53 Comments
Jun 12, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Thanks for the review, ill have to add this ti my list. Since my background is more on the history/political side, I couldn't help but notice the "long 1860s" (1858 to 1872) also witnessed a series of social/political upheavals that set the stage Delong's "long 20th":

-Taiping & fatal crippling of Qing.

-"Meiji restoraton"

-US Civil War & emancipation

-formation of the British Raj (more of a capstone than a revolution)

-German & Italian unification, Franco-Prussian war

-Emancipation of Russian serfs

I don't have a strong causal theory or am even sure there is a connection, just interesting to me.

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Nice piece. One problem is that some of the current technology also aims to capture and enlarge our worst animal behaviors, such as tribalism.

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

“ DeLong has a frankly superhuman ability to remember and regurgitate endless fascinating little anecdotes and facts.” Boy, is that true. I’ve rarely come away even from any tweet of his without marveling at the erudition.

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Jun 12, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

It seems like this somewhat rhymes with Ezra's latest: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opinion/climate-change-should-you-have-kids.html

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Jun 12, 2022·edited Jun 12, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Did Brad's editor allow him to use þ?

And actual question, is the 20th century over everywhere in the world since the wealthiest nations are in a new era? Still lots of industrialization to do and things to figure out as it happens, though the most powerful nations aren't influencing them in the same way.

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Thanks for the review. I'm really looking forward to Brad's book. I have had the privilege of reading bits and pieces on his blog. If I were an early career professional, I think modeling yourself on him professionally would be San excellent strategy. But, hey, you know that already.

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But this book, you won’t be disappointed

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Looks like it could be an interesting read. I think that if anything, the positive aspects of humanity's condition in 2015 and since have actually been understated. Not only do more people live on more than a $1 a day in 2015 than did in 1800 but also a $1 can buy you more in goods and services than was possible in 1800 (if we use the 2011 dollar as the the benchmark).

Even if you are desperately poor today, you still have the chance to access things like clean water, sewage disposal, public transport, electrified infrastructure, basic medications, etc... which you could never have hoped to have accessed in 1800 (partly because some of these innovations simply did not exist).

Famine is largely an affliction relegated to war zones. Farm work is much more mechanized than in the past as is most forms of manual labor. The global average for years of schooling has risen to approximately 8 years. The amount of information a person can access for free is ridiculous.

All of this converges to the conclusion that if you had to be poor, it is better to be poor today than in 1800.

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"He attributes this acceleration to three key innovations: the industrial research lab, the modern corporation, and steamship-driven globalization."

Not cheap fossil-fuel energy, with an unfortunate greenhouse gas externality?

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Here is something that you don't address, so I am guessing that DeLong may not either: All of this wealth-creating activity begins around 1870 and according to climate science around 1880 is when we begin to see the first episodes of enhanced greenhouse gases that are now threatening everything beneficial from this activity. Our climate destruction may wipeout all of this progress or perhaps really set-off global conflict over diminishing resources. For too long economics just labelled this "negative externalities," without political economy driving us to solve this problem.

So while population growth may not set us back to Malthusian scarcity, making our planet increasingly uninhabitable certainly will. We could conceivably develop technologies to "reset" our greenhouse gas levels by neutralizing the accumulated CO2 and methane we have created but absent that...

And who will do this? Not much profit in it, just survival.

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"humans are still deeply unsatisfied with their society, and will doubtless try to create new big political-economic ideas as a result. If history is any guide, this path will be fraught with danger."

Half the population living paycheck to paycheck in the US, the very definition of chronic financial distress , with falling average life expectancy. Comfortable conservatives don';t want to rock the boat, of course... a pity AGW climate change might not be real ; if it is, your market neoliberalism will be dead in the water, in favor of a mostly planned economy. .

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Great piece Noah. Didn't get this point: "final because lower fertility rates will make the human race sustainable even if technological progress peters out)" - can you explain please?

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Sep 3, 2022·edited Sep 3, 2022

This review briefly mentions Robert Gordon's "The Rise and Fall of American Growth." Like Delong, Gordorn also spots 1870 as a key year when progress accelerated. However Gordon argues that progress between 1940 and 2010 has been less than between 1870 and 1940. He makes some good points. And with global warming and a population that will reach 8 billion by year's end, it's quite likey the 20th century will be seen as a by gone golden age by future generations.

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Jun 17, 2022·edited Jun 17, 2022

1870 to 2010 is near a century and a half. Would his thesis fail if he didn't include an extra 40 years. What is with 1870 as the starting point. Anything significant on ths year?

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Stop that sentence!

"But although DeLong is an economic historian, but Slouching Toward Utopia is only partly an economic history book. " (Drop two "but"s.) Noahpinion takes after DeLong's Grasping Reality in one respect -- an apparent urge for quantity over quality. I've already got too much to read (which makes me in no hurry to subscribe to any Substacks). I'm a good proofreader, but I don't think I have time for DeLong or Smith, let alone both. I'd be willing to try, however.

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I pre-ordered a copy a while ago and am very much looking forward to reading it, but I do have to confess that I find Noah's summary much more succinct and clear than Brad's recent attempts at his own "elevator pitch" summaries.

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