Marginal Revolution https://marginalrevolution.com/ Small Steps Toward A Much Better World Sun, 12 Jul 2026 22:01:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/cropped-MR-logo-thumbnail-32x32.png Marginal REVOLUTION https://marginalrevolution.com/ 32 32 42693868 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/my-talk-at-deepmind-2.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-talk-at-deepmind-2 My talk at DeepMind https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960227159/0/marginalrevolution~My-talk-at-DeepMind.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/my-talk-at-deepmind-2.html#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:58:41 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93385 Here is a transcript of my remarks, anything from the audience (Q&A with comments) has been cut out.  Excerpt: The problem will not be how does my life get meaning, but how do I deal with all the meaning my life will have? A kind of exhaustion. And this comes up in the labor supply […]

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]]> Here is a transcript of my remarks, anything from the audience (Q&A with comments) has been cut out.  Excerpt:

The problem will not be how does my life get meaning, but how do I deal with all the meaning my life will have? A kind of exhaustion. And this comes up in the labor supply debates. So again, there’s one point of view like, oh, there’s AGI, there’s going to be mass unemployment. The more moderate, reasonable point of view is not that there’s mass unemployment. Many jobs still require humans. There’s comparative advantage. But total leisure time will go up. I think that’s likely the correct view, but across what time horizon?

If you think about your lives today, like I’m much busier and I’m busier because of AI. I’m working much harder. I don’t have to do that. But the point is my relative wage gradient for working harder today, it’s really quite extreme. And if I were, say, an 18 year old, I would feel I really had to work hard not to fall behind. There’s this new thing coming to the world. All sorts of people will be jumping on it. If I only start looking at it when I’m age 23, I’m behind by X number of years. So I would truly be working hard. At age 64, I don’t have to feel I need to work that hard. I can always just say if I choose to, well, I’m going to run out the clock, as they say, just kind of step back and wait until I die and I’ll be fine. I’m not going to do that.

Every time a new model comes out, I’m still excited. I used to be very excited. But they come out more and more frequently. And now I look at my calendar and I’m like, uh-oh, could you all wait a week, please? Because you want to be ready. You want to play around with it. You want to test it out. You want to talk about it with your friends. It’s a slight bit of an exhaustion. And again, for you all working here, you have access to models that haven’t come out yet or maybe will never come out. But all the time, you have fresh stimuli. And I hope, I think you must all be drenched in meaning. And you’re like, oh, my goodness, someone else tells me, look at this new model. What do I do with that?

So I think sometimes, like, when will the time come when the leisure dividend from AI arrives? No one is forcing you to work harder. But there’s a substitution effect from the higher implicit wage on your future earnings that if you work harder now, it will have a payoff. You’ll at least avoid being behind.

Interesting throughout, definitely recommended.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/my-talk-at-deepmind-2.html/feed 1 93385 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/sunday-assorted-links-575.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sunday-assorted-links-575 Sunday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960186656/0/marginalrevolution~Sunday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/sunday-assorted-links-575.html#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:21:15 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93374 1. NYT overview of Foucault. 2. Solar mirrors to turn night into day? (NYT) 3. How does the butterfly retain the memories of the caterpillar? 4. The Taliban declares war on smartphones. 5. Links from Sam Enright. 6. Why are U.S. ambulance rides so costly? 7. Richard Hanania on The Sopranos.

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]]> 1. NYT overview of Foucault.

2. Solar mirrors to turn night into day? (NYT)

3. How does the butterfly retain the memories of the caterpillar?

4. The Taliban declares war on smartphones.

5. Links from Sam Enright.

6. Why are U.S. ambulance rides so costly?

7. Richard Hanania on The Sopranos.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/sunday-assorted-links-575.html/feed 72 93374 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/the-trump-administrations-threat-to-scientific-research.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-trump-administrations-threat-to-scientific-research The Trump Administration’s Threat to Scientific Research https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960162290/0/marginalrevolution~The-Trump-Administrations-Threat-to-Scientific-Research.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/the-trump-administrations-threat-to-scientific-research.html#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2026 11:18:43 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93377 In The Nationalization of American Science I warned that the Trump administration’s rewriting of the seemingly mundane Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance was a tremendous threat to America’s historically successful decentralized system of science funding. Many others are now sounding the alarm. It’s not surprising that organizations like the AAAS oppose the rule, albeit with unusually […]

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]]> In The Nationalization of American Science I warned that the Trump administration’s rewriting of the seemingly mundane Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance was a tremendous threat to America’s historically successful decentralized system of science funding. Many others are now sounding the alarm.

