40 Thoughts for 40 Years

Today is my 40th birthday and I thought I’d take the chance to share a collection of small thoughts I’ve had this year. As you can see in the history of this blog, I used to post much more of my thoughts online. However, as I got older, I realized people rarely change their minds. So I spent less time putting my thoughts on the internet.

But if you know me, then you know I still have a lot of thoughts and love to put them out there. So over the years, I’ve gotten in the habit of texting myself what I might otherwise posted online. It’s become a kind of miniature private blog to myself. So, for my 40th birthday, I got myself a present. The chance to share about 40 of the things I’ve texted myself over the last year (organized by date texted, not topic):


True greatness requires longevity.

Investment in institutions (government, school, business, communities) is the key to human thriving. Institutions attempt to systematize beyond the influence of individual human choices. In that way, they are also inherently dehumanizing.

The bias of the news is that there is always something newsworthy. You’ll never see the headline “Things are mostly the same as they were yesterday”. Daily news needs to talk less about the present. More about the past. And a lot less about what the future might hold.

Just because a habit was once adaptive, doesn’t mean it’s working for you now.

Religion can offer us an ancient sense of humility: Our free will is constrained by our weaknesses. I’m grateful it’s also constrained by a loving God.

Parent as if you knew your kids were going to be okay. You’ll push them less and enjoy them more. Then they’ll probably turn out okay.

Capitalism is said to have an invisible hand that guides markets. Democracy needs to have a visible hand that voters can see, appreciate, and want to support.

Move away from “is what I’m saying the most correct” to “is what I’m saying the most effective”.

It seems like Adam and Eve were never meant to die. Never meant to go to heaven. Maybe this is the purpose of the human story. To end up better than where we started.

The American empire will eventually fade. Instead of putting energy towards holding on to as much power for as long as possible. Maybe it’s more productive to put that energy towards supporting growing nations that might share our values (maybe like India, Brazil, Ethiopia, etc).

One of the best ways to make America more resistant to radicalism and more open to gradual change is to help us realize just how successful they we've already been.

Every piece of criticism needs to be couched in the context of predetermined acceptance.

If someone is primarily describes the “good news” of Christianity as just delayed gratification (wait for heaven), that is truly some very bad news.

Your emotions are true, but they might not be telling you the truth.

Avoid financial advice that sounds like easy money or a complicated workaround.

Unlikely benefits of having a lot of children younger: Every year early you have a child, is an extra year you are in their life. Every extra child you have is an extra family member for them after you are gone.

The tradeoff to the many benefits of the 18th-century Enlightenment was an over-reliance of what we can see and understand. Apparently there is a lot about the world we will never understand. Thinking otherwise turns us into skeptics and conspiracy theorists.

We should replace the phrase “I can’t do that” with “I don’t want to do that” (because the benefits of success aren’t worth the costs to try)

“Don’t worry what other people think. No one is keeping your score. They are only keeping their own score” -Jeff Probst

Maybe everyone everywhere is struggling and needs to be treated with kid gloves. If so, I’ve got a lot of more apologies to give.

When you compare men and women, remove the top 1% (which is mostly old white men). Then by almost all measures, women are doing just as well if not better than most men over the last 30 years. This is both a celebration of the progress made and a model for how we can help moving forward. This is a big idea I’ve gotten from listening to Scott Galloway

Immigrants are an incredible piece of positive social engineering. There’s something about the immigrant experience that even makes them perform better than other marginalized groups. Are Kamala Harris and Barack Obama successful people of color, or are they products of a family with an immigrant work ethic and talent?

I’m less afraid of AI taking over society like Terminator. I’m more afraid of AI negatively affecting the way humans actually live their lives in the real world. This is already happening with social media algorithms.

The average age of inaugurated Presidents when I was a kid (Clinton, Bush, Obama) was 49. The average of the next 3 presidents (Trump, Biden, Trump) is 75.

Cynicism is a type of cowardice.

“Identical twins, raised apart are more similar than fraternal twins raised together. The most important thing you give your children is genetics. The second is zip code” -Daniel Pink
I feel like this justifies my laissez-faire parenting and the fact that I’m so picky about houses. Note: I’ve been technically homeless for over 6 months.

When things are bad, just keep pushing. When things are good, slow down.

Too much advice, even too much good advice, can create anxiety in the receiver and actually end up being taken incorrectly and become bad advice. If you feel that now, just stop reading this blog post ;)

People only get better when it’s easier to improve than to stay the way they are.

