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> Slickwater fracking caused huge changes in the economy of the US. Look at natural gas as a fraction of energy use in 1970 vs. today. But that's more of the s

> Slickwater fracking caused huge changes in the economy of the US. Look at natural gas as a fraction of energy use in 1970 vs. today. But that's more of the same commodity that we've been using since the days of Standard Oil. Has fracking increased economic productivity or measurable gains in quality of life? > Achieving efficient combustion turbines (comparable to steam turbines) wasn't really possible until ~1980. And ~1980 is very close to the cut-off (1970s) that the book argues things haven't change much. The book does have chapters on transportation, including airplanes.

pfdietz 2y ago
The large drop in price is an example of "major innovations that have changed society and the economy in large ways". It has caused a fundamental restructuring of the US electrical energy supply, moving from coal to natural gas. I am merely going by the criterion the post above me was giving. We can see other examples of changes that are so large that quantitative becomes qualitative. The cost of passenger air travel dropped by an order of magnitude (adjusted for inflation) over the time period. SpaceX's Falcon 9 has done the same, or even more so, to the space launch market. US steel production has overwhelmingly moved to recycled production in EAFs. (BTW, the fuel tanks of Falcon 9 are assembled using a technology called Friction Stir Welding. This technology, which was a game changer for welding aluminum alloys, was invented in the 1990s.) Yet another example, and another one illustrating the difference between invention and adoption, is standardized container shipping. There was a very long incubation period where shipping containers were experimented with, but standardization, and then widespread adoption, took decades. The real burst was in the period since 1980. From 1980 to 2021 the mass of cargo shipping internationally on standardized container ships increased by more than two orders of magnitude. Globalization of production is about as significant a change to the society and the economy as you can get.

pfdietz 2y ago

The large drop in price is an example of "major innovations that have changed society and the economy in large ways". It has caused a fundamental restructuring of the US electrical energy supply, moving from coal to natural gas. I am merely going by the criterion the post above me was giving. We can see other examples of changes that are so large that quantitative becomes qualitative. The cost of passenger air travel dropped by an order of magnitude (adjusted for inflation) over the time period. SpaceX's Falcon 9 has done the same, or even more so, to the space launch market. US steel production has overwhelmingly moved to recycled production in EAFs. (BTW, the fuel tanks of Falcon 9 are assembled using a technology called Friction Stir Welding. This technology, which was a game changer for welding aluminum alloys, was invented in the 1990s.) Yet another example, and another one illustrating the difference between invention and adoption, is standardized container shipping. There was a very long incubation period where shipping containers were experimented with, but standardization, and then widespread adoption, took decades. The real burst was in the period since 1980. From 1980 to 2021 the mass of cargo shipping internationally on standardized container ships increased by more than two orders of magnitude. Globalization of production is about as significant a change to the society and the economy as you can get.