6 ms·

The history of economic growth is a tale of cleanliness

42 points by prostoalex 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
What's up with the misspelling of cleanliness in the title? How could that slip by an editor? Maybe it is some kind of experiment to see if they get more clicks with a deliberate error.
- llarsson 6y ago
  A few years ago, I would notice more misspellings in headers and captions than in the main body of text. This was especially true back when the textarea widget got spell-checking, but input fields did not. Could something like that be at fault here, as well? Do input fields have spell-checking across browsers these days?
  - _trampeltier 6y ago
    Browsers do check, but Firexfox for ex. still has a bug. He does not check the word, if you leave the word with moving the cursor away (not a space, dot or something like that on the end).
  - sp332 6y ago
    By default, single-line input fields in Firefox (including textareas) don't have spellcheck enabled. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Layout.spellcheckDefault http://kb.mozillazine.org/Layout.spellcheckDefault So spellcheck might be enabled for the body text but not for the field where the headline goes.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  Making stupid 'errors' in headlines/summaries was a blatant thing in slashdot a while back (may still do, I don't know). It provoked plenty of rageposts, which I'm sure is exactly why /. did it, by people who never seemed to guess they were having their chain jerked. Again and again. It's why I stopped reading it. It probably works in some sense but it's a counterproductive tactic if you ask me.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  Did you not understand the meaning of the title? And if you did understand it, what does it matter if the word is misspelled? Language is a tool to convey meaning, not to give nitpickers a field day.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    It is adopted from the print edition title which it says was "Cleanliness is next to growth". However the print edition apparently does not contain the same misspelling. Originally I thought there was some special meaning to the misspelling, i.e., it was done deliberately and the reason would be revealed in the article.
new2628 6y ago
Yet sidewalks in cities around most of the developed world drown in dog/cat poop and pee, something that would have seemed strange a generation ago, and still seems if you travel from a less pet-crazy place.
- chadcmulligan 6y ago
  really? Big fines in Australian cities if you don't pick up your dog poo. Aliens watching would assume Dogs are the masters - humans follow them around and pick up the poo.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    We have these liberally spread about: https://www.robi-ag.ch https://www.robi-ag.ch (I am disappointed they changed the logo. The old one was: https://grundig9000.com/storm/robidog.jpg https://grundig9000.com/storm/robidog.jpg )
    - vladvasiliu 6y ago
      Are they well stocked, too? We've got plenty of those around Paris, especially close to parks and green squares. They often look empty. And in any case, people don't seem to have their own bags either. I don't have hard numbers, but it's generally a good idea to look where you step on the sidewalks. Although it's true that subjectively it seems somewhat better than a 5-10 years ago.
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        yes, well stocked (just checked 3 different ones today).
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    maybe the humans are parasites on the dogs, although seeing the humans throw out the poop later would certainly complicate the graph of life the aliens were developing for our planet.
enkid 6y ago
Anyone know how to get around the paywall? Private tab doesn't work.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Get your credit card out?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ur-whale 6y ago
  http://archive.is/EEOX4 http://archive.is/EEOX4
vwat 6y ago
What a great article. It points out that the horrifying diseases of that time were rationalized as being bad luck or divine retribution. People didn’t have any particular desire to get to the bottom of it. Germ theory earned its advocates public lampooning. The things is that it’s exactly the same today. I was reading about how Botox injections have been observed to reduce depression. Doctors claimed that it was because of a feedback loop between frowning muscles and mood. Modern, certified doctors grasped onto this theory with white knuckles, that “frowny face bad.” It’s unbelievable. Obviously follow up studies showed the the location of the injection makes no difference in the anti-depressive effect. It just blows my mind. They always create a theory that does one thing: terminates the line of inquiry. Yes, it’s frowning so there’s nothing more to be seen or done with this. I think subconsciously, it is too emotionally upsetting for them to have to basically go back to the drawing board, rewrite a bunch of basic biology and medicine. There is some kind of mental block there. And just think that thousands and thousands of things like this are around — clues being ignored that could literally save people’s lives and prevent unimaginable suffering. I had psychosis and keto cured it. My doctors literally ignored me when I told them. I asked, should this be looked into? Shouldn’t you be raising the alarm about this weird thing? Shouldn’t we see if it works in other people? No no no... always talking in circles without ever addressing what I’ve said. Science will vindicate me eventually... but in the meantime a whole lot of people will suffer needlessly.
nutshell89 6y ago
This another case that seems intuitive to me (I can't read the rest of article) since: * Cities basically serve as a multiplier for economic output, enabling economies of scale (because of lots of people live near one another). * That increase in population also leads to increased risk from pathogens which can spread with unsanitary conditions or over-crowding and work to reduce urban population (Corona, Queens - one of the harder hit areas of NYC during the pandemic has lower share of 1-2 person households and a higher share of 3-7 person households than the city overall). * It's only been since the 20th century when most of the world's population has lived in cities, so their growth has likely been encouraged by practices and technologies like better sanitation and wastewater treatment, hand-washing, vaccines, and modern epidemiology. What I'm curious about is this: could computing and the internet recreate the broad multiplicative benefit on economic output that cities create? Or will the internet in the 21st century continue to serve only the winners in a winner-take-all market?
- jrott 6y ago
  I'm optimistic that computing and the internet could recreate the economic benefits of cities. At this point though collaboration tools still have a ways to go. The other part that really needs to improve is the random discovery that comes from being packed in with so many other people. Places like HN provide a large part of that but there needs to be more of them.
ur-whale 6y ago
http://archive.is/EEOX4 http://archive.is/EEOX4
eli_gottlieb 6y ago
I mean, yes, you would expect basically any harm to public health to be a significant drag on the economy. Kinda like this pandemic we're going through right now.
andrewl 6y ago
This sounds familiar: So too did stubborn citizens grow weary of the lecturing of muckraking do-gooders. By 1854, outbreaks of infectious disease had killed thousands of Londoners of all classes, and yet an editorial in The Times huffed, “We prefer to take our chance of cholera and the rest rather than be bullied into health.”
smileypete 6y ago
For a far more nuanced and detailed look at life in London in the 1840s, read 'London Labour and the London Poor' by Henry Mayhew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_P... https://archive.org/details/londonlabourand00mayhgoog https://archive.org/details/londonlabourand00mayhgoog http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998 The economist article is OK but a little onesided and cheerleading from their typical angle.

