Simplegift wrote:protagonist wrote:But I would not be surprised, if you looked at the entire course of human history since the last ice age and the birth of the first cities...
The critically important difference is that through all of the historical time period that you mention, both population and productivity growth rates have been
rapidly increasing (see this
thread)
This statement, on the surface, seems so incredulous that I had to check the source. Can one really believe, for example, that there was more rapid growth during the decline of the Roman empire and the subsequent dark ages than when the empire ramped up to its peak in the second century?
Note how the historical periods were cherry-picked. In year 1, Rome, under Augustus, was barely ekeing its way out of 150 years of almost continual civil war. The baseline interval in the graph ("0 growth") was years 1-1000. So any phenomenal growth in the first two hundred or so years in Europe was conveniently cancelled out by the decline and dark ages. The next interval represented a huge 500 year period, including, for example, the years of the great plague which killed an estimated "30-60% of Europe's population". Needless to say, what happened in the mid-14th century would have more than averaged out any growth in the preceding three centuries. 1500-1600, the next period, was the period of the Reformation, and much of Europe was involved in religious battles. The religious wars came to a head in the fourth period, 1600-1700, and GDP growth actually declined significantly (the graph cannot mask that).
As industry started to gain steam in the 18th century, and went full throttle in the 19th and 20th ( due to the industrial revolution), GDP growth increased dramatically. But what does the graph show during this period? That growth was by no means linear and had its ups and downs, with the last two peaks being 1950-1974 and 1994-2010.
The last five years, 2010-2015 (interesting how they were not averaged into the 1994-2010 interval....more cherry picking to make a point I assume...) have been anemic. So what? I wonder what growth looked like in the US from, say, 1929-1934, or 1860-1865.
Plus which, you stated....
The critically important difference is that through all of the historical time period that you mention, both population and productivity growth rates have been rapidly increasing
Really? The historical period I mentioned was "since the last ice age". That was at least 11000 years ago. This graph covers no more than 9% of the historical period I mentioned.
The graph says nothing meaningful, other than that the past 200 or so years have been remarkable, which we already know. And that the dark ages were a lousy time to be alive in Europe.
Statistics don't lie. Statisticians do.