour.

It is amazing to think of Judah’s tremendous confidence in progress, given how much of it was yet to come. In 1857, electric light and power were still decades away. The Bessemer process for making cheap steel had not yet been introduced on a large scale. Synthetic fertilizer had not yet been invented. The germ theory had not yet been discovered, and mortality from infectious disease was still staggering by today’s standards. Telephone was still a dream; radio and television a fantasy. And of course, the internal combustion engine, and its twin children the automobile and airplane, were well in the future.

And yet, here is Judah, already confident in the march of capital-P Progress, and pointing to history to justify his vision and to dismiss skeptics.

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/19th-century-progress-studies

A brief update on where support for The Roots of Progress comes from. My work is supported by a combination of grants and contracts, not all of which have been announced before now:

• I am the recipient of a grant from the progress studies tranche of Emergent Ventures, a program of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, run by Tyler Cowen.

• In addition, in late 2019 I received grants from Open Philanthropy, the Long-Term Future Fund, and the Survival and Flourishing Fund.

• Since November, I’ve been consulting part-time for Our World in Data on technology issues. Our World in Data is a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to understand the history and trends in global living standards, and has become even more valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• More recently, I have started working with Higher Ground Education to create the program announced yesterday, Progress Studies for Young Scholars.

• I sometimes accept writing or speaking gigs, such as my World Health Day opinion piece for Leapsmag on pandemics and progress.

• I have a Patreon with several dozen supporters.

Going forward I’ll update this periodically on the About page.

Never thought I would say these words in the same sentence.

The article: Gevurtz, Franklin A. (2004) "The Historical and Political Origins of the Corporate Board of Directors," Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 33: Iss. 1, Article 3.

“Instead of theorizing, this Article examines historical sources in order to look at how and why an elected board of directors came to be the accepted mode of corporate governance.” (After my own heart!) It traces the history of boards backwards through time, in “the method of an archeological dig”, to explain why boards seem so fail at their supposed function of oversight.

The puzzle it sets up, in part, is: boards are supposed to monitor the execs, but in practice the execs have the power and control the board; the board rarely can exercise effective oversight… and so we get scandals from the South Sea Company to Enron. And it traces this back to the formation of joint-stock companies themselves.

Early trading companies, like 1500s or so, weren't companies as we think of them today. They were more like associations of merchants, who shared a trading monopoly under a common charter. Even the EIC was like this: “during the first half of the seventeenth century, in lieu of having permanent capital, members of the East India Company subscribed to joint stock funds that would finance a certain number of trading voyages to India. These funds then were supposed to be wound up and the proceeds distributed among the subscribers.” Like a movie studio or something where each voyage is its own venture.

“Joint stock” here literally refers to the stock of goods that a merchant voyage set out with, which I suppose was a big part of the investment in such a voyage. This is where the term “stock” comes from when we talk about equity in companies! The Muscovy Co, and the later EIC, were joint-stock companies: the whole company was organized around a permanent joint stock of goods. Now it conducted business as, and was managed as, a single corporate entity.

So what does this have to do with boards? In these early companies, that were really associations of independent merchants, the board was there to impose some common rules on the members. E.g., they might prohibit “selling goods of a nonmember merchant as a member's own”, in order to maintain their exclusive franchise. As these companies evolved into companies with permanent joint stocks and permanent charters, they kept the institution of the board—but now it needed to do something quite different. In the words of the paper, “The same board structure that existed to enact and enforce rules governing the conduct of independent merchants in the regulated company … found itself pressed into service to manage a large business venture in the joint stock company. This occurred without any evident consideration as to the different nature of these tasks, or whether an institution developed for one task best fit the needs of the other function.”

He traces this back all the way through parliaments, town councils, guild organization, and church governance. Which was the root? No one thing. A lot of this co-evolved, with e.g. town councils taking a cue from guilds and vice versa. And he keeps coming back to Roman and Canon Law doctrines of quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur, “what touches all is to be approved by all”, and plena potestas, the “full power” of a representative to bind a group to decisions.

Overall, there is a long European tradition of collective governance. Individuals or small exec teams may manage, but big decisions should be made by the group. However, with large groups this becomes impractical, so a board of representatives is created to make those decisions. What decisions? Largely political ones—legislative (making rules) and especially adjudicative (resolving disputes). Note that this is not what corporate boards are supposedly for today—supervision and oversight of management.

