Conversation

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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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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In fact, mannerist history is, in large part, my main schtick. I'm increasingly doing that very deliberately, introducing outright fictional elements and notional made-up data (like via liberally careless use of the 80-20 principle for instance)
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Interestingly, I'm currently finishing up Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, where the premise is that the Auditors of Reality (the main antagonists of Death) issue a hit contract on the Hogfather (= Santa Claus) precisely for the sin of personifying "wishful facts" against "reality"
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"I will die before modernization theory does" is more than a fatalistic resignation on your part. It's actually an interesting empirical observation about the human historical imagination. Cf: "The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"