awesome link

[rm]

Well, if you dig history and economics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html

This is _exactly_ the thing I needed to read to solve a world-building problem in my novel.

Comments

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Really interesting article - thanks. I remember being gobsmacked that Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" was such a fascinating read in college.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Obviously, this discussion of heredity is racist nonsense, what is trivially disproven by the case of the rapid modernization of Japan, but the historical and economic data is sounds. I actually had an entire (oddly enough grad-level Anthropology) class on the origin of capitalism and industrialization, and at the end my own theory was essentially luck - the fact that the native peoples in the Americas lacked resistance to European diseases ended up introducing truly vast amounts of wealth in the European economy at very little cost - an effect not dissimilar to what would happen if someone simply dropped a small mountain of gold and silver in the middle of Spain around 1500. This wealth allowed a previously impossible level of investment, which combined with the level of innovation introduced by the labor shortages caused by the Black Plague transformed society.

In any case, as for the gap between rich and poor nations growing since 1800, oddly, and pleasingly, this started changing in the 1980s, as both China and India continue to modernize.

Also, much interesting data can be found in useful forms here,, especially here, play with what data is graphed and the results are both interesting and hopeful.

[warhol.livejournal.com]

I have to say that, as an economist, I found this really interesting. (It was especially interesting to see so many people toting the party line: "but it's against the rules to say that 'people behave differently because they fundamentally have different preference!'.")

As we were driving to work this morning, I chatted about it with greencaped_k. My assessment: "it's an intriguing hypothesis." (Oh god: I've turned into the stereotypical academic!) But hypotheses are only as good as the empirical evidence that supports them, and I'm skeptical about whether his will really convince me.