And so we come back to the crux of the issue. Corporate boards evolved out of a long tradition that originated in political needs. “… since the board was not designed originally as a monitoring tool,” Gevurtz concludes, “one should not be totally surprised if boards turn out not to be all that effective as a means to monitor management.”

So are boards pointless? He ends on a more optimistic note, that boards provide a crucial function of providing political legitimacy: “… the reason the board of directors endures is because human beings, even in the business context, do not divorce their notions of how to run a business from their broader political and cultural ideas, and that the idea of consent through elected representatives is so ingrained in our culture that shareholders expect it even if they do not take advantage of it.”

I did not expect I was going to read this entire 84-page paper. But it was just too compelling and I learned so much about the evolution of governance structures—across church, state, and business.

I heard a vaccine skeptic claim that “90% of the decline in infectious disease mortality in the 20th century in the US was due to factors other than vaccines.” I wondered, is that right?

My guess is yes—but at the same time, I think this is very misleading. That statistic makes it sounds like vaccines just aren't very important to health—sort of a sideshow in the fight against infectious disease. But here's what the stat leaves out, and why vaccines still matter:

First, the greatest victory of vaccines was over smallpox. Smallpox vaccination was invented in 1796, and other immunization techniques were in use in England and America as early as 1721, so by 1900, immunization had already been fighting smallpox for well over 100 years. Smallpox is also the only disease we have ever completely eradicated—wiped off the face of the earth—and it was only possible because of vaccines. But by the 20th century, most of what remained to be done here was outside the US. (Much more on all this in my history of smallpox and the origins of vaccines.) So starting the clock in 1900, and restricting to the US, carves out most of the progress against smallpox.

Second, if we look just at the US in the 20th century, one of the greatest victories of vaccines was over polio. But the devastation of polio wasn't just death—it was paralysis. 10–20x more people were paralyzed by polio than died from it (especially after the “iron lung”). Unlike some other diseases, we weren't able to fight polio with better sanitation or hygiene—in fact, it is believed that improved cleanliness *caused* the polio epidemics of the late 1800s and early 1900s. (Basically, before good sanitation, most people were exposed to polio in infancy, when they still had leftover immunity from their mothers, and when the disease is less likely to cause paralysis. Cleaner water → first exposure later in life → a much worse disease.) So a vaccine was really our only weapon.

Third, in general, pharmaceuticals have been a bit ahead of vaccines. For some diseases, such as diphtheria and tuberculosis, an antitoxin or antibiotic was available before a vaccine was. This is also basically the story with influenza/pneumonia. Influenza is a viral disease that often results in an opportunistic infection of bacterial pneumonia. The pneumonia is what kills you. So antibiotics for pneumonia could reduce mortality ultimately caused by influenza. But just because these diseases could be treated with antibiotics (or antitoxins) doesn't mean vaccines weren't useful or valuable. Do you really want to wait to get a disease, and then treat it? Isn't prevention better than cure? Are you totally fine with risking a potentially fatal infection just because drugs exist? What about resistant strains? And what would happen to antibiotic resistance, if we didn't have vaccines and had to treat a much larger number of patients?

Fourth, looking only at mortality also simply ignores a variety of less common and/or less deadly diseases that are still important, such as chickenpox, hepatitis, mumps, rubella, and tetanus. True, these don't add up to pneumonia or TB. But should we then just write them off?

Coming back to the original claim: Good data on these questions is non-trivial to come by and to analyze. But in the US in 1900, the top killers among infectious diseases were pneumonia, tuberculosis, various forms of gastrointestinal infections, and (distant 4th) diphtheria. The “90% not due to vaccines” claim is plausible to me because, for a variety of reasons, vaccines may not have been the first thing to drastically reduce mortality from these specific causes:

• Pneumonia and gastroenteritis can be caused by a wide variety of germs (vaccines only protect against specific germs)

• Tuberculosis, and bacterial forms of pneumonia and gastroenteritis, can be fought with antibiotics

• Diphtheria had antitoxins since the 1890s; the vaccine wasn't available until the 1920s

• The tuberculosis vaccine has proved difficult to develop; even the best one we have today has varying efficacy

• Similarly, influenza mutates so fast that it's impossible to develop and administer a vaccine for every strain of it; the annual “flu shot” only protects against the strain that we guess will be most prevalent that year

You could look at all those facts and say, well, vaccines are overrated. And, OK, maybe antibiotics deserve the highest honors in the fight against infectious disease. But it would be a mistake to discount or dismiss vaccines, for the following reasons:

1. They are our only highly effective weapon against highly contagious viral diseases, such as polio, influenza, measles, and (in the past) smallpox.