One of my greatest personal flaws is I love the simplicity of Checkers and I am easily tired from the complexity of Chess.

A good summary of the U.S. economy of my adult life: The price of non-essentials have gone down (TV’s, computers, air travel, etc) largely thanks to automation, but the price of essentials has gone up (housing, groceries, college, etc), largely due to fixed human labor costs. Curious how AI will affect this,.

There is never a more fickle mistress than the approval of others.

The bad times will come and go. So will the good times. It’s all about enduring and enjoying the now. If life is a gift, we’ve got to accept it all with gratefulness. Somehow.

Expectations are what drive us. They are also what drive us crazy.

My pitch for a new cult: “25 year Amish”. There are costs to living in the modern world. So instead of tying your culture to an arbitrary century like the Amish do, just delay all technology you use by 25 years. So go out and get a Blackberry and start ordering books from Amazon.

If you find yourself serving someone, something, or some group more than they serve you… great! That’s the purpose of life. To become a net positive on the world.

Negative emotions are key factor in human survival. Ignore them at your own peril.
That said, see above about the news high jacking your emotions.

People are not drawn to you. People are drawn to how they feel about themselves around you.

Earnestness is not a measure of whether what you are hearing is in fact correct. Earnestness is saying confidently what you think is correct. This is what makes Trump so believable, yet so incorrect.

It’s weird that as you get older your parents have less impact on your daily life. But it’s not until you’re older that you realize just how much they impact who you are.

I have found that my own lack of empathy is a lack of willingness to endure the feeling someone else in having right in front of me. It is brave to embrace the joy and sorrow of the world around you.

This NYT article is about how one of the most powerful things you can give children to increase their resiliency is an intergenerational self. An idea of how they fit into the larger narrative of their family history. A way to test this, is to see how much of the stories about their parents and grandparents they know. My wife and I played a trivia game asking our children these questions. They scored an average of 84%!

Career advice for my children: cast a wide net of hobbies and interests and then follow the ones that offer the lifestyle (money, hours, satisfaction) you desire.

You don’t get to choose who you are. That is largely a function of who you spend your time with. But you do get to choose who you spend your time with. I’d suggest regularly participating in more than just one group to ensure a healthy competition of ideas.

I’d like to increase not only my transparency, but also my vulnerability. One challenge for myself is to use more “I feel” statements. People will commonly respond incorrectly to vulnerability, but worst case scenario I’m just giving us all practice.

I’ve gotten very good at communicating with large groups. My challenge for the next decade of my life: give more individual attention.

Takeaways from "Crazy Busy"

These days I finish books about as often as I blog (not very much). One reason for the lack of both is busyness. This Spring Break I took some time and read "Crazy Buzy: A (mercifully) Short Book about a (really) Big Problem" by Kevin DeYong. Here are my takeaways:

Efficiency and punctuality are a part of functioning and showing respect in America, but they are not absolute virtues globally (and certainly not historically).

If you doubt the level of complexity and opportunity in America just visit the cereal aisle.

One way to combat the burden of busyness is to ensure your lifestyle has a "margin". That is, you plan to make room for the eventuality of the unplannable. To not do so is arrogance from a finite person.

A fallacy: "Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness. Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy." -Tim Kreider of the NYT

A primary cause of busyness is pride. Ask yourself: "Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?" I'm personally guilty of sacrificing the unconditional love of my family for the praise of those I'm less intimate with.

Jesus never ended a sermon with "do more or disobey". The original sin was not a lack of effort for God, it was an attempt to become Him.

This is not a permission to be apathetic. We should hurt for those who hurt. However, our circle of influence will always be smaller than our circle of concern.

Jesus spent 30 years in relative calm before a whirlwind 3 years of public ministry. So don't fear, Jesus (more than most pre-modern people) felt the weight you likely feel of busyness. He was constantly around the disciples, preached to thousands (without a microphone), was swamped by the sick, and sometimes even had to escape by boat. Yet, he certainly had to leave cities with more sick and hungry (literal and spiritual) to continue his larger Mission.

Busyness isn't a planning problem, it's a personal one. You must create a simple list of priorities or "unseized" time will flow towards our weakness and squeaky wheels. At the same time, we have to respect others' priorities and appreciate when we hear "no".

