What if they gave an Industrial Revolution and nobody came? (2023)

Space, demand, and large upfront costs

• Several comments analogize space expansion (asteroid mining, off‑world industry) to early industrialization: technically feasible but blocked by poor economics and huge initial capital costs.
• Reusable rockets may change economics, but even then deep-space industry remains extremely expensive and long‑term.
• Some argue sustained high public funding (e.g., NASA since the 1970s) could have pulled reusable systems and space industry forward by decades.

Why Britain, not China or Rome?

• Explanations for China’s “missed” revolution include: coal economics (no deep‑mine drainage problem until large coal demand exists), lack of calculus/Newtonian mechanics, political unification vs Europe’s fragmented, competitive states, family structures affecting labor mobility, limited long‑distance sailing/naval competition, and weaker free‑market institutions.
• Others note China did have sophisticated ironworking and proto‑industrialization but political and social structures discouraged further mechanization.
• Romans are portrayed as pragmatic adopters of labor‑saving tech, but lacking a long, “wasteful” culture of tinkering and precision engineering that eventually produced practical steam engines.

Coal, energy, and contingency

• One camp stresses pre‑industrial British coal use for heating and deep mining as the core trigger: steam engines first made sense only in coal mines.
• Others emphasize concurrent non‑coal developments (textile mechanization with water power, skilled metalworking regions, heat‑intensive industries) and a shift from “organic” to “mineral” energy as a broader transformation.
• Some argue Britain’s navy, trade empire, and capital markets drove both deforestation and industrial incentives; coal is seen as one factor among many, not the sole “accident.”

Wages, productivity, and labor vs capital

• Debate over whether high wages cause productivity gains or simply reflect them.
• Questions raised: why were English wages relatively high pre‑revolution, and what prevented employers from pushing them to subsistence?
• Others stress that capital cost, resource cost, and risk of sunk investments are crucial; cheap labor can still make machines unattractive even if they reduce headcount.

Capitalism, markets, and central planning

• Some argue centralized elites with abundant slaves or peasants had no incentive to adopt labor‑saving machines; decentralized market systems diffuse decisions and reward labor‑saving innovation.
• Others distinguish generic “market economies” from specifically capitalist ownership (capital vs labor), noting that non‑capitalist market systems and state‑directed systems have also industrialized.
• Long sub‑thread debates whether alternatives like worker‑owned firms or “democratic firms” can fund risky innovation and replace incumbents as effectively as capital‑driven startups.

Was the Industrial Revolution a true “revolution”?

• One view: there was no sharp break—just centuries‑long, incremental scaling of pre‑existing industrial processes and global supply chains.
• Counterview: the 19th century shows a marked inflection in production and a qualitative energy shift, justifying “revolution” despite underlying continuity.

War as a driver of innovation

• Some are surprised the article downplays war; historically, existential wars seem to catalyze rapid innovation.
• Others argue recent conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan) produced far less broad civilian innovation than WWII, though they did transform aspects of warfare (drones, communications) without clearly matching earlier spillovers into civilian life.

Inequality, leisure, and invention

• One line of thought: a wealthy leisure class is useful because it can “mess about” and pursue inventions others are too busy to attempt.
• Critics counter that high inequality today is destabilizing and unnecessary; with current wealth levels, many more people could have creative slack time.
• An example of egalitarian hunter‑gatherers with low work hours is cited to question whether hierarchy is needed for leisure and experimentation.

Additional critiques of the article’s framing

• Some say the article over‑centers steam engines and wages, underplaying the scientific revolution, agricultural changes, metrology, factory systems, and the rise of a capital‑owning class.
• Others argue any theory focused solely on Britain is incomplete without matching patterns observed in later industrializations (e.g., Japan, modern Asia).