Links to Consider, 5/7

Britain's early shift toward manufacturing; Daniel Klein on libertarians and Mr. Trump; Michael Strong on evolutionary mismatch and modern childhood; Dominic Cummings on institutional decay

Fred Lewsey writes,

The research shows that 17^th century Britain saw a steep decline in agricultural peasantry, and a surge in people who manufactured goods: from local artisans like blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights, to an explosion in networks of home-based weavers producing cloth for wholesale.

Pointer from Jason Manning. Economic historians in recent years have tended to push the beginning of Industrial Revolution closer to 1800. I think that this is because capital intensity and higher output per person appeared relatively late. But this research indicates that the shift toward manufacturing took place much earlier.

The article says this:

Industries of textiles, or metalworkers making nails and scythes, were shaped like “factories without machines spread out over hundreds of households” according to Shaw-Taylor – and increasingly produced goods for international markets.

I interpret this as suggesting that industrialization in Britain began as a shift in patterns of specialization and trade. You get more people employed in manufacturing, and they are able to eat because they can trade their goods for food. Then mechanization kicks in a couple of centuries later.

I talked with Daniel Klein on libertarians and Mr. Trump. I tried to ask the Devil’s Advocate questions and probe for weaknesses in his arguments for why Mr. Trump is the lesser evil from a libertarian perspective. In the end, I think you can agree with Klein if and only if you are as convinced as he is that the Democratic Party poses a definite threat to liberty.

Michael Strong writes,

Contemporary adolescents in developed nations, by contrast:

1. Are often exposed to hundreds or thousands of age peers directly in addition to thousands of adults and thousands of electronic representations of diverse human beings (both social media and entertainment media).

2. Are exposed to many languages, belief systems, norms, moralities, and social and cultural diversity.

3. Are largely isolated with a very narrow range of age peers through schooling.

4. Have little or no opportunities for meaningful work in their community and no adult responsibilities until 18 or even into their 20s.

5. They are competing for mates and status with hundreds or thousands directly and with many thousands via electronic representations (both social media and entertainment media).

This is not our ancestors’ adolescence, and perhaps it is not going well.

At this point, most teens most of the time are either in school or online. While addressing the digital addiction crisis and free play crisis, we should also be thinking about learning environments.

Can we create learning environments that more deeply satisfy adolescent needs for connection, community, meaning, and purpose? If we take the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis seriously, we clearly should be exploring how to do so.

I did not know he had a substack, but I have long appreciated his mental energy and will subscribe.

Dominic Cummings writes,

a huge incentive asymmetry makes it hard for institutions to act and almost impossible for any individual to affect them much. Almost all hard things in politics/government require facing unpleasant reality and sticking to long-term operations that disrupt existing power and budgets. But the social/career costs for any individual pressing others to face reality, stick to long-term operations, and disrupt existing power and budgets are very high, immediate and personal, but gains are ephemeral, long-term, and accrue almost entirely to others. Therefore almost all large organisations incentivise (largely implicitly/unconsciously) preserving existing power structures and budgets, preventing system adaptation, fighting against the eternal lessons of high performance, excluding most talent, and maintaining exactly the thing that in retrospect will be seen as the cause of the disaster. Large organisations naturally train everyone who gets promoted to align themselves with this dynamic: dissent is weeded out. Anybody pointing out ‘we’re heading for an iceberg’ is ‘mad’, ‘psychopath’, ‘weirdo’ — and is quickly removed. And even the very occasional odd characters who a) see, b) are able to act and c) have the moral courage to act are highly constrained in what they can do given the nature of large institutions and the power of the forces they confront.

He thinks we are at an unstable part of history’s cycle. He foresees

A. Waves of financial crises, revolutions, wars, and chaos.

B. Over the next 10-20 years a very different world will emerge and some of our regimes that seemed permanent, like the Soviets in 1980, will be replaced. Perhaps like the 1860s-70s new countries will be formed.

C. Regimes that survive will be transformed and the elites in charge will be transformed.

D. The political chaos will be downstream of the spiritual crisis described in Dostoyevsky: the crisis of ‘modernity’ itself and ‘rationality’.

The reason for these dire predictions is that leading institutions are in decay and denial, unable to cope with change. See the earlier paragraph quoted.

The problem is that unlike in the private sector, where organizations in the process of decay get driven out of business, decay within government organizations seems to lead them to expand. Their natural response to adversity is to seek more power.

substacks referenced above:

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Dostoyevsky, the modern intelligentsia, the spiritual crisis of the West

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Evolutionary Mismatch as a Causal Factor

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Links for April 2024