One of the most common American forms of busyness is Kindergarchy: Rule by children. "Children have more options and more opportunities, but parents have more worry and hassle. We have put unheard-of amounts of energy, time, and focus into our children. And yet, we assume their failures will almost certainly be our fault for not doing enough."

In his book, Selfish Reasons to Have Kids", economist Bryan Caplan (remember him?) cites numerous twin and adoption studies that conclude almost every desirable trait parents wish to pass down (health, happiness, intelligence, likeability) are more nature than nurture.

"One of the most resilient and cherished myths of parenting is that parenting creates the child" -Leslie Leyland Fields

However, Bryan Caplan does show 3 traits that can be impacted by parenting: religion, politics, and appreciation of how they were parented. So, perhaps we should just try and instill those and not stress about the others so we can "have a better life and a bigger family".

Technology helps us do more of what we want. So, it can (and often does) feed into our desire for busyness. Easy half-solution: put your phone out reach and/or create full on technology Sabbath day(s).

We actually work less and rest more than we did (farming was hard), but the two are significantly less separated. We work while we play (and visa versa) much more. I may have tried to post this near 5pm so you wouldn't read it at work.

"You can borrow time (from the future), but you can't steal it. There is no such thing as a free coffee boost.

A not very sexy, but correct, concluding point: "If you have creativity, ambition, and love, you will be busy." But how busy?


HT to my brother in law Stephen for the book!

The Past, Present, and Future of Greenville Manufacturing

I love it when NPR does a story on my hometown. Just this week Planet Money did a two part series on the history of American manufacturing through the lens of Greenville, SC. Here's my version of the story:

The Past

With several forces coming together at the right time, the early days of the Industrial Revolution brought about radical economic change. Work moved from the home to factories in cities, greatly improving human life, wealth, and morality. Which meant the late 1800's and early 1900's saw huge economic growth. These increases in production, and in turn increasing wages, didn't require very much expertise (assembly lines run themselves) and could often be created by a lone genius inventor.

The Present

Then we had The Great Stagnation. The Industrial Revolution picked up all the low-hanging fruit of innovation. Printing press, cheap western land, fossil fuel powered machines, penicillin, clean water, cars, planes, basic worker education, etc. all made life better quickly and relatively easily. Computers, cancer research, alternative forms of energy, college education for all, etc are all slow going and complicated to benefit from. Also, much of the innovation of machinery and globalization of trade has replaced the low skill industrial workers of the past and it's still happening (just check this old and new video of automobile manufacturing).

The Future

If you read the full Planet Money story in the Atlantic the future looks grim. Workers are suffering in the name of profit. The poor try, but can never succeed. The reality is a little more optimistic. Every time a human is replaced by a machine (or even a cheaper human) customers benefit. And since all workers are also customers, even the replaced workers' lives can improve. The unemployed of today probably have better living standards than the employed of the 1910's because of increases in productivity. That's why I support some kinds of social safety nets (especially the kind that retrains replaced workers). I also suggest that when choosing a career be sure you can't be replaced by a machine in your lifetime (hint: don't go into the toy assembling business).

The Distant Future

Though if I did have a worry about how technology impacts society, it would be about fertility. As technology improves, jobs become more complicated. That's why the return on education is actually greater than it used to be, even non-economically speaking (especially if you weren't "supposed to go"). This increase in complexity requires an increase in education. Which is usually fine because increases in education result in increases in pay that exceed the cost of that education. But what I'm specially worried that if jobs become so complicated that they require decades of education, they could delay plans for family past the point of our most fertile years. What if we have to learn so much we can't have babies anymore, increasing the future underpopulation bust? My guess is creating a family while still in school will become a more common trend.

Economics of Education

From Freakonomics Radio:

So of all the topics that economists have studied, I would say one we are most certain about are the returns to education. And the numbers that people have come up with over and over are that every extra year of education that you get will translate into an 8% increase in earnings over your lifetime. So someone who graduated from college will earn about 30% more on average than someone who only graduated from high school. And if anything, the returns to education have gotten larger over time. They’re as big as they have ever been. And I think it makes sense that the returns to education now are higher than they’ve ever been because of how the economy has changed. It used to be that with a low education, you could get a good manufacturing job, lifetime employment. But now with the Chinese competition for instance, almost all the manufacturing jobs are gone, because there are Chinese workers willing to work, who are able to do these jobs at wages that are one-fifth or one-tenth of what an American worker would demand to do it.

Nothing overly surprising. But it does show why education is and will continue to be very important.

