Aug 24, 2016 2:23pm
—“Would you also say, sir, that Europe’s Scientific and industrial Revolutions were the result of this high trust/social capital, as opposed to the prevailing narrative that colonialism = industrial/scientific revolution? It’s always been a theory of mine that social capital is what allowed Europe and Western Civilization to accelerate ahead of other Civs, which runs contrary to the Guns, Germs and Steel narrative”—
Well, the tradition was there in the 700’s when the Friesians started immigrating to land in England. And Roger Bacon in 1200 started a tradition that Francis Bacon brought to fruition in the 1500’s. Bacon had studied this contractualism and invented empiricism. And starting about the same time they started aggressively hanging vast numbers of troublemakers, and restoring the trade that would become the Hansa (Germanic) civilization.
So my view is that the colonial expansion ARRESTED the growth of germanic north sea civilization, and that while there was amazing wealth generated in England, France, holland, Spain, and Portugal by this switch from north sea to Atlantic, that the reason for the division between germanic and English civilizations that culminated in the world wars, was this catastrophe we call colonialism. (Durant has the same opinion).
Now, Americans speak English, but we separated from England before England split from germanic civilization. The majority of American whites are from germanic decent. And the majority of anglo whites are from pre-Germanic split. So that is why we have the language of the English and a culture more Prussian-like the germans.
And in my opinion, from what I’ve seen throughout history, as far as I can tell, the industrial revolution would have occurred in northern Europe just as it nearly occurred in Athens. England blew up just like Athens for the same reason – overreach.
If you have an empirical society, with enough literacy, and enough cultural capital, you will eventually produce innovations, since there is no opportunity to survive and compete by parasitism.
In other words, if we create rule of law we will continue to evolve. We have no choice. It’s the societies that dont create incremental suppression through natural law that stagnate.
Becuase it is too easy to develop stagnating-corruption and parasitism.
