Perhaps the best argument for the life-giving value of production is that the number of people who can inhabit the Earth at any given time is a direct function of how much and how well they can produce. That is, human population itself depends on the quantity and quality of production.
We can observe this connection historically ― and see it operate in both directions. For example, historian Gordon Childe, in his book, What Happened in History, traces the “revolutionary innovations” and subsequent productive progress from the Stone Age, through the Bronze and Early Iron Ages, to the Greeks and Romans, observing that each period was “followed by such increases in population that, were reliable statistics available, each would be reflected by a conspicuous kink in the population graph.”
Conversely, historian Brian Ward-Perkins, in his book, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, notes that when the Roman economy collapsed, “the population had to fall. It is indeed thought that parts of the Levant did not regain the levels and density of population that they sustained in late Roman and early Arab times until well into the nineteenth, or even the twentieth century.”
Though measuring the two variables ― population and production ― can be difficult, in broad strokes the centuries make their relationship clear. Why this relationship holds is undoubtedly worth devoted study (and is the focus of this blog).
But that it holds is also worth contemplating in itself, if only to impress upon us this foundation of our survival.
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