It’s not surprising that organizations like the AAAS oppose the rule, albeit with unusually strongly worded dissents:

This latest move is a brazen power grab by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to buck the will of Congress and the American people and will make future discoveries less likely. If this rule becomes final, Americans’ hopes for future cures, national security and economic strength will rely on the scientific sensibilities of the nation’s chief bureaucrat. Alzheimer’s disease will not be cured by a budget analyst from either political party.

But we are now seeing strong pushback from independent thinkers such as:

Grayson Logue writing at The Dispatch:

A sweeping new rule proposed by the Trump administration could remake how that money is awarded and give the president and his political appointees discretion to cancel funding or target recipients for virtually any reason—with little opportunity for recourse.

White House officials argue the new rule is necessary to assert more accountability over federal grantmaking, but observers fear the shift will expand opportunities for politicization, abuse, and even corruption for an administration that has already demonstrated a penchant for using the levers of the federal government to punish partisan enemies and reward ideological allies. 

Dan Drezner:

if I was trying to ruin American leadership in scientific research this is pretty much the kind of rule I would write…One of the genuine difficulties with observing the second Trump term is that the assault on state capacity and impartiality has been so multipronged that it is difficult to keep track of everything going on. But these proposed rule changes are monumental and catastrophic.

and Noah Smith:

MAGA’s attack on science is even worse than it looks…despite science’s overwhelming popularity and public trust, Trump and his administration are launching an unprecedented and devastating attack on American science — cutting funding, and forcing science projects to undergo ideological review by government commissars.

It may be that the Trump administration has pushed too far, but my real worry is that we are losing an equilibrium. Science was never completely independent of politics, of course, but even at the worst of times, funding was decentralized and the culture-war material that dominated the headlines was never more than a tiny fraction of the whole. Like an independent judiciary, independent science has been an American virtue. COVID policy, gender policy, and now the Trump administration’s weaponization of these mistakes may have destroyed that equilibrium.

As I wrote in my original post, we are adopting the loser policies of authoritarian nations but those policies are the norm elsewhere for a reason. Centralized control of science is the default because it serves the people in power of whatever party. Decentralization is the fragile exception—a historically unusual achievement that is easier to destroy than rebuild.

Addendum: And here is Andrew Gelman.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/the-trump-administrations-threat-to-scientific-research.html/feed 86 93377 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/a-tale-of-three-cities.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-tale-of-three-cities *A Tale of Three Cities* https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960155717/0/marginalrevolution~A-Tale-of-Three-Cities.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/a-tale-of-three-cities.html#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2026 07:17:21 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93376 The author is Bob Harris, and the subtitle is The Life and Times of Lord Daer 1763-1794.  Who is Lord Daer?  Don’t worry about that!  So many books on the Scottish Enlightenment cover one particular thing, but somehow fail to give the reader a proper sense of life on the ground.  I found this is […]

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]]> The author is Bob Harris, and the subtitle is The Life and Times of Lord Daer 1763-1794.  Who is Lord Daer?  Don’t worry about that!  So many books on the Scottish Enlightenment cover one particular thing, but somehow fail to give the reader a proper sense of life on the ground.  I found this is the best book I know for actually communicating what it was like to live during, and participate in, the Scottish Enlightenment.  Maybe to achieve that end it is necessary to focus on the life of a figure who was less than totally famous?  Definitely recommended, this book should be better known.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/a-tale-of-three-cities.html/feed 6 93376 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/who-thinks-like-an-economist.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=who-thinks-like-an-economist *Who Thinks Like an Economist?* https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960154475/0/marginalrevolution~Who-Thinks-Like-an-Economist.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/who-thinks-like-an-economist.html#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2026 06:18:59 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93380 That is the title of a recent book by Beatrice Magistro.  Some key results are: Economic knowledge consistently predicts higher support for welfare-enhancing policies (Eurozone membership, free trade, and EU immigration), independent on whether individuals stand to gain or lose initially from globalization.  This challenges conventional self-interest accounts and instead highlights the role of economic […]