42 points by prostoalex 6y ago

What's up with the misspelling of cleanliness in the title? How could that slip by an editor? Maybe it is some kind of experiment to see if they get more clicks with a deliberate error.

llarsson 6y ago
A few years ago, I would notice more misspellings in headers and captions than in the main body of text. This was especially true back when the textarea widget got spell-checking, but input fields did not. Could something like that be at fault here, as well? Do input fields have spell-checking across browsers these days?
- _trampeltier 6y ago
  Browsers do check, but Firexfox for ex. still has a bug. He does not check the word, if you leave the word with moving the cursor away (not a space, dot or something like that on the end).
- sp332 6y ago
  By default, single-line input fields in Firefox (including textareas) don't have spellcheck enabled. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Layout.spellcheckDefault http://kb.mozillazine.org/Layout.spellcheckDefault So spellcheck might be enabled for the body text but not for the field where the headline goes.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
Making stupid 'errors' in headlines/summaries was a blatant thing in slashdot a while back (may still do, I don't know). It provoked plenty of rageposts, which I'm sure is exactly why /. did it, by people who never seemed to guess they were having their chain jerked. Again and again. It's why I stopped reading it. It probably works in some sense but it's a counterproductive tactic if you ask me.
ur-whale 6y ago
Did you not understand the meaning of the title? And if you did understand it, what does it matter if the word is misspelled? Language is a tool to convey meaning, not to give nitpickers a field day.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  It is adopted from the print edition title which it says was "Cleanliness is next to growth". However the print edition apparently does not contain the same misspelling. Originally I thought there was some special meaning to the misspelling, i.e., it was done deliberately and the reason would be revealed in the article.

new2628 6y ago

Yet sidewalks in cities around most of the developed world drown in dog/cat poop and pee, something that would have seemed strange a generation ago, and still seems if you travel from a less pet-crazy place.