The Near Future of American Economic Growth

The inspiration for my series against self-verification was inspired by this final example of where I used to be wrong. A common theme of this blog is the recognition of just how rich we are. Whether you're an American, a high school teacher who's married to a social worker, a breakfast eater, a person with too many hobbies, or almost anyone who's been alive for the last 200 years, you're historically very rich. Along with that assumption, I've argued that economic growth will continue as it has since the Industrial Revolution. I'm less sure of that now.

If there was ever a person who could challenge such an important presupposition of mine it's Tyler Cowen. He's smart, well-read, and most of he's reasonable. He's also the only person with his own tag on my blog. Wikipedia (and his wife) describes him as a ""libertarian bargainer", a libertarian who's not so radical that he can't influence those in power. Tyler recently published a new short ebook, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. Thanks to my friend with a Kindle, I was able to read it this weekend.

The thesis of the book is clear and the facts are to deny. Median income growth is down. The economic growth and technological innovation that began with the Industrial Revolution has slowed. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century technological innovation changed the face of America. The use of fossil fuels and electricity, telegraph/telephone, radio, car, refrigerator, penicillin, light bulb, airplane, nuclear power, running water, and germ theory are many examples. Now compare those to the important inventions for last 75 years. Spaceflight, lasers, solar power, DNA/genome/stem cell discoveries, credit cards, heart surgery, cell phones, smaller better computers, and of course the internet. Although those are all very important, collectively they have made less of an impact on the human race.

It's the simplicity of his claim that makes it so believable. The world is not ending and is in fact is still getting better, just more slowly. Per his book's subtitle, he describes the problem as an issue of "low hanging fruit". The first set of inventions I described are fairly simple and more important compared to those in the second list. Finding out mold kills disease is much easier than how to successfully remove and replace a human heart. We've picked the easy inventions off the tree of innovation. The next ones will require more effort. Also, the benefit of the more recent innovations are also not as evenly spread as the earlier ones. The poor gain a lot from running water, light bulbs, and penicillin and very little from Google, smart phones, and heart surgery.

However the biggest problem with this new reality is what it means for debt and investing. Originally I was less worried about our government's debt because, like it has in the past, economic growth can help pay most of it off. If we're richer in the future, it's easier to pay off poor debt. Without even counting the Great Recession, if economic growth will continue to slow down, it will make paying those debts off much more difficult. Less economic growth also means less growth in the stock market. Which means less growth for retirement and savings accounts which can have important changes on how we invest.

But remember this is bad news, not tragic news. The world is still great and getting better. In many ways the irony of this ebook is that it is an ebook. The internet is the great shining hope for, as Tyler predicts, another spurt in economic growth. The book is an example of how good the great stagnation can be. Four dollars for a lesson on American economic growth doesn't add much to GDP, but it sure made a huge impact on my economic and political perspective. I highly recommended the book and for the author's personal words on the book I recommend the interviews from EconTalk, The American, and BloggingHeads.

The Past Wasn't Completely Impoverished

In the first post my series against self-verification, I'd like to try and balance an argument I make regularly. Though like was significantly worse before the Industrial Revolution, in some places it wasn't as bad as I thought:

In the first, with Joseph Cummins and Brock Smith, he shows that England was surprisingly rich before the Industrial Revolution. This assertion is based on the fact the a small share of the population was engaged in farming. The primary sector accounted for 52% in 1817, and even 60% in 1560. These measurements are based on the occupations listed in men's wills and indicate that a substantial fraction of people living in rural areas were in fact not engaged in farming. Thus measuring the urban population share can be misleading in this respect.

In the second, Gregory Clark shows that there has been relatively little growth over these centuries, which means that way back in 1381, England was much richer than we thought. At that date, only 55% of the population was engaged in farming, based on records of the Poll Tax. This is very close to the number quoted above for 1817. Thus standards of living were not that different four and a half centuries apart.

I think I've also been guilty of ignoring the importance of intimate relationships when it comes to measuring wealth. Having enjoyable conversations with friends is one of many things that won't show up in GDP. And let's not forget, that like me, plenty of ancient cultures had time for games.

