Yes, it’s a possible story. And yes, wars and plagues impact tech development and infrastructure all the time. But I find it hard to think about how to draw a principled distinction between local growth slowdowns and hitting local limits to technological growth.
For example, in medieval Europe the Black Plague definitely depopulated the continent in ways that affected lots and lots of things, and there was no way they could reasonably have known how to do better. Resolving the plague wasn’t possible because the solutions were beyond the local limits of technological growth. If the same plague struck today, that wouldn’t happen, because we have the tools to deal with it. We understand sanitation, and disease vectors, and we can develop vaccines. It would be a blip of a decade and a few percent GDP growth, rather than half the population and centuries of recovery.
Yes, it’s a possible story. And yes, wars and plagues impact tech development and infrastructure all the time. But I find it hard to think about how to draw a principled distinction between local growth slowdowns and hitting local limits to technological growth.
For example, in medieval Europe the Black Plague definitely depopulated the continent in ways that affected lots and lots of things, and there was no way they could reasonably have known how to do better. Resolving the plague wasn’t possible because the solutions were beyond the local limits of technological growth. If the same plague struck today, that wouldn’t happen, because we have the tools to deal with it. We understand sanitation, and disease vectors, and we can develop vaccines. It would be a blip of a decade and a few percent GDP growth, rather than half the population and centuries of recovery.