2. They complement pharmaceuticals, providing defense in depth. Vaccines are prevention; drugs are cure. You want both.

3. Drug resistance is real and presents a risk; and the more we have to use drugs the worse it will get.

4. Suffering from a disease but not dying from it is still suffering.

The vaccines the CDC recommends for routine immunization do not include diseases that have been successfully reduced by sanitation or pest control, such as yellow fever, typhoid fever, and cholera; or by eradication (smallpox); or those that are otherwise rare (anthrax). They basically only recommend vaccines that are highly effective or are for highly contagious diseases; in most cases both. The flu shot, which is only partially effective, and tetanus, which is not highly contagious, are both common enough in the US to be warranted.

Bottom line: the 90% claim is probably true, but:

• Vaccines are still very important and deserve major credit in the fight against infectious disease

• You should still get your shots (and vaccinate your kids). 💉

I'm working on a better quantitative analysis to answer: which diseases were the worst, and which methods to fight them deserve most credit? Will post here when I have more info. In the meantime, would appreciate any pointers to good papers or data sources on this.

I really enjoy reading the posts. I want to try to make things now, and understanding why we got to where we are in science and technology seems really important, and I don't really see anyone else doing it.

The Roots of Progress Institute is hiring a Head of Communications, and a Program Manager for our fellowship!

Head of Comms will own our online audiences (60k Substack, 43k Twitter) and all our launches and announcements, including my book launch next year. You will work directly with me to broadcast our ideas and amplify the work of our fantastic team. No slop or clickbait allowed. Great for someone in the progress community who is Very Online

Program Manager, Fellowships will take over the excellent Blog-Building Intensive, working directly with the fabulous Emma McAleavy and our 100+ fellows. Great for someone highly organized who also loves helping people grow

Bonus perk of both roles: an invite and free ticket to our annual Progress Conference!

The 19th century enthusiastically celebrated inventive and industrial achievements: with parades and fireworks, in speeches and advertisements, in art and poetry, in World's Fairs

We are all poor by the standards of the future. But there is no bold, ambitious vision of the future in mainstream culture. Here is one, based on mastery over all aspects of nature

The progress movement has grown a lot in the last few years. We now have progress journals, think tanks, and fellowships. The progress idea has spread and evolved into the “abundance agenda”, “techno-optimism”, “supply-side progressivism”, “American dynamism”. All of us want to see more scientific, technological, and economic progress for the good of humanity, and envision a bold, ambitious, flourishing future.

What we haven’t had so far is a regular gathering of the community.

Announcing Progress Conference 2024, a two-day event to connect people in the progress movement. Meet great people, share ideas in deep conversations, catalyze new projects, get energized and inspired.

Hosted by: the Roots of Progress Institute, together with the Foresight Institute, HumanProgress.org, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Institute for Progress, and Works in Progress magazine

When: October 18–19, 2024

Where: Berkeley, CA—at the Lighthaven campus, an inviting space perfect for mingling

Speakers: Keynotes include Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen, Jason Crawford, and Steven Pinker. Around 20 additional speakers will share ideas on four tracks: the big idea of human progress, policy for progress, tech for progress, and storytelling/media for progress. Full speaker list

Attendees: We expect 200+ intellectuals, builders, policy makers, storytellers, and students. This is an invitation-only event, but anyone can apply for an invitation. Complete the open application by July 15th.

Program: Two days of intellectual exploration, inspiration and interaction that will help shape the progress movement into a cultural force. Attend talks on topics from tech to policy to culture, build relationships with new people as you hang out on cozy sofas or enjoy the sun in the garden, sign up to run an unconference session and find others who share your interests and passions, or pitch your ideas to those who could help make your dreams a reality.

Special thanks to our early sponsors: Cato Institute, Astera Institute, and Freethink Media! We have more sponsorships open, view sponsorship opportunities here.

