Joel Mokyr warns against halting technological progress out of fear, citing historical examples where societies prioritized short-term stability at the cost of long-term prosperity.
Opinion
Mokyr: History offers little guidance for understanding the modern technological age
“I am not really a great believer in the hypothesis that there's an awful lot we can learn from history about our own age, because our own age is so different in so many ways”
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Mokyr: Industrial Revolution succeeded despite state institutions, not because of them
“The national institutions probably play a relatively secondary role. Quite frankly, you know, if you put a gun to my head, I would say what happened, happened despite the best efforts of these states, not thanks to them.”
Insight
Mokyr: Climate change can only be solved through technology, not politics
“Climate change cannot be solved by any means except technology, because a political solution is clearly not going to happen.”
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Mokyr: Resistance to genetically modified organisms is baseless and fabricated
“The evidence does not support that there's any danger. This whole notion about frankenfoods is completely made up”
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Mokyr: Every major modern technological advance originated from informal knowledge networks
“Out of that came our modern world. Out of that came every technological advance that made a big difference in electricity, in textiles, in steel, in, you know, in transportation, in medicine, you name it. It came all out of those interactions.”
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Mokyr: Growth is understated and inflation overstated due to zero-cost digital goods
“We are mis-measuring growth, or to put it slightly different, we're over-measuring inflation, because that, those two things boil down to the same thing, and we've known this for a long time, but it turns out the process is getting worse and worse, simply beca…”