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]]> That is the title of a recent book by Beatrice Magistro.  Some key results are:

Economic knowledge consistently predicts higher support for welfare-enhancing policies (Eurozone membership, free trade, and EU immigration), independent on whether individuals stand to gain or lose initially from globalization.  This challenges conventional self-interest accounts and instead highlights the role of economic knowledge — and potentially time preferences — in shaping globalization attitudes.

Economic knowledge also predicts a lower discount rate, even after adjusting for years of education.

I would say that over the years I have altered my perspective a bit on these issues.  I used to think these factors were correlated, in large part, through a kind of wisdom.  I now think that more of the effect, however much I may sympathize with it, runs through sociological expectation and perceived obligation, combined with conformity and signaling pressures.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/who-thinks-like-an-economist.html/feed 16 93380 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/new-space-policy-substack-from-mercatus.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-space-policy-substack-from-mercatus New space policy Substack from Mercatus https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960150467/0/marginalrevolution~New-space-policy-Substack-from-Mercatus.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/new-space-policy-substack-from-mercatus.html#comments Sun, 12 Jul 2026 04:03:44 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93378 We are Rebecca, Max, and Aakrith. We are researchers at The Mercatus Center, a research organization dedicated to classical liberal ideas. Rebecca is a philosopher, Max is an economist, and Aakrith is a political scientist. Together, we are the Space Team, and this is our Substack. We’re here to persuade you that space policy is increasingly important. And that getting […]

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]]>

We are Rebecca, Max, and Aakrith. We are researchers at The Mercatus Center, a research organization dedicated to classical liberal ideas. Rebecca is a philosopher, Max is an economist, and Aakrith is a political scientist. Together, we are the Space Team, and this is our Substack.

We’re here to persuade you that space policy is increasingly important. And that getting space policy right offers humankind astonishing opportunities. In particular, we’re currently thinking hard about innovation, competition, federalism, property rights, and life in space.

Here is the link.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/new-space-policy-substack-from-mercatus.html/feed 9 93378 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/mental-health-sentences-to-ponder.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mental-health-sentences-to-ponder Mental health sentences to ponder https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960117605/0/marginalrevolution~Mental-health-sentences-to-ponder.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/mental-health-sentences-to-ponder.html#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:13:49 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93375 Christoph Henking and Ben Baumberg Geiger found that while there has been a steep rise in the share of young Britons reporting a mental illness, the share of people who say a mental health problem limits their day-to-day functioning has barely budged. …when asked if they would consider someone experiencing typical fluctuations in mood (described […]

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]]>

Christoph Henking and Ben Baumberg Geiger found that while there has been a steep rise in the share of young Britons reporting a mental illness, the share of people who say a mental health problem limits their day-to-day functioning has barely budged.

…when asked if they would consider someone experiencing typical fluctuations in mood (described as broad happiness but occasional moments of worry, frustration or loss of confidence) as having a mental illness, more than half of young Americans say yes, up from just a fifth 15 years ago. Older people’s views show no such change.

Here is more from John Burn-Murdoch at the FT.  I would second his numerous caveats, and you should not consider this at all conclusive.  But the alternative perspective is not conclusive either.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/mental-health-sentences-to-ponder.html/feed 44 93375 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/saturday-assorted-links-569.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saturday-assorted-links-569 Saturday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960110387/0/marginalrevolution~Saturday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/saturday-assorted-links-569.html#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2026 16:23:17 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93368 1. The tiny economist on my shoulder. 2. Beethoven in Indian classical raga. 3. Too many books? (NYT) 4. Roon on slop. 5. MIE.  Taylor Swift. 6. Rolling Stones fact of the day. 7. More balloons! 8. Seb Krier.

