Tyler Cowen

If you want to talk about 17th century England, so they have the scientific revolution.

You have the rise of England as a true global power.

Navy becomes much more important.

The Atlantic trade route, because of the New World, becomes much more important.

Places like the Middle East, India, China, that were earlier, you know, Persia had major roles.

They're crumbling partially for reasons of their own, and that's going to help the relative power of the more advanced European nations.

England has a lot of competition from the Dutch Republic, France, happening at the same time that for the first time in human history that I know of,

We have sustained economic growth, according to Greg Clark, starting in the 1620s, of about 1% a year.

And that is compounding again.

Slow numbers, but compounding.

And England is the place that gets the compounding at 1%, starting in the 1620s.

And somehow they go crazy, civil war, kill the king, all these radical ideas.

Libertarianism comes out of that, which I really like.

John Milton, John Locke.

Also this brutal conquest of the new world, like very good and very bad coming together, and I think it should be seen as these set of processes where very good and very bad come together, and we might be in for a dose of that again now, soon.

I mean, you try at the margin to nudge toward the better set of things, but it's possible that all the technical advances that recently have been unleashed, now that the great stagnation is over, which of course include AI, will mean another crazy period.

It's quite possible.

I think the chance of that is reasonably high.

most underrated cult, Progress Studies?

That's right, I was at an EA meeting and I said, you know, hey everyone, this is as good as it gets.