[11:05 PM] cassander: the song dynasty had a mini-industrial revolution! [11:05 PM] marshwiggle: I could talk for a while about it. [11:06 PM] marshwiggle: But I'm not sure we really understand the impacts on the Chinese economy [11:06 PM] cassander: economic effects prior to 1600 or so are pretty easy (edited) [11:06 PM] cassander: nothing really matters [11:07 PM] cassander: 80% of human labor goes into agriculture [11:08 PM] cassander: there are a handful of places that manage to break out of that pattern, most of which are tiny mercantile republics [11:09 PM] cassander: a few larger areas manage to achieve enough political stability to rise a little out of the mire, but never for long [11:09 PM] cassander: and thus it remains until the dutch invent capitalism and start to feed themselves from baltic grain and herring they pay for with money instead of food they made themselves (edited) [11:13 PM] Darkside007: Cass more or less has it right [11:16 PM] marshwiggle: That's not all wrong, but there's all kinds of impacts even on agriculture. [11:17 PM] marshwiggle: Especially agriculture not for local consumption [11:17 PM] cassander: it's overwhelmingly for local consumption though, because transport costs are so high [11:18 PM] marshwiggle: In Europe, there's well documented seriously nontrivial impacts of tech on the economy. [11:19 PM] marshwiggle: In China, I'm not sure how much work has been done that hasn't been tainted by marxist analysis, or even how much work has been done at all. @marshwiggle In Europe, there's well documented seriously nontrivial impacts of tech on the economy. [11:19 PM] cassander: such as? [11:19 PM] marshwiggle: Just changing the way a horse gets harnessed. Huge impact on agriculture [11:19 PM] cassander: yeah [11:20 PM] marshwiggle: Transport techs. Metalworking techs. [11:20 PM] cassander: that does happen, but the Malthusian logic kicks in, and the result is a higher population at a pretty similar standard of living [11:20 PM] cassander: and the pace of change is glacial [11:21 PM] cassander: like, you see the center of gravity of european population drift north [11:22 PM] marshwiggle: I agree that often tech resulted in more population density [11:22 PM] cassander: and that has important geopolitical effects [11:22 PM] marshwiggle: That's still an impact on the economy, from 1st and 2nd order effects of population density [11:23 PM] marshwiggle: Population sure has an impact on taxes, military, yeah [11:23 PM] cassander: and things like there start being more germans than italians