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This post made me think of a little history. There were plenty of problems in the 19th century, but the ideas of the era did not lead them to suppose that the

This post made me think of a little history. There were plenty of problems in the 19th century, but the ideas of the era did not lead them to suppose that the first answer to any problems was red tape. The effects of this difference are huge. I know this isn't quite apples-to-apples, but a rather stark comparison comes to mind: Using the comparatively primitive technology of the 1880s, James J. Hill was able to build a transcontinental railroad in a decade (using private finance). Here in Seattle, the public transit authority says it's going to take two or three decades to build a train that goes just six miles.

eldavido 10y ago
My friends and I talk about this a lot. We aren't living in the 1880s anymore. For one, we value life, health, and safety much more than they did back then, with things like OSHA, much more stringent labor laws (overtime, child labor), more types of insurance required for employers including unemployment and various disability coverage, environmental laws like CEQA/Clean Air Act, and tons of other stuff. But I think the biggest change is ultimately cultural. We just don't value growth today like we did back then. We want safe workplaces, and a clean environment. I also think there's a much greater tolerance for government bureaucracy today then there was in the 1880s, including all kinds of permits that take weeks to issue, multiple agencies overseeing everything at the state, local, and federal level, and just in general a huge expansion in the size of government. If you told someone from the 1880s that US government spending would rise to some 40% of GDP over 120 years, they'd think you were totally insane. I go back and forth on whether it's good or bad. It's a complicated question. It takes forever to get anything done, and yet, young Chinese nationals are coming to the US because their parents have utterly ruined their environment, they don't trust the safety of their food supply, and factories with hundreds of people in them burn down, killing everyone inside. I used to think the US and Europe were radically different places, but I'm coming to see they're more alike vs. different. It's really the US and China that are worlds apart.
- maxharris 10y ago
  I think (but am not completely certain) that we needed a high-growth environment to be rich enough to invent the technologies that give us safe workplaces and a clean environment. If that's true, I also wonder what safety and and living standard improvements we might be giving up because we don't have high growth today.
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    >we might be giving up because we don't have high growth today If by this you mean our descendents. It would be fair to note that life for most was quite brutish and short in the "high-growth" period you're lauding. Would you have been a collier or among the more fortunate, I wonder?
    - maxharris 10y ago
      It was brutish and short for most people because there wasn't much wealth of any kind. How far would the combined fortunes of the industrialists gone in raising the standard of living had they been confiscated and distributed to everyone else? Not far at all, it turns out. 50 million people lived in the US in 1880, and Vanderbilt's $232 million fortune would have netted each of the the other 50,189,208 Americans around $4.62 each (around $114 in 2015 dollars). What they got in exchange from these captains of industry (steel, rail, oil, and a future where their children went on to live better than they did) was worth a heck of a lot more to their lives and livelihoods than a few fistfuls of coins. Even if you were Andrew Carnegie, you'd have no Xbox, no CT scanner, no supercomputer in your pocket, no access to the Internet, no way to jump between cities by air... Back then, all people were so poor, not just in material goods or safety technologies, but in knowledge. In the 19th century, they didn't know a damn thing about what actually caused cancer, so people routinely did incredibly stupid things (stupid to us, that is, with the knowledge we have today) when making dyes and many other chemical processes. Incredibly, the alternatives to all that were even worse. If you just sat at home and did nothing, what would you have to do? Play cards and starve to death? Books were still expensive, and remember what I said about all the things that even Carnegie wouldn't have access to in his time? Given all that, I'd rather start as a poor person today than be a rich person in 1830.
- vacri 10y ago
  As an example of changing values (though not 19th C), the Hoover Dam claimed 100-ish lives during its construction. That would be a scandalous number today.
  - maxharris 10y ago
    Here's just one example of my point: we have TBMs (tunnel boring machines) today, which were made possible by 19th and 20th-century industrial development. During the construction of the Hoover Dam, the original bypass tunnels were created by drilling and blasting, which resulted in a number of those deaths. If they had TBMs back then, many people would been spared exposure to dangerous rock dust, explosives, falling rocks, etc.
monknomo 10y ago
We might have too much red tape right now, but to say that 19th century problems didn't create red tape is not quite correct. The Jungle was published in 1906, and was about 19th century problems. It lead to red tape regarding food safety. Taft used the Sherman Act (red tape from 1890) to deal with competition problems. With regard to railroads, there was no minimum wage to consider, no worker safety to consider, no environmental impact to consider and no zoning to consider. The only challenges were logistics, money and buying enough land in a straight line. Sure, there are costs to that approach, but the railroad builders don't have to bear them
- maxharris 10y ago
  It is a mistake to neglect the influx of German philosophical ideas (Kant, Hegel, Marx) in the latter part of the 19th century. This led to a very sharp shift in views in all aspects of thought, including ethics and politics, and culminated in the Progressive movement. So this isn't nearly as simple as "people saw there were problems, and regulation was the natural development from there."
  - monknomo 10y ago
    I'm not really familiar with the changing landscape of philosophy in the 19th century, or how that pertains to political development. I'm also not saying that regulations are a natural development. I am saying that regulations were the development from the problems. Perhaps in another country, or across the multiverse, there were different reactions. My point is that the 19th century was not a regulation free paradise and that regulations did not arise in a vacuum. There were substantial externalities associated with the 19th century regulatory environment. As for today, we can talk overreach and rent seeking and all the other problems with excessive regulations - those are big components of our modern woes.