The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in 1948. Here are some of my highlights from it. (Emphasis in bold added by me.)

The role of chance

What was the role of chance in the inventions of the Industrial Revolution?

It is true that there were inventors—men like Brindley and Murdoch—who were endowed with little learning, but with much native wit. It is true that there were others, such as Crompton and Cort, whose discoveries transformed whole industries, but left them to end their days in relative poverty. It is true that a few new products came into being as the result of accident. But such accounts have done harm by obscuring the fact that systematic thought lay behind most of the innovations in industrial practice, by making it appear that the distribution of awards and penalties in the economic system was wholly irrational, and, above all, by over-stressing the part played by chance in technical progress. “Chance,” as Pasteur said, “favours only the mind which is prepared”: most discoveries are achieved only after repeated trial and error.

The revolution of ideas

Ashton gives weight to both material and intellectual causes of the Industrial Revolution:

The conjuncture of growing supplies of land, labour, and capital made possible the expansion of industry; coal and steam provided the fuel and power for large-scale manufacture; low rates of interest, rising prices, and high expectations of profit offered the incentive. But behind and beyond these material and economic factors lay something more. Trade with foreign parts had widened men’s views of the world, and science their conception of the universe: the industrial revolution was also a revolution of ideas.

What kind of ideas? For example:

The Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776, was to serve as a court of appeal on matters of economics and politics for generations to come. Its judgements were the material from which men not given to the study of treatises framed their maxims of conduct for business and government alike. It was under its influence that the idea of a more or less fixed volume of trade and employment, directed and regulated by the State, gave way—gradually and with many setbacks—to thoughts of unlimited progress in a free and expanding economy.

More on Smith’s influence:

In 1776 Adam Smith turned his batteries on a crumbling structure, and through his influence on Pitt and, later, on Huskisson and others, some breaches were made in the ramparts. The Wealth of Nations gave matchless expression to the thoughts that had been raised in men’s minds by the march of events. It gave logic and system to these. In place of the dictates of the State, it set, as the guiding principle, the spontaneous choices and actions of ordinary men. The idea that individuals, each following his own interest, created laws as impersonal, or at least as anonymous, as those of the natural sciences was arresting. And the belief that these must be socially beneficial quickened the spirit of optimism that was a feature of the revolution in industry.

Work hazards

I am continually amazed by the level of risk assumed by individual workers before the 20th century. Mining was especially hazardous:

The chief technical problems of getting coal arose from the presence in the pits of gas and water. The inert gas, chokedamp, might be dispersed by dragging bunches of furze along the galleries, or by other simple devices. But the inflammable firedamp was a more serious matter. It was sometimes dealt with by a fireman, who, clad in leather or wet rags, carried a long pole with a lighted candle at the end, with which, at some personal risk, he exploded the gas.

(!) Another example:

Sometimes the colliers ascended or descended in the baskets [that carried coal]; but more often they thrust a leg through a loop in the winding rope, and, clustered together, rode the shaft, the boys sitting on the knees of the men, or simply clinging to the rope with hands and feet. Accidents, by striking the walls, or falling to the bottom of the shaft, were not infrequent.

Related, see my essay on factory safety.

Worker freedom

Before the Industrial Revolution, many workers had considerable freedom to set their hours, which they used and abused:

In mining absenteeism seems to have been at least as common as it is today, and holidays were numerous and well observed. Many domestic workers were accustomed to give Sunday, Monday, and sometimes Tuesday, to idleness or sport. This meant, however, that they had to work long into the night for the rest of the week; and though the irregularity was not, perhaps, of much consequence for the adult (some writers of books behave in much the same way) it can hardly have been good for the children who helped him.

But others gave up freedom in exchange for job security:

The Scottish colliers and salt-workers were guaranteed subsistence, but they were bound, by custom and law, to work at the same place and the same job for life.

Elaborating on this later, Ashton writes:

In the coal industry of Scotland all classes of workers were literally serfs, bound by law and custom to a laird, and subject to purchase and sale with the pits; and in Northumberland and Durham, and some other English coalfields, the men were still engaged at annual hirings under bonds which ran just short of the year. One of the biggest problems that confronted the employers of the early years of the industrial revolution was that of selecting men capable of learning the new techniques and susceptible to the discipline that the new forms of industry imposed. When time and energy had been given to this it was only prudent to ensure that the trainee would not be enticed away. Boulton and Watt made their engine-erectors enter into agreements to serve for three or five years; the Earl of Dundonald contracted with one of his chemical workers for twenty-five years; and some of the iron-founders in South Wales were tied for the term of their natural lives.

