why England?

[pktechgirlbackup]

Because England was more productive.

Capital, meaning automated equipment, doesn't have a fixed production value. Generally it needs some human intervention somewhere in the process to produce money for its owner. Depending on what you're studying, you can view this as "how much more does 1 human being produce when working with this machine?" or "how much more productive is this machine with 1 extra person." or "what mix of machine and labor do I need to produce X doodads?" Since there's usually some flexibility in how efficient a machine you buy (with a more efficient machine producing more doodads/worker), factory owners are trading off how expensive a machine they buy with the price of labor- this is one reason the minimum wage might lower employment, by pushing people to buy capital equipment that requires fewer workers.

Anyways, we think of slotting unskilled labor into factory openings just like equipment, but that turns out to be untrue. Clark uses the specific example of the power loom. The loom weaves cloth by itself, but needs human workers to monitor for and repair broken threads. You can set the machine to work faster, but then more threads will break. A more efficient worker allows to to set the machine faster, or can monitor more machines. It turns out that factories achieved optimum output with an English worker monitoring eight machines, but an Indian worker could only manage one and a half. This wasn't a matter of different management styles or different optimum speeds of the machines- the English "unskilled" workers were outright more efficient than the Indian "unskilled" workers. Thus, English workers were more cost effective even though Indian workers were cheaper.

Why is this, you ask? Clark doesn't know. Yes, he spent the first half of the book talking about how evolution was working faster in England, disseminating middle class values and/or genes into the lower classes, but he never in any way connects to the second half of the book.

I want to yell at him for talking about India when he's discussing productivity but China and Japan when discussing pre-industrial evolution. In his defense, the records in India simply didn't give him the data he needed, which is itself a sign of India's poverty. And I've heard the same thing, with less sourcing, about Chinese factory workers- they're cheap, but you have to throw away half the work. And it *used* to be true of Japan- As long as I've been alive, Japan has been the land of meticulousness that leads to extremely high quality, but in the 40s and 50s "Made in Japan" meant "piece of crap," which is why today they'll say "Japanese Quality," to avoid triggering old timers. I would have loved to see Clark discuss that transformation.

Nor does Clark actually talk about ending charity, or the need for charity. There's a half a page about opening up immigration, which I am completely for, but is only the solution to this particular issue if the problem is inherit in Indian land but not Indian workers. He could mean the fact that industrialization has disproportionately benefited the poor, but he never says that.

I suspect there was some editorial intervention here, because a book saying "white people are evolved to be better workers" would set off a shitstorm. I can't really criticize him for not having the spine to say it without taking a stand myself, so here it goes: I find the idea that higher birth and death rates lead Europeans to be more productive plausible, but not proven. Among its flaws: if high birth and death rates are so awesome, how come Africa's not stomping us all? What about the differences in selection pressure stemming from the difficulty of wet rice farming?

Comments

[scythe-of-time.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure I follow. Why would the English be more effective at monitoring complex machinery? Was it their food, or are there other environmental factors that I'm not catching here?

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

He's implying, without actually saying it, that years of high differential between survival rates of the rich and poor in England led the English population to be smarter, more conscientious, or some other useful trait, though cultural or genetic evolution. He talks specifically about higher absenteeism, but even when at work they were less productive.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

There are very few areas that I engage in full on Jewish-style fence laws, but hypotheses about racial superiority are one of them. As far as I'm aware, humans have a uniformly bad track record with such hypotheses, and logical induction therefore clearly indicates that I should never entertain one. :)

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

That's fair.