Cities Are Greener

From the most recent Freakonomics podcast:

if you love nature, stay away from it. We're much more likely to harm nature, as Thoreau did surrounded by the woods than if we lived in tall urban apartments by ourselves. There's a statistical partner to that, which is together with Matthew Kahn, I've assembled data on carbon emissions associated with living in different parts of the country. And there are two facts which I think are important to come out of that: one of which is that people who live in cities do tend to emit significantly less carbon than people who live in countries. And this is controlling for income controlling for family size. That's coming mainly from driving, from the fact there's just a lot fewer carbon emissions associated with dense living. It's not just the move to public transportation, it's also that for drivers within cities, they're just driving much shorter distances. And then of course, it's because of smaller homes. The higher price of urban space means that people are living in smaller homes even with the same family size. And that leads to lower electricity usage, lower home heating usage, and those are the facts that make cities seem, at least to my eyes, significantly greener.

So if, as the author also claims, that cities are the engines of economic and social growth without the environmental destruction, why don't we all live in big cities? The government:

I think that at the federal level there are three issues, one of which is the home mortgage interest deduction. The home mortgage interest deduction essentially acts as a push away from urban apartments into suburban homes. [...]

Second policy that's problematic, and we're still doing this, and this I actually give President Obama much less credit for—we've been huge on building infrastructure in this country for a long time. [...]

But I worry about a renewed push towards building new transportation infrastructure in this country. The work of Nathaniel Baum-Snow finds that every new highway that cut into a major city in the post war period reduced that city's population by eighteen percent because of suburbanization. Transportation is sort of the opposite of urban clustering. You're sort of subsidizing people to spread out.

And the third thing, which is not really a federal issue, but it's huge is our local system of schooling. Certainly for anyone who's a parent like myself, the suburban school districts offer huge enticement to leave cities.

If you're not subscribed to this podcast yet, I highly reccomend it (and others).

Economics of the Printing Press

It's likely that the printing press played a part in the Industrial Revolution. Here's estimate of it's impact on population:

Historians observe that printing diffused from Mainz in “concentric circles” (Barbier 2006). Distance from Mainz was significantly associated with early adoption of the printing press, but neither with city growth before the diffusion of printing nor with other observable determinants of subsequent growth. The geographic pattern of diffusion thus arguably allows us to identify exogenous variation in adoption. Exploiting distance from Mainz as an instrument for adoption, I find large and significant estimates of the relationship between the adoption of the printing press and city growth. I find a 60 percentage point growth advantage between 1500-1600.

Here's an example of how:

Cities that adopted print media benefitted from positive spillovers in human capital accumulation and technological change broadly defined. These spillovers exerted an upward pressure on the returns to labour, made cities culturally dynamic, and attracted migrants.

China Becomes a Political Power

I've discussed before about how I don't fear China's growth, China's US investments, or China's domestic subsidies. However, China as a global political figure does give me pause for thought. Although I don't support most of the United States' foreign policy, I believe that or global intervention has mostly been attempts to do good. With a hand full of exceptions during the age of imperialism, our military has mostly been a force for more peace and more prosperity. America's unilateral global leadership began after World War II as Europe recovered. In fact, America's post-war aid to Europe, the Marshall Plan, was one of our first acts as the global leader. Now, China is doing something similar:

Citing government sources, the paper reported that Mr. Li said “China is willing to buy as much Spanish bonds as Greek and Portuguese combined, that is, around 6 billion euros.” The Chinese financial support is so welcome that El País referred to Mr. Li as a new "Mr. Marshall"

And here are the political string attached:

China’s goodwill also comes attached to European willingness to open up its markets to Chinese companies and to relaxing restrictions of technology transfers.

So far it seems China's goals are similar to the United States, more trade and interdependence. It's important to remember that these have not always been the goals of other global leaders. Rome, Great Britain, Japan, and Germany come to mind. China, who was a global power before the Industrial Revolution in the West, is now moving up the ranks and I'm optimistic, but unsure, what their political aspirations are.

Economics of the Last 200 Years

Although wealth isn't everything, it is very important. Here's a flashier, shorter, still awesome version of Hans Rosling's famous TED Talk:



I was right when I said if you're reading this, you're rich, but I guess I forgot that historically you're also rich if you're not reading this (and you'll get richer).

