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10 1/2 Big Ideas for 20th
Century Economic History
1.
The twentieth century saw the
material wealth
of
humankind explode beyond all previous imagining.
2.
But these
advances
in
technology, productivity, and
organization--and
resulting
social dislocation and
disquiet
—also produced
tyrannies
that were
were the
most brutal and barbaric in history.
3.
T
he
relative economic gulfs
between different
economies grow at a rapid
and unprecedented
pace.
4.
Government
s were
unable
to manage
their economies
to provide consistent, durable, distributed, and
equitable advancing prosperity.
5.
The
great
Milanovic
-Kuznets inequality waves
that
characterized the century.
6.
The
demographic and feminist transition
that raised
women from the status of a subordinated caste.
7.
H
ow
societal
status
orders were steamed away
—
no
matter how established or ascribed, ethnicity, caste, and
other sociological status groups lost much of their
salience.
8.
The
Polanyian
perplex
: creating a society in which the
only rights that really mattered were property rights ran
into people's very strong belief that they had rights to
maintain their communities, receive their incomes, and
1
work in their occupations--that the attempt of a market
society to transform land, labor, and fi nance into
"commodities" was, always and everywhere in the
twentieth century, playing with fi re.
9.
The coming of
robots and the rise of the overclass
:
was the potential replacement of human brains as
cybernetic machine-management and routine
transactions-processing cybernetic control mechanisms.
10.
The
fall of formal empires
as strong nationalism
spread from northwestern Europe to become a near-
universal foundational belief in nearly all human
societies.
And somewhere, lurking in the background, there is the
mystery of the
Great Filter
.
Ways in Which the Twentieth Century Is Special:
1.
The
Astonishing Acceleration
in technological and
organizational progress
2.
Really Existing Failed Utopias
: socialism and fascism
3.
Gross International Divergence
4.
Mismanagement
of the Business Cycle and the
Income Distribution
5.
Milanovic-Kuznets Inequality Waves
in within-
country and global-inequality
2
6.
The Demographic
-Feminist
Transition
7.
Societal Orders Are Steamed Away
—
whether
established or ascribed
…
8.
The Polanyian Perplex
: turning land, labor, and
fi nance into commodities is asking for big trouble
9.
Robots and the Overclass
10.
Formal to Informal Empire
Does the Great Filter count as a big idea?
(1)
The
Astonishing Acceleration
in technological and
organizational progress in the twentieth century: worldwide
http://tinyurl.com/dl20161128a
. Real income growth:
•
-8000--1: 0.008
%
/year
•
1-1500: 0.024
%
/year
•
1500-1800: 0.047
%
/year
•
1800-1870: 0.366
%
/year
•
1870-present 1.715
%
/year
Today, worldwide, we today get in one year what was
before 1500 75 years of technological and organizational
invention and diffusion and change
. And note that the
n
ineteenth-century
pace of
growth is not enough to get us
over the hump of the demographic transition...
(2)
Really Existing Failed Utopias
: really existing
socialism and fascism
:
3
•
Adolf Hitler (and also Mussolini, Franco, and many
many others)
•
Josef Stalin (and also Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, Pol
Pot, Kim Il Sung, Jong Il, Jong Un, Fidel Castro, and
many others)
(3)
Gross International Inequality
in the twentieth
century
http://gapminder.org
:
•
1820: Britain 3 times and U.S twice as rich as China and
India
•
1870: Britain 3 and U.S. 4 times as rich as China and
India
•
1975: U.S. 30 times as rich as China, 24 times as rich as
India; Britain 19 times as rich as China, 16 times as rich
as India
•
Today: U.S. 4 times as rich as China, 9 times as rich as
India; Britain 2.5 times as rich as China, 6 times as rich
as India
(4)
Economic Mismanagement
of the Business Cycle and
the Income Distribution
•
The Great Depression
•
What we used to call the Great Recession (but should
now, I think, call the Longer Depression)
•
Inflations
4
(5)
Kuznets-Milanovic Inequality Waves
in within-
country and global-inequality
•
The Kuznets Curve
•
Its post-1980 reversal
•
Piketty's interpretation of Gilded Age-level inequality as
the natural state of the system
(6)
The
Demographic
-Feminist
Transition
•
A change
of at least if not a greater
same order of
magnitude as the coming of high patriarchy ca. 4000 BC
(7) “
In society all established and ascribed
O
rders Are
Steamed Away
..."
•
the vicissitudes of caste, of "meritocracy", of market
position, of inheritance, and of place of birth
(8)
T
he Polanyian Perplex
: land, labor, and fi nance as
commodities
(9)
Robots and the Overclass
•
Sources of value in human labor:
•
backs and thighs;
•
fi ngers;
5
•
brains as cybernetic control devices for machines;
•
brains as routine transaction and accounting system
components;
•
smiles for social coordination and personal service; c
•
reative thought
•
Which of these will still have value in a robot- and -bot-
ridden future?
•
What controls distribution when everyone's marginal
product is vastly below their average product?
(10)
Formal to Informal Empire
•
F
all of the British, French colonial, Austrian, Ottoman,
Russian empires
…
•
Persistence of the Han hegemony
…
•
Coming of the European Union and of India
…
•
“
Neoliberal globalization
”
Does the Great Filter count as a big idea?
pages:
https://www.icloud.com/pages/
0kVr__lBUDJd5BIlzob5A_74w#2017-01-13_10_1.2_BIG
_IDEAS_for_20th_Century_Economic_History_.TCEH
html:
http://www.bradford-delong.com/big-ideas-115-
twentieth-century-economic-history.html
6
