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Re:Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer by pg on Monday June 18, 2007 @08:00AM (#28842)
Are you implying that the Industrial Revolution was caused by population pressure? That would be an amazing coincidence, wouldn't it, if jobs in factories appeared at just the moment it "wasn't possible to be a farmer anymore."

In fact the history of every country that industrializes is the same. People work on farms till jobs appear in factories, and then they move to the cities-- not because it isn't possible to work on farms anymore, but because it's such a grim life.

And incidentally, feudalism was over in England centuries before the Industrial Revolution got started in the late 18th century.

Re:Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer by lupin_sansei on Monday June 18, 2007 @08:06AM (#28843)
Exactly. The guy above got it back to front. The population explosion was because of the extra wealth from the industrial revolution lowering the death rate due to the end of famine. http://www.mises.org/books/conquest.pdf

Feudalism ended in England in the 16th century, hundreds of years before the industrial revolution http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0006447.html

Re:Life of a Chinese Gold Farmer by Tichy on Monday June 18, 2007 @08:53AM (#28849)
Well then it wouldn't be a coincidence, would it? I mean if population explosion was caused by the industrial revolution. I didn't mean the industrial revolution was started by population explosion, only the squalor was (among other factors) caused by it.

Sorry I don't have the books with me right now (until next week), and I didn't learn them by heart. I seem to also remember that there were machines before the "revolution" - maybe it still was a change of political circumstances that permitted the revolution (free trade between countries, possibility of ownership giving incentives for entrepreneurs etc.). Certainly several factors worked in combination, it's not like the invention of a particular machine triggered it all.

I also seem to remember that China has the fewest farmland per person of all countries in the world. I don't think anybody can simply be a farmer. I know I couldn't just be a farmer in my country.