Geography and the Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, had one central question he attempted to answer in his masterpiece: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It's clear that free markets are the key to the the Industrial Revolution. Tyler Cowen's given me his thoughts on the causes. There's probably some cultural factors. But one there's two geographical factors I hadn't given enough consideration. The first is latitude:

Geography determined that when the world warmed up at the end of the Ice Age a band of lucky latitudes stretching across Eurasia from the Mediterranean to China developed agriculture earlier than other parts of the world and then went on to be the first to invent cities, states and empires. But as social development increased, it changed what geography meant and the centres of power and wealth shifted around within these lucky latitudes. Until about ad 500 the Western end of Eurasia hung on to its early lead, but after the fall of the Roman Empire and Han dynasty the centre of gravity moved eastward to China, where it stayed for more than a millennium. Only around 1700 did it shift westward again, largely due to inventions – guns, compasses, ocean-going ships – which were originally pioneered in the East but which, thanks to geography, proved more useful in the West. Westerners then created an Atlantic economy which raised profound new questions about how the world worked, pushing westerners into a Scientific Revolution, an Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

The second is rainfall:

Why have some countries remained obstinately authoritarian despite repeated waves of democratization while others have exhibited uninterrupted democracy? This paper explores the emergence and persistence of authoritarianism and democracy. We argue that settled agriculture requires moderate levels of precipitation, and that settled agriculture eventually gave birth to the fundamental institutions that under-gird today’s stable democracies. Although all of the world’s societies were initially tribal, the bonds of tribalism weakened in places where the surpluses associated with settled agriculture gave rise to trade, social differentiation, and taxation. In turn, the economies of scale required to efficiently administer trade and taxes meant that feudalism was eventually replaced by the modern territorial state, which favored the initial emergence of representative institutions in Western Europe. Subsequently, when these initial territorial states set out to conquer regions populated by tribal peoples, the institutions that could emerge in those conquered areas again reflected nature’s constraints. An instrumental variables approach demonstrates that while low levels of rainfall cause persistent autocracy and high levels of rainfall strongly favor it as well, moderate rainfall supports stable democracy. This econometric strategy also shows that rainfall works through the institutions of the modern territorial state borne from settled agriculture, institutions that are proxied for by low levels of contemporary tribalism.

It's humbling to consider how most of the reasons why I'm rich are not only out of my control, but also out of the control of my family, my country, and at least in this case, my entire species (not to discount the importance of human ingenuity).

Morality During Hard Times

I just finished watching the movies The Book of Eli and The Road. Both take place in a post-apocalyptic world where people are desperately trying to stay alive. Even the heroes are forced to do things we might find morally reprehensible. However, the sobering reality is that these fictional movies aren't fiction for much of the world. Until the Industrial Revolution, man was always on the verge of starvation. There are also countless people in world today forced to make lose lose choices. Whether it's the Dark Ages, Darfur, or hurricane battered New Orleans, it seems our view of right and wrong become more liberal during hard times. The more desperate, the moral gray the lines become.

I assumed this was exclusively a bad thing, that is until I read this post about some governmental changes during the Great Recession. I've posted about the positives of this recession before, but didn't mention these. The federal government recently overturned a ban on internet gambling. California, marijuana is becoming increasingly legal and taxed. There are even some local airports loosening the alcohol restrictions in airports to make money. Maybe just the right amount of hardship can shift cultural norms closer to my preference.

Culture of the Industrial Revolution

A while back I posted Tyler Cowen's answer to my question about why the Industrial Revolution happened when it did. Although his list is exhaustive, he didn't mention this one:

the wide adoption of Bourgeois values was critical. By that, she means that once innovators and capitalists were looked up to or were considered gentlemen, an economic transformation towards industrialization could happen.

Not surprisingly, there is a correlation between the cultural appreciation for entrepreneurs and past economic growth. Now, what does the recent backlash against CEO's mean for future growth?

Economic View of Past, Present, and Future

In a 25 minute lecture to the Federal Reserve, economist Steve Landsburg lays out a great description of life before and after the Industrial Revolution. This was too good to just put in a links list and a a must watch if you truly understand the world you live in. It's followed by a worthwhile Q & A session.

Rationally Poorer

I teach and my wife is a social worker. Those aren't very high paying jobs. In a ranking of the lowest paid jobs with a college degree, social worker is #1, elementary education is #2 and general education is #7. Who would have guessed there would be a capitalist with so little capital? Before you pity me, I'll explain why our choice of college degrees were incredibly rational. I've already posted on how Americans in 2010 are richer than any civilization ever. I've also mentioned how that wealth has increased faster than our life expectancy, giving us more money, but less time to spend it. And I discussed that wealth has a diminishing positive impact on happiness, especially after about $40,000. And even though my wife and I make less than the average person in the US, we have a very clear plan for children, college payments, and retirement.