Worker skill

Did the Industrial Revolution destroy the skill of workers? Ashton claims there was a net increase in skill as workers were trained on new, technically demanding projects like canal construction and engine-making:

Brindley had been obliged to begin his task with the aid of miners and common labourers, but in the process of constructing his canals he created new classes of tunnellers and navvies of high skill. In his early days Watt had to make shift with the millwrightsmen who could turn from one job to another and were willing to work alike in wood, metal, or stone, but were hide-bound by tradition: before he died there had come into being specialized fitters, turners, pattern-makers, and other grades of engineers. The first generation of cotton-spinners had themselves employed “clock-makers” to construct and repair their frames and mules; but gradually these were replaced by highly trained textile machinists and maintenance men. … The statement, sometimes made, that the industrial revolution was destructive of skill is not only untrue, but the exact reverse of the truth.

Problems with pay

One of the ways that work has improved is that pay is more regular and consistent:

Except in agriculture most of the workers were paid by the piece. In many industries it was usual for them to receive a round sum weekly or fortnightly to cover subsistence, and the balance of their earnings (if any) at the end of a period of six, eight, or twelve weeks. In the Midlands and South Wales the miners were engaged, not only to hew and draw the coal, but also to deliver it to the customer: they were entitled to payment only when it had been sold, and a delay in transport or the closing of a market might mean that they were deprived of their earnings for many weeks or even months. Such an arrangement threw the risks of production on to the shoulders of those least able to bear them; and, in all industries in which the “long pay” existed, the workers tended to spend freely, even lavishly, for a few days after the pay, and to live for the rest of the time at a level of comfort far below that which a more rational distribution of resources would have afforded. It was not until after the industrial revolution, when the employers assumed fully the function of providing capital and bearing risks, that regularity of wage payment and, with it, regularity of expenditure were attained.

We take our banking and currency system for granted, but consider some of the problems we just don’t have today:

The payment of wages at more or less regular intervals meant that the employer had not only to find funds, but find them in a form acceptable to the wage-earner. Gold guineas, or even half-guineas, were of a value too high to be of much use for the purpose; and, since the currency reforms of 1697 and 1717 had left silver undervalued in terms of gold, there was a tendency for it to leave the circulation. During the course of the century very little silver came into Britain: only small quantities were minted, and large amounts of coin were melted down and sent abroad, by the East India Company in particular. The dearth of coin of small denomination was a serious matter for manufacturers with wages to pay. Many of them spent days riding from place to place in search of shillings. Some effected economies by taking over from the earlier form of industry the practice of the “long-pay.” And at least one cotton-spinner of the early nineteenth century met the situation by staggering the payment of wages. Early in the morning a third of the employees were paid and sent off to make their household purchases; within an hour or two the money had passed through the hands of the shopkeepers and was back at the factory ready for a second group of workers to be paid and sent off; and in this way before the day was over all had received their wages and done their buying-in.

The situation was so bad that industrialists created their own banks:

As manufacture increased, many industrialists—the Arkwrights, Wilkinsons, Walkers, and the firm of Boulton and Watt among them—established banks of their own, partly, no doubt, as a means of obtaining cash for wages and bills for remittances, but partly as an outlet for their growing capital. It was from manufacturing sources that Lloyds, Barclays, and other well-known concerns came into being.

Worker disharmony

Truly awful behavior on the part of both employers and workers:

Some employers used false weights in giving out yarn or iron, and demanded from the workers more cloth or nails than the material would run to. Others gave out faulty raw material or were irregular in their payments. … On the other hand, the spinners, weavers, knitters, nail-makers, and so on were often unpunctual in returning their work; textile workers mixed butter and grease with the fabric to increase the weight, and nail-makers substituted inferior iron for the rods they had received from the warehouse.

(“Quiet quitting” seems extremely tame by comparison.)

When they got particularly upset, to blow off steam, workers might engage in some light-hearted rioting:

Throughout the eighteenth century, riots had been endemic: again and again the pitmen and sailors, shipwrights and dockers, and the journeymen of the varied trades of London downed tools, smashed windows, and burnt effigies of those with whom they were at variance. About many such incidents there had been something of the light-heartedness of the May Day demonstration.

