Fixing the roads: How tolls saved Britain from pothole hell in the Industrial Revolution

Food for thought! How about going back to private roads and tolls?

"The ‘turnpike’ toll road system deserves far more credit for improving roads in eighteenth-century England and Wales, a new study argues. Analysis of nearly 100 travellers’ diaries reveals that turnpiking improved comfort and reduced danger on the roads, as well as speeding up wheeled vehicle journeys. ..."

Fixing the roads "How tolls saved Britain from pothole hell in the Industrial Revolution"

History books are wrong about British industrialization. It started perhaps as early as 1550

Amazing stuff! 

The invention of the steam engine was rather a consequence and an add on.

Eternal lessons of:

• Classical liberalism
• Limited, and small government
• Division of labor
• Powerful minority groups exploit the majority for their own gain

And when did the industrial revolution start in China? Much earlier then the British one!

"... They went through 160 million records on the website including parish registers, census data, probate records, and loads of other information related to the British labor force right from the beginning of the Elizabeth era to the onset of World War I. They were looking for demographic signs of industrialization. ...

According to the study, the 17th century witnessed a dramatic shift in the labor market. While a large number of people in Britain were leaving agricultural work, there was a rise in small-scale manufacturing activities.

For instance, the total number of male agricultural workers dropped from 64% to 42% between 1600 and 1740. The number of male workers in goods manufacturing jumped from 28% to 42% during the same period.

The study authors suggest that it is likely that this industrialization may have started earlier, perhaps around 1550. However, they currently don’t have hard evidence for the second half of the sixteenth century.  ..."

"Britain was already well on its way to an industrialised economy under the reign of the Stuarts in the 17th century – over 100 years before textbooks mark the start of the Industrial Revolution – according to the most detailed occupational history of a nation ever constructed. ...

“However, the English economy of the time was more liberal, with fewer tariffs and restrictions, unlike on the continent.”

Moving goods within many European countries was subject to tolls from land barons, so markets were often very local. In England there are few records of such levies after the medieval era.     

... trade guilds also had more power in other nations. For example, textile production was prohibited in the countryside around the Dutch city of Leiden, and in Sweden no shops were permitted in rural areas within a ten-mile radius of a town until the 19th century.

Yet in the England of 1700, half of all manufacturing employment was in the countryside. “In addition to village artisans, there were networks of weavers in rural areas who would work for merchants that supplied wool and sold the finished articles,” ...

“We think labour force participation for adult women was somewhere between 60-80% of in 1760, and back down to 43% by 1851,” ... “It didn’t return to those mid-18th century levels until the 1980s.”  ..."

History books are wrong about British industrialization. It started way earlier The British Industrial Revolution didn't begin in the 1760s, it had started way back in the 1600s but even historians didn't know about it.

Britain began industrializing in the 17th century – over a 100 years earlier than history books claim (original news source)

Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Genius of the Industrial Revolution

Recommendable!

Debunking The Lasting Myth Of Poverty In The Early Industrial Revolution

Posted: 9/18/2019

I have had serious doubts for many years regarding the still predominant narrative about the severe poverty and worker exploitation during the early phase of the Industrial Revolution as it happened in Great Britain. Charles Dickens famous stories and Karl Marx and his sugar daddy Friedrich Engels stoked the narrative early on.

“Were there no poor people before that? (There were, obviously.) There are a number of possible answers – an increase in the concentration of poverty with growing urbanization and industrialization, which made poverty more visible; the rising standard of living, which made poverty seem less “normal”; or ... a more visible contrast between wealthy owners and poorer workers” (S1; emphasis added)

I may add:

1. Yes, perhaps the contrast between wealthy owners and poor workers became more visible. Perhaps, there were suddenly many more affluent and wealthy citizens around, while in previous centuries wealth was more invisible and highly concentrated with the nobility and upper echelons of clergy. 
2. Many of the nouveau rich were self made and came from humble beginnings
3. I would bet there were relatively fewer poor people during this time than in the centuries before if you adjust e.g. for population growth
4. Above all, poverty is such a strong relative phenomenon depending on time, location, culture and much more. E.g. a person in Western countries, who is in our time considered to be poor, would have been seen as a well off person just a few decades ago. Like beauty, poverty is to some extent more in the eye of the beholder. Greed and envy do the rest!

Sources (S):

1. Charles Dickens, poverty, and emotional arguments (Acton Institute, 9/13/19)

Germany’s Obsession With Jeremy Rifkin

An Interview With Rifkin

Featured By The German Foreign Ministry

On 6/22/2012, I received in my e-mail the weekly edition of “The Week In Germany”. This is an e-mail newsletter published by the German Federal Ministry headed by the hapless liberal democratic Guido Westerwelle.

The headline for this interview was “Germany is clearly ahead”.

Rifkin Is Full Of Praise For Germany

Of course, for the wrong reasons. In a separate blog, I have critiqued this gentleman and his Third Industrial Revolution. In my frank opinion, Mr. Rifkin is more like a modern charlatan.

In his first answer, Mr. Rifkin proudly tells the world that he discussed his Third Industrial Revolution with German Chancellor Merkel. How much was Chancellor Merkel actually influenced by him?

Why Is Germany Ahead According To Rifkin

Here is his outline of the future from this interview: “… We should stop any further investment in the old infrastructure, and instead develop a new one. … Fit out public and private buildings with combined heat and power units and solar panels! Convert street lighting to energy-saving LED lamps! The cost savings can be used to fund the investments. …Why shouldn’t German companies also be leaders in developing the electrical vehicles of the future?” And of course, he talked briefly about his “identified five pillars”.

