Summary of Bradford DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia

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#1 The author Thomas Robert Malthus wrote a counterblast to the Essay on the Principle of Population, written by the father of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. His objective was to demonstrate that his explicit target, William Godwin, and all of Godwin’s ilk were shortsighted and deluded enemies of the public welfare.

#2 The Industrial Revolution of 1770–1870 did not improve the living standards of the majority of people. It did provide comforts for many, but it did not change how humans lived.

#3 The Industrial-Commercial Revolution, which took place from 1770 to 1870, was a crossing of a watershed boundary. The rate of growth of humanity’s technological and organizational capabilities took a fourfold upward leap, from 0. 04 percent per year to 0. 15 percent per year.

#4 The Industrial Revolution was not inevitable, and it was not the only world that could have experienced it. In fact, in most other worlds, there was no British Industrial Revolution at all. The growth of human technological and organizational capabilities would have been eaten up by global population growth of 0. 9 percent per year, or about 25 percent per generation.

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Release date

Ebook: September 19, 2022