A friendly review of & but with this unfortunate line: “China is essentially going through a hugely accelerated version of the industrial revolution & the Gilded Age rolled into one.” #ModernizationTheoryNeverDies newyorker.com/magazine/2019/
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Not sure I understand what's unfortunate about it?
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Remember how Gilded Age America was run by a ruthlessly authoritarian one party state that had all the tycoons under its thumb, controlled internal movement of its people, and for decades enforced an anti-natalist policy that produced the mother of all demographic dividends?
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Man you historians never let one slip past you huh
otoh... corrupt city machines did kinda run a ransomware level control on tycoons, and slavery was a similar kind of demographic dividend... I think the rhyme holds in the bass notes if you squint a bit at the lyrics
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“Stylized facts” vs, uh, real facts — this is one of the main contributions historians make: calling bullshit on facile Whig historiography.
I’ve been beating this particular drum for 15 years, though by now am grimly resigned that I will die before modernization theory does.
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