chadcmulligan 6y ago
really? Big fines in Australian cities if you don't pick up your dog poo. Aliens watching would assume Dogs are the masters - humans follow them around and pick up the poo.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  We have these liberally spread about: https://www.robi-ag.ch https://www.robi-ag.ch (I am disappointed they changed the logo. The old one was: https://grundig9000.com/storm/robidog.jpg https://grundig9000.com/storm/robidog.jpg )
  - vladvasiliu 6y ago
    Are they well stocked, too? We've got plenty of those around Paris, especially close to parks and green squares. They often look empty. And in any case, people don't seem to have their own bags either. I don't have hard numbers, but it's generally a good idea to look where you step on the sidewalks. Although it's true that subjectively it seems somewhat better than a 5-10 years ago.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      yes, well stocked (just checked 3 different ones today).
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  maybe the humans are parasites on the dogs, although seeing the humans throw out the poop later would certainly complicate the graph of life the aliens were developing for our planet.

enkid 6y ago

Anyone know how to get around the paywall? Private tab doesn't work.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Get your credit card out?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ur-whale 6y ago
http://archive.is/EEOX4 http://archive.is/EEOX4

vwat 6y ago

What a great article. It points out that the horrifying diseases of that time were rationalized as being bad luck or divine retribution. People didn’t have any particular desire to get to the bottom of it. Germ theory earned its advocates public lampooning. The things is that it’s exactly the same today. I was reading about how Botox injections have been observed to reduce depression. Doctors claimed that it was because of a feedback loop between frowning muscles and mood. Modern, certified doctors grasped onto this theory with white knuckles, that “frowny face bad.” It’s unbelievable. Obviously follow up studies showed the the location of the injection makes no difference in the anti-depressive effect. It just blows my mind. They always create a theory that does one thing: terminates the line of inquiry. Yes, it’s frowning so there’s nothing more to be seen or done with this. I think subconsciously, it is too emotionally upsetting for them to have to basically go back to the drawing board, rewrite a bunch of basic biology and medicine. There is some kind of mental block there. And just think that thousands and thousands of things like this are around — clues being ignored that could literally save people’s lives and prevent unimaginable suffering. I had psychosis and keto cured it. My doctors literally ignored me when I told them. I asked, should this be looked into? Shouldn’t you be raising the alarm about this weird thing? Shouldn’t we see if it works in other people? No no no... always talking in circles without ever addressing what I’ve said. Science will vindicate me eventually... but in the meantime a whole lot of people will suffer needlessly.

nutshell89 6y ago

This another case that seems intuitive to me (I can't read the rest of article) since: * Cities basically serve as a multiplier for economic output, enabling economies of scale (because of lots of people live near one another). * That increase in population also leads to increased risk from pathogens which can spread with unsanitary conditions or over-crowding and work to reduce urban population (Corona, Queens - one of the harder hit areas of NYC during the pandemic has lower share of 1-2 person households and a higher share of 3-7 person households than the city overall). * It's only been since the 20th century when most of the world's population has lived in cities, so their growth has likely been encouraged by practices and technologies like better sanitation and wastewater treatment, hand-washing, vaccines, and modern epidemiology. What I'm curious about is this: could computing and the internet recreate the broad multiplicative benefit on economic output that cities create? Or will the internet in the 21st century continue to serve only the winners in a winner-take-all market?

jrott 6y ago
I'm optimistic that computing and the internet could recreate the economic benefits of cities. At this point though collaboration tools still have a ways to go. The other part that really needs to improve is the random discovery that comes from being packed in with so many other people. Places like HN provide a large part of that but there needs to be more of them.

ur-whale 6y ago

http://archive.is/EEOX4 http://archive.is/EEOX4

eli_gottlieb 6y ago

I mean, yes, you would expect basically any harm to public health to be a significant drag on the economy. Kinda like this pandemic we're going through right now.

andrewl 6y ago

This sounds familiar: So too did stubborn citizens grow weary of the lecturing of muckraking do-gooders. By 1854, outbreaks of infectious disease had killed thousands of Londoners of all classes, and yet an editorial in The Times huffed, “We prefer to take our chance of cholera and the rest rather than be bullied into health.”

smileypete 6y ago

For a far more nuanced and detailed look at life in London in the 1840s, read 'London Labour and the London Poor' by Henry Mayhew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_P... https://archive.org/details/londonlabourand00mayhgoog https://archive.org/details/londonlabourand00mayhgoog http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998 The economist article is OK but a little onesided and cheerleading from their typical angle.