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]]> 1. The tiny economist on my shoulder.

2. Beethoven in Indian classical raga.

3. Too many books? (NYT)

4. Roon on slop.

5. MIE.  Taylor Swift.

6. Rolling Stones fact of the day.

7. More balloons!

8. Seb Krier.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/saturday-assorted-links-569.html/feed 31 93368 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/winston-marshall-podcasts-with-me-on-ai.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=winston-marshall-podcasts-with-me-on-ai Winston Marshall podcasts with me on AI https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960074609/0/marginalrevolution~Winston-Marshall-podcasts-with-me-on-AI.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/winston-marshall-podcasts-with-me-on-ai.html#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2026 07:20:40 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93361 He is from the star musical group Mumford & Sons, but is also an excellent podcaster.  Here is the episode, recorded before the Fable ban was lifted: Of course I do sneak in some music analogies, including a mention of Dock Boggs.

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]]> He is from the star musical group Mumford & Sons, but is also an excellent podcaster.  Here is the episode, recorded before the Fable ban was lifted:

Of course I do sneak in some music analogies, including a mention of Dock Boggs.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/winston-marshall-podcasts-with-me-on-ai.html/feed 16 93361 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/progress-against-dementia.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=progress-against-dementia Progress against dementia https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960064274/0/marginalrevolution~Progress-against-dementia.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/progress-against-dementia.html#comments Sat, 11 Jul 2026 04:29:44 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93370 Mr Stallard has been working for a decade to corroborate this revelation. His findings have, if anything, become even more striking. Last year he and some colleagues published research in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that, whereas 40 years ago three in every ten Americans aged 85-89 had dementia, by 2024 just one in […]

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]]>

Mr Stallard has been working for a decade to corroborate this revelation. His findings have, if anything, become even more striking. Last year he and some colleagues published research in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that, whereas 40 years ago three in every ten Americans aged 85-89 had dementia, by 2024 just one in ten had it (see chart 1). What is more, America is not the only beneficiary of this trend. Between 1988 and 2015 the share of older people being diagnosed with dementia fell by 13% a decade across six countries in North America and Europe, according to a study of almost 50,000 people by Frank Wolters of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, and colleagues.

Some smaller studies have also found big declines. Data from the Framingham Heart Study, which has tracked three generations in an American town, show an average drop in new dementia cases of 20% per decade over almost 40 years between the late 1970s and early 2010s. Those who were entering their dotage when Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” was topping the charts (2013) were 44% less likely to have dementia than those who were doing so when Sting was urging Roxanne to switch off her red light (1978).

Whereas most earlier studies had simply pooled elderly people and then applied a statistical adjustment for age, Mr Stallard looked at narrow bands of ages to compare different cohorts of people over 50 years. By examining the changes between each successive cohort, he calculates that dementia rates have been declining by 2.5-3% for each calendar-year cohort.

Here is more from Jonathan Rosenthal at The Economist.  You can think of this as the new instantiation of the Flynn Effect…

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/progress-against-dementia.html/feed 44 93370 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/friday-assorted-links-580.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=friday-assorted-links-580 Friday assorted links https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/960018047/0/marginalrevolution~Friday-assorted-links.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/friday-assorted-links-580.html#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:02:09 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93362 1. On Jewish culture. 2. How much have the top last names changed since 1790? 3. Bernanke appointed to the Long-Term Benefit Trust of Anthropic. 4. The India 1991 Fellowship is going great. 5. UK Dynamism Fund. 6. Peter Gray on phones and social media. 7. The new Richard Hanania book is out. 8. Warsh […]

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]]> 1. On Jewish culture.

