Mark Koyama: uncertainty

Transcript context

…What was the most undervalued factor behind the British Industrial Revolution? There’s plenty of theories. You could cite 20 or 30 factors. Maybe they all play a role. But what’s being neglected? Okay, let’s just think about the ones we should not neglect. You have natural resources. You have coal. You have this idea of high-wage economy associated with Bob Allen, which now seems to be under pressure. You have stories about imperialism and trade. I think people understand those. I don’t know if it’s underrated, but perhaps this cohesive nation-state story is part of it. One noticeable thing about the English Industrial Revolution is it doesn’t occur in a political center. It occurs in the periphery, in Manchester, Yorkshire, Birmingham, Derbyshire. If we look at economic miracles or effervescences, I don’t know how many of them arise in the capital region, in the political center, and how many arise in peripheral regions. Maybe more than I think. But something about English society that allows a bunch of entrepreneurs to basically kick-start this revolution far away from what’s going on in London seems to be quite important to me. And it takes many years of experimentation, that these industrialists are self-funding many of these developments. London has a sophisticated banking sector, but the London bankers are not financing the Industrial Revolution. They’re being financed out of savings. So it does take a long while to get going. And it’s being neglected. Not many people are talking about it in the 1750s, 1760s, 1770s. Famously, Adam Smith doesn’t really talk much about what’s happening in terms of industrialization at the time he’s writing. At least since Cromwell, England has been relatively tolerant toward the Jews, compared to much of Europe. And if you’re trying to build out a broader theory, compare some amount of English or British tolerance. But then compare that to how the Irish are treated, or how the colonies or India is treated. Is there a unified approach that ties this all together? Or are the British just schizophrenic in some way, with respect to tolerance?…

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