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I assumed that there was a standard answer to this and that Rosenberg didn't include it as a poetic device. When I think from a historical point of view, I tend to reach for technological answers (humans got more efficient with using energy?) but the implication here is that a move towards freedom predates and potentially is responsible for the burst of creativity that leads to such improvements.
Looking forward to the quote.
There are a couple of handful candidate answers, yes, but this is the one I find most persuasive:
the implication here is that a move towards freedom predates and potentially is responsible for the burst of creativity that leads to such improvements.
An important piece of the puzzle is that we've had rises and falls in economic well-being (think: sustained growth in per-capita GDP) in enough different times and geographies that most other explanations fall away: what was different about England in the 1600-1700s?
I might argue that it was the unparalleled access to natural resources: the european colonial empires are rising and have access to whole continents-worth of resources and the ability to move the resources around.
Or do you suggest that it was common law? Blackstone publishes his big ol' compendium of common law in the middle of the 1700s.
the nat resources -- the most persuasive of which in the IR is coal -- is definitely a regularly invoked candidate... but it's not from the empires (it's home-grown), and many other civilizations (e.g., Yangtzee delta in China) had remarkably refined energy processes for coal. Still, no dice.
Stupidly well-written. Thanks!
This is the question of economic history. Will dig up a fantastic quote for you in a while (fr Gregory Clark's book).
Stunning <3