2. How much have the top last names changed since 1790?

3. Bernanke appointed to the Long-Term Benefit Trust of Anthropic.

4. The India 1991 Fellowship is going great.

5. UK Dynamism Fund.

6. Peter Gray on phones and social media.

7. The new Richard Hanania book is out.

8. Warsh Fed task force leaders.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/friday-assorted-links-580.html/feed 82 93362 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/andrew-hall-is-on-a-roll.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=andrew-hall-is-on-a-roll Andrew Hall is on a roll https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959991716/0/marginalrevolution~Andrew-Hall-is-on-a-roll.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/andrew-hall-is-on-a-roll.html#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2026 10:21:58 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93364 He is one of the new(ish) thinkers on the rise, here is his latest piece.  Excerpt: For most of the past decade, anti-billionaire language was a niche product. Democratic emails invoked billionaires in the mid-single digits through 2017 and 2018, spiked briefly to around 14 percent during the Warren and Sanders primary surge in 2019, […]

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]]> He is one of the new(ish) thinkers on the rise, here is his latest piece.  Excerpt:

For most of the past decade, anti-billionaire language was a niche product. Democratic emails invoked billionaires in the mid-single digits through 2017 and 2018, spiked briefly to around 14 percent during the Warren and Sanders primary surge in 2019, and then settled back down—through the entire Biden presidency, the billionaire appeared in roughly one of every twenty to twenty-five Democratic fundraising emails, barely more than in Republican ones.

Then came January 2025. In the weeks after an inauguration that seated tech CEOs in the front row and the dizzying drama of Elon Musk’s ill-fated DOGE experiment, billionaire mentions in Democratic emails quadrupled, peaking above 20 percent of all emails sent and holding around 15 percent ever since. Anti-billionaire fundraising tactics are now a mainstay of Democratic messaging.

Yes, billionaire derangement syndrome is now a thing.  As a side note, I was told that Andrew is the son of the great economist Robert E. Hall of Stanford.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/andrew-hall-is-on-a-roll.html/feed 128 93364 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/redux-of-my-homers-odyssey-essay.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=redux-of-my-homers-odyssey-essay Redux of my Homer’s Odyssey essay https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959980442/0/marginalrevolution~Redux-of-my-Homers-Odyssey-essay.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/redux-of-my-homers-odyssey-essay.html#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:59:51 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93369 On EconLib, you will find all three parts here, in reverse order.

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]]> On EconLib, you will find all three parts here, in reverse order.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/redux-of-my-homers-odyssey-essay.html/feed 9 93369 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/my-conversation-with-the-excellent-joel-mokyr.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-conversation-with-the-excellent-joel-mokyr My Conversation with the excellent Joel Mokyr https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959973014/0/marginalrevolution~My-Conversation-with-the-excellent-Joel-Mokyr.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/my-conversation-with-the-excellent-joel-mokyr.html#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2026 04:44:33 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93363 Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary: Tyler and Joel discuss European corporations vs. Chinese clans, why the Catholic Church became obsessed with cousin-marriage, how persistent cultural trends really are, why Chinese cities became so populous relative to Europe, why it took so long for European living standards […]

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]]> Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the episode summary:

Tyler and Joel discuss European corporations vs. Chinese clans, why the Catholic Church became obsessed with cousin-marriage, how persistent cultural trends really are, why Chinese cities became so populous relative to Europe, why it took so long for European living standards to surpass China’s, why sinified invaders kept getting swallowed by the dynasties they conquered, how geography kept Europe fragmented and China unified, where India fits into the story, why the Romans never made spectacles, why British soldiers stood two inches taller than the French, what powered the sudden rise of 19th-century German science, how disruptive winning a Nobel is, and much more.

Unlike many Conversations, in this one I could excerpt just about any section with equal interest.  Here is one bit:

COWEN: Why does it take so long for the wealthiest parts of Western Europe to surpass Chinese living standards? Say that’s happened by 1700 or 1720, that’s many centuries after this medieval divergence. If it takes so many centuries, is the medieval divergence really the relevant factor? Why is it such a slow process?

MOKYR: Yes, I think it is. I think it’s a main factor. I think the idea of looking at standard of living, one thing, I’m very skeptical about how standards of living are actually measured. I know that this is what Pomeranz and other people have, and Jack Goldstone and other people have argued that the living standards in China were comparable to the West as late as 1750. I’m not 100 percent sure that that is true. Certainly, for my money, what really defines the divergence is that, technologically, the gap between the two countries starts to become visible at the time of the Renaissance, in terms of a whole bunch of things that you see growing in Europe and stagnant in China.

