- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
They did not have running water and central heating in the late 18th century. I can dispense with most of the wonders of modern civilisation if need be, as long as I am allowed to keep running water and central heating.
However, global warming may yet trigger a major nuclear exchange.
As recently as 50 years ago, plenty of people in Europe and the U.S. didn't have central heating or running water (cold, let alone hot).
It is not that big of a deal to not have these things. Admittedly it is easier to turn a tap and have hot water come out, but is it really so important?
Before central heating, people would use oil furnaces in their basement to heat their house - but I made the tacit assumption that those were going to go away long before central heating would. And distributing firewood to every household in Scandinavia would be a major undertaking.
But my family lived in Steamboat Springs where it gets to 40 below zero (F and C) in the winter, and they only had coal stoves. Their domestic water supply was a pump in the kitchen, and a cistern. This was in the 1940s.
We lived in various European countries and Australia in the 1960s and 1970s in houses that did not have central heat. It's really a pretty recent innovation in rural areas...
But I'm assuming here that coal and oil stoves for private use will fall out of use before district heating in the event of a serious disruption of industrial society.
There are quite a lot of great ww2 pictures with big outdoors piles of chopped wood in swedish cities, but google was not with me today in finding any. And yes, it was a major undertaking.
(Saw btw a neat little propaganda film from 1941 that emphasised the values of riding your bike. "You will be saving energy for where it is needed better, you will feel well and you will even look better!")
But if we are to rebuild for a low energy future I think insulating is the first step. We have houses in Sweden that are heated by leftover heat from home appliances and the inhabitants. A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Central heating is overrated. I haven't had central heating for the past five and a half years, living in a "modern" apartment in industrialized Japan, and I get along just fine.
But I'm just being silly and pedantic, here, and not meaningfully engaging with any of the primary issues in your diary.
Also, I'm in VietNam right now, and pressurised or drinkable tap water is not really existing. Most buildings have an individual water tank, and only bottles allow for drinkable water. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
Textile mill technology was developed in the 18th century in England, then borrowed (or stolen) for introduction in the USA. The technology was as mobile as the person who understood it. Similarly, 19th century gold mines in California and Colorado were generally run by European engineers. 20th century mines in South America were frequently run by American engineers.
Today, Global Foundries is setting up a new chip fab using technology from the USA and Far East, and money from the Middle East.
What is the difference?
By contrast, today you can gut the factory, ship the machines halfway around the world and put them in a factory there. And your engineers will not take a month to get there, but a couple of days.
I think a persuasive argument can be made that British financial capital, at least, was not seriously constrained by those capital controls.
By 1880 there was a need by those who held the capital, and who had great influence over the government, to find profitable investment opportunities abroad lest they cause the price of labor in Britain to rise and the return on their existing investments to decline. So long as they could manipulate the government into providing basic security in a destination country, such as India or South Africa, on pretext of colonial rivalry or "national interest" they could manufacture rails and locomotives in the U.K. from existing plants, build and operate railroads, etc. in India and South Africa, thereby bringing vast hinterlands into the reach, through their control, of "the market." As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
(This was also during the the first period of globalization so Mig's comment applies similarly to it.) A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
The technology was as mobile as the person who understood it
Only as long as the technology was lite, using machines made of wood and other natural materials a craftsman could assemble. The colonists and later Americans did develop foundries and metal-working, but it took time to build an industrial infrastructure. It wasn't as quick and easy as you describe.
http://www.nps.gov/spar/upload/Tho%20Blanchard%20bulletin%201206%20A.doc
I suppose the first thing to do would be to choose some dates for comparison, say 1850 and 2000...
The Blanchard story is interesting, but more a story of an individual craftsman's ingeniosity than the mobility of technology.
Look at this house that Bronson Alcott lived in in Concord, for example. And he was broke most of the time.
