Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

At 04:57 PM 4/30/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Robin Hanson writes:
>> >The U.S. had similar growth rates during the industrial revolution.
>>
>> Britain invested huge amounts in the U.S. during this period. An isolated
>> U.S. would not have grown nearly as fast.
>
>Britain also had massive growth in this period. Who was the external
>investor?

What period are you talking about?
Britain roughly doubled its GDP from 1830 to 1870, and then doubled again
from 1870 to 1910. (Per-capita growth was slower, doubling once in this
whole period.) Britain grew *slower* than the rest of Europe.
How is this at all comparable to Peter's factor of 100 in 10 years?

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Thu Apr 30 21:43:24 1998