Now, keep in mind, of course, that part of the European growth is due to the fact that they borrowed ideas from China. Then the Industrial Revolution consists, to some extent, of imports institution by Europeans trying to mimic the goods that they were importing from China—not just from China, from India as well. Pottery is a good example. One of the things they really wanted from China was Chinaware. That’s why it’s called Chinaware. It took them a while to be able to match the Chinese capability in the ceramic industry, but they do so eventually. Then they stop importing this stuff from China. The same is true for, say, cotton and other products that we’re getting from the East.

European living standards, I think, should be measured, in part, by the fact that when the Europeans start their voyages across the globe in the late 15th and early 16th century, they are able to bring in a whole bunch of new crops and new techniques from other areas which they merely adopt. You’ll see Europeans very soon growing tobacco and potatoes and corn and other things like that. They are the agents of global change. Not only that they change their own diets, they change the Chinese diets because the Europeans bring from the New World things like peanuts and sweet potatoes and things like that. They change the Chinese diets, but the Chinese themselves are not agents here.

They are accepting the stuff that the Europeans did to some extent, and they’re rejecting others, but it’s the Europeans who are the agents of change here. They are the entrepreneurs. They are the people who bring about the changes, Tyler. My sense is that typifies the difference between Europeans and the Chinese. Europeans are more aggressive. They are more outward-looking. In the end, what you see by the 1830s and 1840s, you see that the technological gap is huge, in some ways much larger than the living standards gap. Even in the 19th century, in terms of food, the Chinese were capable of producing enough food. The number of famines in China is probably not a lot worse than in Europe.

When you see what happens during the First Opium War, one English ship is blowing all of this sort of mighty empire to pieces, and the Chinese have to accept this terribly humiliating peace, you can sort of see how the technological gap has grown between the two. For me, that is much more telling than the living standards. The other thing that I should like to point out is that, when you look at Europe in the 16th and 17th century, you can see that the capability of expanding the set of useful knowledge, including science, is just growing very rapidly. Whether there is a scientific revolution or not is a debate that I want to get into.

Certainly, by 1700, Europe is on the verge of really changing our understanding of how creation works. That’s not just Newton and Galileo. There’s a whole body of work that is emerging. There’s really nothing parallel like that in China. China is a very sophisticated society in many ways. The literacy rates are high. They have a well-funded and well-organized system of education, but they don’t really continue their earlier forays into science and into new technology.

Somebody actually went out and looked at Joseph Needham’s many volumes on Chinese technology and science, or Science and Civilisation [in China], as he called it, and he discovered something—which I guess we all knew, but they put numbers on it—almost nothing that Needham pointed out as an innovation happens after 1400. There’s complete stagnation setting in and some of the things that they knew how to make in earlier times, like the sophisticated clocks that they built in the 11th century, they disappear. For me, that’s more telling than how many calories of carbohydrates were consumed on average, if we could ever calculate that correctly.

Interesting throughout, and of course self-recommending.  I very much enjoyed Joel’s recent book Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000, with Greif and Tabellini.

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]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/my-conversation-with-the-excellent-joel-mokyr.html/feed 45 93363 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/that-was-then-this-is-now-59.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=that-was-then-this-is-now-59 That was then, this is now https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/959940749/0/marginalrevolution~That-was-then-this-is-now.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/that-was-then-this-is-now-59.html#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:10:36 +0000 https://marginalrevolution.com/?p=93359 One of the cool things about European football is that it provides good evidence that high-income, high-ability individuals move in response to tax rates… That is from Jeremy Horpendahl, citing research by…Emanuel Saez.

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One of the cool things about European football is that it provides good evidence that high-income, high-ability individuals move in response to tax rates…

That is from Jeremy Horpendahl, citing research by…Emanuel Saez.

The post That was then, this is now appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

]]> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/07/that-was-then-this-is-now-59.html/feed 34 93359