Welcome to my weekly newsletter, Age of Invention, on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation. You can subscribe here: The other day, economic historian Tim Leunig tagged me into a comment on twitter with the line “intellectually I think the biggest change since settled agriculture was the idea that most people could live in cities and not produce food”. What’s interesting about that, I think, is the idea that this was not just an economic change, but an intellectual one. In fact, I’ve been increasingly noticing a sort of ideology, if one can call it that, which seemingly took hold in Britain in the late sixteenth century and then became increasingly influential. It was not the sort of ideology that manifested itself in elections, or even in factions, but it was certainly there. It had both vocal adherents and strenuous opponents, the adherents pushing particular policies and justifying them with reference to a common intellectual tradition. Indeed, I can think of many political and economic commentators who are its adherents today, whether or not they explicitly identify as such.
Had a similar, but hazy notion at the back of my mind. Thanks for giving it a name! Question is, can it last? Agglomerationism's externalities seem to be doing a pretty good job of undermining its conditions of possibility. (May be of interest: https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/)
Had a similar, but hazy notion at the back of my mind. Thanks for giving it a name! Question is, can it last? Agglomerationism's externalities seem to be doing a pretty good job of undermining its conditions of possibility. (May be of interest: https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/the-future-is-rural/)