Is he not a flatterer? German companies being leaders in the development of the electrical vehicles of the future?

To put it sarcastically and hyperbolically, he thinks a new infrastructure can be paid for by installing (my I add expensive) LED lamps? Who is he fooling?

Big Government: Third Industrial Revolution

Trigger For This Blog

Today, I read the weekly newsletter put out by the German government called “The Week In Germany”. In the introduction to this newsletter it reads “A Third Industrial Revolution - a concept outlined by the American economist, writer and political advisor Jeremy Rifkin and endorsed in 2007 by the European Parliament - is well underway in Germany”. What is well under way?

The Book By The Same Name

Forgive my ignorance, I have never really heard of this economist Jeremy Rifkin or his book by the title “The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World” published in 2011. I also freely admit that I have not yet read the book. The table of content is very coarse and not helpful. The index of this book is also peculiar, basically a list of names.

An excerpt from his book’s website:

“[Mr. Rifkin] asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories, and sharing it with each other in an "energy internet," just like we now create and share information online.

Rifkin describes how the five-pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses and millions of jobs, and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships, from hierarchical to cpower, that will impact the way we conduct business, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life.” What a wonderful world! How do we get to this stage of Rifkin’s bliss? By government force only, because it is utopian.

Why Third Industrial Revolution? The era we are living in is anything but a continuation of the more than 200 year old Industrial Revolution. The information and communication revolution we are in will even pale Gutenberg’s printing press. The exponential, accelerating growth of human progress in so many areas is unprecedented. Thus, the premises of this book are obviously in question.

According to Wikipedia his The Third Industrial Revolution is based upon 5 Pillars:

1. Shifting to Renewable Energy

2. Converting Buildings into Power Plants

3. Hydrogen and Other Energy Storage Technology

4. Smart Grid Technology

5. Plug in, Electric, Hybrid, and Fuel Cell based Transportation

His 5 Pillars seem to be to be extremely narrow in scope undeserving of such a grandiose label like Industrial Revolution. Yes, the supply of energy is very important, but so are other things. As any good economist knows there are always competing uses of resources etc.

Judging from the table of content of his book titled “Entropy – A New World View” it appears that Mr. Rifkin classifies nuclear fusion as a nonrenewable form of energy. This assertion was new to me.

His single-minded focus on renewable energy is disturbing. Whether highly decentralized production of energy is a panacea as he puts it remains to be seen. Who knows which forms of energy will serve humans and nature best in the years ahead? Only god knows and humans have to find out by trial and error liberated from government control.

About Jeremy Rifkin

An excerpt about him from his foundation’s website (The Foundation On Economic Trends):

“Mr. Rifkin is the principle architect of the European Union's Third Industrial Revolution long-term economic sustainability plan to address the triple challenge of the global economic crisis, energy security, and climate change.   … Jeremy Rifkin has been an advisor to the European Union for the past decade. [he] advised the government of Spain during its presidency of the European Union …. also served as an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Jose Socrates of Portugal, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain”. Well with advisors like this one should not be surprised about the malaise of the Euro zone. Or does this reflect more on the quality of European, elected leaders?

By glancing at his Wikipedia entry and the about him on his foundation’s website, I suspect he is what Germans refer to as a Weltverbesserer (to my limited knowledge, there is no equivalent English translation, perhaps starry-eyed idealist, do-gooder) and he is a leftist academic. Like many other leftist academics he seems to be prone to shallow thinking. Beware of Weltverbesserer! Humanity has suffered great losses due to such people.

From his bio, I also gather he is a fervent environmentalist, thus his enmity to economics a la Adam Smith is no surprise.

He is the man of the “European Dream” (another of his books), while the American Dream is languishing. “Europeans, by contrast, emphasize cooperation and consensus over go-it-alone approaches to foreign policy.” Has he overlooked that the EU has disarmed to a point of being a cuddly paper tiger.

His ideology seems to be derived from the first and second law of Thermodynamics, which he interprets in a particular way to suit his purposes. Who wants argue with the laws of nature? Adam Smith, according to him, is passé because Adam did not understand these two laws. To quote from an article by him published in the British The Guardian on November 3, 2011 “The reason most economists just don't get it is that they fail to understand that all economic activity is borrowing against nature's energy and material reserves.” Ah, but a genius like Rifkin gets it! Karl Popper would call him a proponent of historicism.

Socialism is dead, long live Socialism

A play on “Le roi es mort, vive le roi”. Central planning is still alive and kicking. Power and control for those who pretend to know what is best for the rest of us.

Is it not an irony of history that the European Union adopted Rifkin’s Third Industrial Revolution? The fall of the Iron Curtain is only a little more than two decades old. I also bet that Chancellor Merkel is beholden to Rifkin’s ideas. Ms. Merkel grew up and lived in the former GDR, while central planning was applied. She is the daughter of a pastor and a PhD in physical chemistry. However, her political approach is more akin to a politburo member.

Or in Mr. Rifkin’s own words found in an interview with the Huffington Post dated 9/26/2011:

“Question: Other parts of the globe, particularly Europe, appear to grasp the trends and solutions you suggest in your book. Why are Americans lagging in this regard?

Rifkin: One of the reasons an overarching new economic game plan has never been rolled out is not just because we need to cut back public spending and reduce government deficits, but because the administration is missing, to quote former president George W. Bush, the "vision thing." … What Obama is lacking is a narrative. … If President Obama clearly understood the underlying dynamics of the five-pillar infrastructure of the next great industrial revolution and how the parts connect, he might have been able to sell the American public on a comprehensive economic plan for the country’s future.” (my emphasis). If the poor President of the USA only understood the narrative the master planner bemoans.