eldavido 10y ago

My friends and I talk about this a lot. We aren't living in the 1880s anymore. For one, we value life, health, and safety much more than they did back then, with things like OSHA, much more stringent labor laws (overtime, child labor), more types of insurance required for employers including unemployment and various disability coverage, environmental laws like CEQA/Clean Air Act, and tons of other stuff. But I think the biggest change is ultimately cultural. We just don't value growth today like we did back then. We want safe workplaces, and a clean environment. I also think there's a much greater tolerance for government bureaucracy today then there was in the 1880s, including all kinds of permits that take weeks to issue, multiple agencies overseeing everything at the state, local, and federal level, and just in general a huge expansion in the size of government. If you told someone from the 1880s that US government spending would rise to some 40% of GDP over 120 years, they'd think you were totally insane. I go back and forth on whether it's good or bad. It's a complicated question. It takes forever to get anything done, and yet, young Chinese nationals are coming to the US because their parents have utterly ruined their environment, they don't trust the safety of their food supply, and factories with hundreds of people in them burn down, killing everyone inside. I used to think the US and Europe were radically different places, but I'm coming to see they're more alike vs. different. It's really the US and China that are worlds apart.

maxharris 10y ago
I think (but am not completely certain) that we needed a high-growth environment to be rich enough to invent the technologies that give us safe workplaces and a clean environment. If that's true, I also wonder what safety and and living standard improvements we might be giving up because we don't have high growth today.
- wavefunction 10y ago
  >we might be giving up because we don't have high growth today If by this you mean our descendents. It would be fair to note that life for most was quite brutish and short in the "high-growth" period you're lauding. Would you have been a collier or among the more fortunate, I wonder?
  - maxharris 10y ago
    It was brutish and short for most people because there wasn't much wealth of any kind. How far would the combined fortunes of the industrialists gone in raising the standard of living had they been confiscated and distributed to everyone else? Not far at all, it turns out. 50 million people lived in the US in 1880, and Vanderbilt's $232 million fortune would have netted each of the the other 50,189,208 Americans around $4.62 each (around $114 in 2015 dollars). What they got in exchange from these captains of industry (steel, rail, oil, and a future where their children went on to live better than they did) was worth a heck of a lot more to their lives and livelihoods than a few fistfuls of coins. Even if you were Andrew Carnegie, you'd have no Xbox, no CT scanner, no supercomputer in your pocket, no access to the Internet, no way to jump between cities by air... Back then, all people were so poor, not just in material goods or safety technologies, but in knowledge. In the 19th century, they didn't know a damn thing about what actually caused cancer, so people routinely did incredibly stupid things (stupid to us, that is, with the knowledge we have today) when making dyes and many other chemical processes. Incredibly, the alternatives to all that were even worse. If you just sat at home and did nothing, what would you have to do? Play cards and starve to death? Books were still expensive, and remember what I said about all the things that even Carnegie wouldn't have access to in his time? Given all that, I'd rather start as a poor person today than be a rich person in 1830.
vacri 10y ago
As an example of changing values (though not 19th C), the Hoover Dam claimed 100-ish lives during its construction. That would be a scandalous number today.
- maxharris 10y ago
  Here's just one example of my point: we have TBMs (tunnel boring machines) today, which were made possible by 19th and 20th-century industrial development. During the construction of the Hoover Dam, the original bypass tunnels were created by drilling and blasting, which resulted in a number of those deaths. If they had TBMs back then, many people would been spared exposure to dangerous rock dust, explosives, falling rocks, etc.

monknomo 10y ago

We might have too much red tape right now, but to say that 19th century problems didn't create red tape is not quite correct. The Jungle was published in 1906, and was about 19th century problems. It lead to red tape regarding food safety. Taft used the Sherman Act (red tape from 1890) to deal with competition problems. With regard to railroads, there was no minimum wage to consider, no worker safety to consider, no environmental impact to consider and no zoning to consider. The only challenges were logistics, money and buying enough land in a straight line. Sure, there are costs to that approach, but the railroad builders don't have to bear them

maxharris 10y ago
It is a mistake to neglect the influx of German philosophical ideas (Kant, Hegel, Marx) in the latter part of the 19th century. This led to a very sharp shift in views in all aspects of thought, including ethics and politics, and culminated in the Progressive movement. So this isn't nearly as simple as "people saw there were problems, and regulation was the natural development from there."
- monknomo 10y ago
  I'm not really familiar with the changing landscape of philosophy in the 19th century, or how that pertains to political development. I'm also not saying that regulations are a natural development. I am saying that regulations were the development from the problems. Perhaps in another country, or across the multiverse, there were different reactions. My point is that the 19th century was not a regulation free paradise and that regulations did not arise in a vacuum. There were substantial externalities associated with the 19th century regulatory environment. As for today, we can talk overreach and rent seeking and all the other problems with excessive regulations - those are big components of our modern woes.