We chose low paying jobs not so we could maximize our income, but our goals. Though I am currently working very hard to create the intellectual property needed in the classroom, my workload will decrease (and has decreased) as I gain more experience. My hope is that by the time I have children, I will actually be working less than the average American (currently 8.8 hours a day). I currently have a spring break, a Christmas break, two months off in the summer, and school is over before 3 o'clock. In the future I hope to take advantage of this extra time and spend it with my lovely wife (and future kids), performing improv, and becoming more relationally responsible for my community. I am free riding off the Industrial Revolution and the hard work of the generations since. Hopefully I'm heeding the Biblical warnings against personal wealth while enjoying the comfort that has been produced by society as a whole. This helps to explain my simultaneous feeling of sympathy and appreciation for those entrepreneurs currently working hard to create more wealth for future generations. Being productive is important, but it's not solely measured by personal income or national production.

Timing of the Industrial Revolution

Tyler Cowen recently did a request for requests. I asked him this:

Why did it take so long for humans to have the Industrial Revolution?

He was gracious enough to give a thorough answer:

That's a reader request from the especially loyal Harrison Brookie. First, you might wish to go back and read the MR reviews and debates of Greg Clark's Farewell to Alms,

More generally, extended periods of economic growth require that technologies of defense outweigh technologies of predation. They may also require that the successful defender, at the same time, has good enough technology to predate someone else and accumulate a sizable surplus. Parts of Europe took a good deal from the New World and this may have mattered a good deal.

Building a strong enough state to protect markets from other states is very hard to do; at the same time the built state has to avoid crushing those markets itself. That's a very delicate balance. China had wonderful technology for its time and was the richest part of the world for centuries but never succeeded in this endeavor, not for long at least.

England was fortunate to be an island. Starting in the early seventeenth century, England had many decades of ongoing, steady growth. Later, coal and the steam engine kicked in at just the right time. English political institutions were "good enough" as well and steadily improving, for the most part.

Christianity was important for transmitting an ideology of individual rights and natural law. As McCloskey and Mokyr stress, the Industrial Revolution was in part about ideas.

There are numerous other factors, but putting those ones together -- and no others -- already makes an Industrial Revolution very difficult to achieve. It did happen, it probably would have happened somewhere, sooner or later, but its occurrence was by no means easy to achieve. The Greeks had steam engines, proto-computers, and brilliant philosophers and writers, but still they did not come close to a breakthrough.

One question is how long the Roman Empire would have had to last to generate an Industrial Revolution and don't mention the Eastern Empire smartypants.

If you are asking why the Industrial Revolution did not occur in the Mesozoic age, or other earlier times, genetic factors play a role as well.

I tell my high school students that the Industrial Revolution is second only to learning to farm when thinking about human history. If that's true, then this answer is important. If I'm understanding Tyler correctly, it took humans a while to figure out how to make a government strong enough to defend property rights (especially from the outside), but weak enough to allow the market to work. I also agree that religion, perhaps in the form of the Protestant Reformation was an important step in understanding human liberty. That also helps explain why England as an island was more likely to begin this revolution.

Other interesting suggestions from the comments of Tyler's post are the importance of the printing press in saving and spreading ideas and how cheap manual labor in the form of slavery may have delayed it (I don't buy the second one).

Answering My Own Questions, Second Edition

Here's Part I and here are some more interesting questions with interesting answers:

1) What is the total number of humans that have ever lived?

Best estimates are around 106 billion people. Because the current population is so large in comparison to the past (thanks Industrial Revolution), that's over 5% of humans ever.

2) How many calories do you use when thinking hard?

According the Popular Science, your brain burns 1.5 calories a minute while doing a crossword puzzle. Not bad when you consider walking burns 4 calories a minute. Should I have added weight loss to a reasons to blog?

3) What's the most famous spin-off television show?

Most found answer was Frasier. But what about King of the Hill and apparently The Simpsons?

4) Do the losers on Jeopardy get to keep the money they win?

No, but they do get small consolation prizes. So why don't more people bet it all at the end?

5) What percentage of people have had premarital sex?

According to a survey of women for the last 30 years, 95 percent had done so by age 44. Wow.

Here's one I couldn't find the answer to:

Why do TV shows tell us who closed captioning is "brought to you by"?

My best guess is because businesses want to look good by supporting it. Got a better idea?

