In August 1932, at a time of a secondry plunge in the Great Depression, a
Saturday Evening Post reporter asked Keynes if there had been anything
similar before. "Yes. It was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four
hundred years."
Quite what 400 years Keynes was referring to I don't know but my home town
of Coventry had a Dark Age of some length when the wool trade left it in
the late 16th century. At that time, Coventry had about 5,000 inhabitants
but was such a rich city that its wool merchants had donated enough money
to build two large churches and a cathedral (all with very tall steeples)
more or less simultaneously in the 14th century. However, the wool trade
left it and Coventry then fell into a stupor for at least 100 years until
the Huguenots, fleeing persecution in France, set up silk weaving. And then
its superb engineers set up the beginnigs of a prosperous watch industry.
It took something extraordinary to jolt Coventry out of its recession. This
is something that the great economist, Joseph Schumpeter. spoke about. I
think the same will apply to the Western world while China, India and the
rest try to catch up. If they ever do, of course. I foresee catastrophic
problems for them. The technology of the future to replace the present
industrial era? DNA-based is my guess.
Keith
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