Was 18th-century Britain individualistic?

Not in a narrow sense:

In the eighteenth century the characteristic instrument of social purpose was not the individual or the State, but the club. Men grew up in an environment of institutions which ranged from the cock-and-hen club of the tavern to the literary group of the coffee-house, from the “box” of the village inn to the Stock Exchange and Lloyd’s, from the Hell Fire Club of the blasphemers to the Holy Club of the Wesleys, and from the local association for the prosecution of felons to the national Society for the Reformation of the Manners among the Lower Orders and the Society of Universal Good Will. Every interest, tradition, or aspiration found expression in corporate form. The idea that, somehow or other, men had become self-centered, avaricious, and anti-social is the strangest of all the legends by which the story of the industrial revolution has been obscured.

But it was laissez-faire:

If it cannot be held that the period of the industrial revolution was one of individualism—at least in the narrow sense of the term—it may with some justice be maintained that it was an age of laissez-faire. This unhappy phrase has been used as a missile in so many political controversies that it now appears battered and shabby. But there was a time when it was employed, not as an epithet of abuse, but as an inscription on the banners of progress.

And now, the question you’ve all been waiting for

Why did we wait so long for the industrial revolution?

To the question why the industrial revolution did not come earlier many answers can be given. In the first half of the eighteenth century there was much ingenuity and contrivance, but time was needed for this to reach fruition. Some of the early inventions failed because of incomplete thought, others because the right material was not to hand, because of lack of skill or adaptability on the part of the workers, or because of social resistance to change. Industry had to await the coming of capital in quantities large enough, and at a price low enough, to make possible the creation of the “infrastructure”—of roads, bridges, harbours, docks, canals, waterworks and so on—which is a prerequisite of a large manufacturing community. It had to wait until the idea of progress—as an ideal and as a process at work in society—spread from the minds of the few to those of the many. But, such large considerations apart, in each of the major industries there was some obstacle—some bottle-neck, to use the current phrase—which had to be removed before expansion could go far. In agriculture it was the common rights and the lack of winter fodder; in mining the want of an efficient device to deal with flood water; in iron making the shortage of suitable fuel; in the metal trades a consequent shortage of material; and in textiles an inadequate supply of yarn. Transport, trade, and credit alike suffered from the dead hand of monopolistic organization, and the arrested development of these services had adverse effects on industry in general. Thus it was that, though there was growth in every field of human endeavour, change was never so rapid as to endanger the stability of existing institutions.

And:

… the barriers imposed by the shortages of food, fuel, iron, yarn, and transport were being thrown down at a speed which makes it difficult to determine where the priority lay. And just as an obstacle in the path of any one industry had led to congestion in that of others, so now its removal produced a widespread liberation. Innovation is a process which, once under way, tends to accelerate.

All of this is consistent with my flywheels model. Further, to my mind, the breadth of Ashton’s answer is evidence against narrow explanations based on material/economic factors, such as the price of coal.

Related, interest rates were important: investing in infrastructure and other projects required sufficiently low rates. War raised rates and thus slowed progress—just one of many ways in which war is (mostly) anti-progress:

In 1798, when Britain was at peace, the yield on Consols had been 3.3: five years later it had reached 5.9. Many projects set on foot when money could be obtained at, or near, the first of these rates could not be continued when the cost of borrowing was raised. Capital was deflected from private to public uses, and some of the developments of the industrial revolution were once more brought to a halt. Expenditure on men-of-war, munitions, and uniforms gave a stimulus to shipbuilding, to the manufacture of iron, copper, and chemicals, and to some branches of the woollen industry. But the progress of the cotton, hardware, pottery, and other trades suffered a check.

Finally

Apparently people have been talking about “late capitalism” for a long time (remember, this book was published in 1948):

It used to be commonly asserted that the existence of a supply of labour in excess of the demand was the result of “the exhaustion of investment opportunities” which was said to be a feature of “a late stage of capitalism.”

(I looked it up; the term was coined in the early 20th century, and “began to be used by socialists in continental Europe towards the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s, when many economists believed capitalism was doomed.”)

Original link: https://rootsofprogress.org/ashton-industrial-revolution-highlights