Founder, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org). Part-time tech consultant, Our World in Data. Former software engineering manager and tech startup founder.
Trust is important, but… the Church banning cousin-marriage as the primary cause of a high-trust society? I find it hard to believe. No time now to elaborate on my reasons but if people are really interested maybe I will write something up later
I think in Allen's book there is both a generic claim of high wages, and some specific analyses of technologies like the spinning jenny and whether it would have paid to adopt them.
The builders' wages are part of the generic claim, because there was no building-related technology that was analyzed.
The spinners' wages might be related to the spinning jenny ROI calculations, but I haven't gone deep enough on the analysis to understand how the paper that was linked might affect those calculations.
Maybe! Or maybe you could interest him in a printing press, or a sextant, or at least a plow? That is sort of my point in the second-to-last paragraph (about shape/direction vs. rate).
That is one of many hypotheses. (I haven't studied all of them yet, but I'd be surprised if I ended up ranking that even in the top three causes.)
Insurance is exactly a mechanism that transforms high-variance penalties in the future into consistent penalties in the present: the more risky you are, the higher your premiums.
Yes, and similarly, William Crookes warning about a fertilizer shortage in 1898 was correct. Sometimes disaster truly is up ahead and it's crucial to change our course. What makes the difference IMO is between saying “this disaster will happen and there's nothing we can do about it” vs. “this disaster will happen unless we recant and turn backwards” vs. “this disaster might happen so we should take positive steps to make sure it doesn't.”
Right, and as Tyler Cowen pointed out in the article I linked to, we don't hold the phone company liable if, e.g., criminals use the telephone to plan and execute a crime.
So even if/when liability is the (or part of the) solution, it's not simple/obvious how to apply it. Needs good, careful thinking each time of where the liability should exist under what circumstances, etc. This is why we need experts in the law thinking about these things.
Looking at the “accelerating projection of 1960–1976” data points here, it reaches almost 3 TW by the mid-2010s:
According to Our World in Data's energy data explorer, world electricity generation in 2021 was 27,812.74 TWh, which is 3.17 TW (using 1W = 8,766 Wh/year).
Comparing almost 3TW at about 2015 (just eyeballing the chart) to 3.17 TW in 2021, I say those are roughly equal. I did not make anything “significantly shinier”, or at least I did not intend to.
The article has a detailed analysis that comes up with a much lower cost. If you think that analysis goes wrong, I'd be curious to understand exactly where?