Re:Inefficient, but Smart
by btilly on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @03:30PM
(#23693861)
That is a nice "just so" story that simply doesn't fit the facts.
Europe had many points in its history where labor was dear. For example wages went up after the Black Death because so many workers had died. Why did the Industrial Revolution not happen then?
Where and when it did happen, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio... preceded it. Meaning that lots of laborers were displaced from fields (particularly due to enclosures) and forced to move to cities. This lead to an excess of labor in the cities, not a shortage.
The evidence is rather better that the progress of science and technology simply hit an inflection point with the invention of things like the steam engine (factories could be put anywhere) and the spinning jenny (machines could make cloth far cheaper than it had been). In a society which already had a free market bent (it was not an accident that The Wealth of Nations came out of the same time and place), these things were seized upon, imitated, and further innovations proceeded apace.
The spread of the Industrial Revolution afterwards was dependent upon the spread of the necessary skills, the investment of capital, and the building of supply chains. Which meant that what started in England spread to places in closest contact with her. Namely the United Stated and Continental Europe. And then only slowly spread elsewhere.
Europe had many points in its history where labor was dear. For example wages went up after the Black Death because so many workers had died. Why did the Industrial Revolution not happen then?
Where and when it did happen, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio... preceded it. Meaning that lots of laborers were displaced from fields (particularly due to enclosures) and forced to move to cities. This lead to an excess of labor in the cities, not a shortage.
The evidence is rather better that the progress of science and technology simply hit an inflection point with the invention of things like the steam engine (factories could be put anywhere) and the spinning jenny (machines could make cloth far cheaper than it had been). In a society which already had a free market bent (it was not an accident that The Wealth of Nations came out of the same time and place), these things were seized upon, imitated, and further innovations proceeded apace.
The spread of the Industrial Revolution afterwards was dependent upon the spread of the necessary skills, the investment of capital, and the building of supply chains. Which meant that what started in England spread to places in closest contact with her. Namely the United Stated and Continental Europe. And then only slowly spread elsewhere.