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New Explanation For the Industrial Revolution
Pcol writes "The New York Times is running a story on Dr. Gregory Clark's book 'A Farewell to Alms,' which offers a new explanation for the Industrial Revolution and the affluence it created. Dr. Clark, an economic historian at the University of California Davis, postulates that the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 came about because of the strange new behaviors of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours, and a willingness to save. Clark's research shows that between 1200 and 1800, the rich had more surviving children than the poor and that he postulates that this caused constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. 'The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,' Clark concludes. Work hours increased, literacy and numeracy rose, and the level of interpersonal violence dropped. Around 1790, a steady upward trend in production efficiency caused a significant acceleration in the rate of productivity growth that at last made possible England's escape from the Malthusian trap."
It's hardly coincidental that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were bringing in the industrial revolution.
/.'er wouldn't exist.
The widespread use of caffeinated drinks helped transform human economies from farm to factory. Boiling water helped decrease disease among city workers. And caffeine kept them from falling asleep over the machinery.
In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee--or Diet Coke or Red Bull--to get us out of bed and back to work, the world of the average
And now, as evidenced by intro of "Idiocracy", we have a trend in other direction...
One that hath name thou can not otter
I have trouble believing slashdotters are helping the population grow rapidly. After all, wouldn't that require... well... having sex ???
If he is correct in his hypothesis then we're in trouble. If the article post last week about Smart Teens having less sex can be extrapolated to adults then we should see the opposite happen in the US. It already felt like the general populace of the USA is getting dumber this just seems to confirm my suspicions.
We should introduce an artificial selection pressure. How about a mechanical sphynx that targets pre-pubescent with random algebra, English, and social questions and if you fail ti eats you.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I thought HORNY PEOPLE out-reproduce everybody else. So society is getting progressively hornier all the time. Logically, we'll eventually reach a situation where we can't go 5 minutes without sex. We'll be like lemmings.
Thanks for learning English ;)
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It's not exactly as if all those priests and nuns were breeding like rabbits, but still...
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.