The Last 100 Years

Economist Brad DeLong takes a look at what the world looked like in 1900 compared to how it looks today. This a great overview of the benefits of economic development. Read his first and second post on the topic. Here's an excerpt from the first:

First, that the world at the start of the twentieth century–even the most advanced economies at the start of the twentieth century–were very, very poor relative to how they would be at the century’s end. But that was about to change.

Second, that the spread of ploughs that pulled themselves and looms that wove by themselves was about to end the pre-industrial era, and promise to make the world amazingly rich by all previous standards.

Third, that the ten thousand years in which people had lived largely in small groups in villages was about to end: people were starting to live in large groups in cities.

Fourth, that in the late nineteenth century transportation costs had finally fallen low enough and transport speeds had become high enough to make mass intercontinental shipment of goods and people possible: a global economy and, because of telegraph and all the rest, a global polity too. This fall in transportation costs had for the first time created the possibility of a global economy–an economy in which movements of people and goods across oceans and between continents were central to how the economy worked, rather than mere precious and luxury froth on the surface of a deep ocean.

Fifth, that this global economy was on its way to becoming a global market. The era in which goods were either consumed at home, consumed by you relatives, traded among your neighbors, or offered up to keep the thugs with spears or the thugs with quills from killing you was also coming to an end. Supply and demand would rule--which does not mean that thugs would not use force to manipulate supply and demand.

Sixth, that the fall in transport costs and rise in transport speeds had come about when the military-force gap between the North Atlantic and the rest of the world was at its maximum--which meant imperialism, formal or informal, and colonialism, open or masked.

Seventh, that the people were standing up politically. In proportion as populations became urbanized and as rural populations became commercialzed and plugged into the global communications network, politics became democratized: rulers found themselves depending in fact as well as in noble flights of fancy on the consent of the governed--a consent that could be extracted for a while at gunpoint or gramophonepoint.

This is how the world of my great-great grandparents was starting to transition into mine.

(HT Russ Roberts)