The Industrial Revolution made technology the engine of economic growth (Landes 1969, Mokyr 1990). Before 1750, per capita income in the world doubled every 6,000 years. Since then, it has doubled every 50 years (DeLong 1999). This acceleration was in large part the consequence of applying machinery in production, which allowed us to produce more with fewer people (Frey 2019). Seen in this light, the current automation hysteria is hard to understand. Future generations could make an extraordinary leap forward from the Industrial Revolution’s ‘great enrichment’. The industrialisation process itself, however, was a different matter. The Luddites, who rioted […]
Full Post at voxeu.org