Work Comes Back Home

Friend, fellow improviser, and the World's Best Presenter two years running, Jeff Brenman, recently posted another interesting slide show. It's about the increasing trend of working from home. Thanks to increases in communication technology, jobs that were created only a decade ago, are already be homesourced. However, the title of the slide show, The Future of Work, misrepresents world history. Working from home isn't the future, it's the past. Before the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800's almost all people worked on the family farm. It wasn't until the birth of factories that men left the home to work. Perhaps the last two centuries may be the exception to the long term trend of working from the home. As someone that commutes a lot, I look forward to that.

Importance of the Economy on Human Life

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the successive end to the Cold War, I'd like to make a brief comparison on the impact communism and capitalism have had on human life. According to the Black Box of Communism, direct governmental take over of a national economies has resulted in 100 million deaths. That is equal to the number of dead from World War I and World War II combined. However, the impact of capitalism is not one of destruction, but of creation. The emergence of the free market, which in turn allowed for the Industrial Revolution, brought about the largest increase in prosperity ever seen in human history. The population of the world had been relatively constant, at about half a billion, until this increasing wealth has brought another 6 billion people into the world. I not only thank unhindered human industry for more life, but also for a better life.

Response to an Email

First, please accept my apologies for not having attended the last several meetings! I am – unfortunately – so much opposed to globalization and cannot see any benefit in it for the Western World, economically, politically as well as militarily, that I cannot in good conscience support this "pro globalization" conference! It is my firm conviction that globalization in its present form is the beginning of the end of Western civilization. If we do not oppose this scheme, we will either all speak Chinese or will have to pray to Allah within 50 years. I do hope you understand my dilemma! I am sorry that I did not have the guts to express my feelings earlier on!

-Concerned Citizen

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Dear CC,

I am sad to hear that you will not be supporting the upcoming conference, but I wanted to take this chance to explain to you why we are organizing such an event.

You stated that you are very opposed to globalization, but I wonder if we are talking about the same thing. The idea covers such a broad and vague issue, that sometimes the world itself becomes vague. This conference will be discussing the many benefits of globalization, but if we don't clarify the word, then we cannot clarify the world. Globalization, as we define it, is the cultural and economic integration of nations around the world. It is the ease of communication, the opening of trade, and the flow of culture around the world. Put simply, it is the process of shrinking the globe.

Now that you understand what we are organizing, let me explain why we have a positive point of view of the subject. From an economic viewpoint, globalization has radically and unambiguously increased the wealth of nations around the world. Countries that embraced this idea of the free global market (South Korea, Switzerland and the United States to name a few) are the richest and most prosperous nations. Those that have rejected global trade (North Korea, Iran and formally China) are the poorest and most destitute nations. This is not happenstance, but instead a direct result of their international cooperation.

Another point you mentioned was the lack of political benefit to the West. This comment was confusing to me because of what I see and define as the West. What characteristics differentiate this region from others around the world? Globalization is a western idea. Pioneered by Great Britain and championed by the United States, the process of globalization defines western civilization. From the industrial revolution to the age of the internet, western nations have always been at the forefront of connecting the world. The results of this process has improved not hindered, politics. Globalization partners with freedom and democracy around the world. Wealthy people demand and get individual liberty.

Your final worry was that globalization may come at an expense to our military might. This is again opposite of reality. Historically, democracies rarely, if ever, go to war each other. If globalization is a path to democracy, then it must also be a path to peace. Also, nations whose markets are interwoven together have no incentive to use military action against the other. It would only serve to disrupt the economies of both nations.

Finally, I like to respond to your fear of Chinese, Islamic other foreign influences. Like I stated above, the spread of globalization has resulted in more, not less western influence. For good or bad, we have seen the English language and the Christian religion spread around the world. Increased global competition between goods and services are good for consumers and the same is true for other kinds of competition. Rises in competition between cultures, languages and even governments will result in the failure of the bad and the success of the good. Harmful cultural norms will be weeded out by an increase in choices. The resulting free flow of information and ideas will even increase the quality of governments around the world. As people are given the opportunity to move elsewhere, governments must work harder and better to keep their populace.

I hope that this lengthy response has helped you to understand our support of the global integration. That globalization does not mark the end, but instead the spread of western ideas (the good ones at least). In future feel free to speak with me personally so that we can involve you in our future support of globalization.

Thanks,

Harrison Brookie

*this was an assignment for ECON 621: Globalization