Thanks Rob Tye for your thoughtful comments. Here is our response. We 
associate the First Industrial Revolution with automated textile machinery 
(that produced the most important manufactured good of the time) and the 
steam engine. Of course, there were other innovations as well, such as major 
advances in metallurgy. The mass production factory, Fordism and Taylorism 
did not come until the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a result of the 
introduction of the unit-drive electric motor that replaced the central 
power source of a large steam engine that distributed its power to 
individual machines by shafts and belts. That others than Europeans were 
able to produce some commodities in large quantities in factory-style 
arrangements is beyond doubt. Incidentally, the Venetians produced a mass of 
galleys using a canal-based assembly line in preparation for the 
confrontation with the Turks that culminated in the battle of Lepanto. But 
the pervasive use of mechanical power not tied to fast running streams and 
automated production of important consumer goods were unique to Europe in 
the First Industrial Revolution. (For a review of the literature on Chinese 
and European productivity and technology in the mid-18th century which 
suggests that Chinese productivity was not on a par with Britain's in 1737 
see Clark's "A Farewell to Alms".).

Incidentally, for reasons spelled out in our book (and a CJE article by 
Lipsey and Carlaw) we do not accept changes in productivity (whether 
multi-factor or otherwise) as a good measure of techn;ogical change. About 
half the profession agrees with us while the other half continues to use it 
as a measure of technological change.

We were careful to say that our list of GPTs was not intended to be 
complete, just illustrative, although it probably covers the majority of 
them. Money is clearly a highly transforming technology in freeing us from 
the limitations of barter but how important was the invention of coinage (in 
China at an uncertain date and in Mesopotamia in the mid 3rd century BC) is 
uncertain at us, but it would be interesting to research that matter 
further. Is coinage narrowly understood, or money widely understood, a GPT? 
If so, we would make it money, not just coinage?  (1) It is widely used 
through the economy. (2)  It was improved over time and, if we include paper 
money, over a very long time. (3) It has the usually stated multiple 
purposes as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a means of stored 
value. Important and transforming it surely was and it can at least be 
argued that it fulfils the structural definition of a GPT.

regards
Richard Lipsey (in consultation with Cliff Bekar)


--------------------------------------------------
From: "Rob Tye" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 2:57 AM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [SHOE] risk and Far East philosophy/economics

> Prof Lipsey
>
> That European prosperity and technology rapidly outpaced China after about
> 1800 is surely correct.  But I am delighted to see you take a stand 
> against
> 'Chinese mentality' type explanations of that matter.   As historians we
> will inevitably tend to reverse engineer our evidence, but to do so merely
> by invoking mentality seems to just too associated with intellectual
> slovenliness, and worse.
>
> If I understand your position correctly, then you associate factory
> production rather closely with modern Europe in general and Fordism in
> particular.  This I do not accept.  Wang Anshih did not get five billion
> coins a year made in kitchen ovens, nor were the 90 million bricks in the
> Jetavana stupa made in anyone's back yard.  Factory production within a
> Fordist economic environment however is perhaps more of a modern European
> phenomenon - but surely we must then ask what the roots of that Fordist
> economic environment were?  It is at this point I think we find an 
> important
> influence that China had on Europe.
>
> Berkeley (The Querist) is surely correct to point to high Chinese
> productivity in 1737 - I do not think it excessively sarcastic to suggest
> that the only thing England was mass producing at that time was stately
> homes.  And the obvious key fundamental element in Berkeley's 
> proto-Fordism,
> got from a Chinese model, is the realisation that you have to bite the
> bullet and actually pay your workers, rather than truck them.
>
> In 1682 William Petty thought 12 copper coins per household was an 
> adequate
> money supply for the English working classes.  When Wang Anshih took power
> in China around 1060, there were already maybe six thousand copper coins 
> per
> household in circulation, but he saw this a greatly inadequate and 
> increased
> production by at least an extra 100 coins per household per annum.
>
> One final point - coinage does not seem to be on your list of General
> Purpose Technologies.  Am curious to understand why it was excluded, if 
> so.
>
> Regards
>
> Rob Tye, York UK
>