From book Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. Bradford DeLong. 2022. Kindle online sample. Section 1.

From introduction:

Before 1870, almost all of humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population.

THEN CAME A GREAT SHIFT: INVENTION SPRINTED FORWARD, DOUBLING OUR TECHNOLOGICAL CAPABILITIES EACH GENERATION and utterly transforming the economy again and again.

Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia.

But it was not so.

…

When 1870–2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming, economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality, and broad rejection of the status quo.

Economist Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this UNPRECEDENTED EXPLOSION OF MATERIAL WEALTH OCCURRED, HOW IT TRANSFORMED THE GLOBE, AND WHY IT FAILED TO DELIVER US TO UTOPIA.

Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.

….

From book sample:

What I call the “long twentieth century” started with the WATERSHED-CROSSING EVENTS OF AROUND 1870—THE TRIPLE EMERGENCE OF GLOBALIZATION, THE INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH LAB, AND THE MODERN CORPORATION—which ushered in changes that began to pull the world out of the dire poverty that had been humanity’s lot for the previous ten thousand years, since the discovery of agriculture.

…

What I call the “long twentieth century” ended in 2010, with the world’s leading economic edge, the countries of the North Atlantic, still reeling from the Great Recession that had begun in 2008, and THEN AND NOW UNABLE TO RESUME ECONOMIC GROWTH AT ANYTHING NEAR THE AVERAGE PACE THAT HAD BEEN THE RULE SINCE 1870.

The years following 2010 were to bring large system-destabilizing waves of political and cultural anger from masses of citizens, all upset in different ways and for different reasons at the failure of the system of the twentieth century to work for them as they thought that it should.

…

In between, things were marvelous and terrible, but by the standards of all of the rest of human history, much more marvelous than terrible.

The 140 years FROM 1870 TO 2010 OF THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY WERE, I STRONGLY BELIEVE, THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL YEARS OF ALL HUMANITY’S CENTURIES.

And it was the first century in which the most important historical thread was what anyone would call the economic one, for it was the century that saw us end our near-universal dire material poverty.

…

My strong belief history should focus on the long twentieth century stands in contrast to what others—most notably the Marxist British historian Eric Hobsbawm—have focused on and called the “short twentieth century,” which lasted from the start of World War I in 1914 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Such others tend to see the nineteenth century as the long rise of democracy and capitalism, from 1776 to 1914, and THE SHORT TWENTIETH CENTURY AS ONE IN WHICH REALLY-EXISTING SOCIALISM AND FASCISM SHOOK THE WORLD.

Histories of centuries, long or short, are by definition grand narrative histories, built to tell the author’s desired story.

…

Setting these years, 1914–1991, apart as a century makes it easy for Hobsbawm to tell the story he wants to tell.

But it does so at the price of missing much of what I strongly believe is the bigger, more important story.

It is the one that runs FROM ABOUT 1870 TO 2010, FROM HUMANITY’S SUCCESS IN UNLOCKING THE GATE THAT HAD KEPT IT IN DIRE POVERTY UP TO ITS FAILURE TO MAINTAIN THE PACE OF THE RAPID UPWARD TRAJECTORY in human wealth that the earlier success had set in motion.

…

What follows is my grand narrative, my version of what is the most important story to tell of the history of the twentieth century.

It is a primarily economic story.

It naturally starts in 1870.

I believe it naturally stops in 2010.

As the genius, Dr. Jekyll–like, Austro-English-Chicagoan moral philosopher Friedrich August von HAYEK OBSERVED, THE MARKET ECONOMY CROWDSOURCES—INCENTIVIZES AND COORDINATES AT THE GRASSROOTS—SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS IT SETS.

…

Back before 1870 humanity did not have the technologies or the organizations to allow a market economy to pose the problem of how to make the economy rich.

So even though humanity had had market economies, or at least market sectors within its economies, for thousands of years BEFORE 1870, ALL MARKETS COULD DO WAS TO FIND CUSTOMERS FOR PRODUCERS OF LUXURIES and conveniences, and make the lives of the rich luxurious and of the middle class convenient and comfortable.

…

Things changed starting around 1870.

Then we got the institutions for organization and research and the technologies—WE GOT FULL GLOBALIZATION, THE INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH LABORATORY, AND THE MODERN CORPORATION.

These were the keys.

These unlocked the gate that had previously kept humanity in dire poverty.

The problem of making humanity rich could now be posed to the market economy, because it now had a solution.

…

On the other side of the gate, THE TRAIL TO UTOPIA CAME INTO VIEW.

AND EVERYTHING ELSE GOOD SHOULD HAVE FOLLOWED FROM THAT.

Much good did follow from that.

My estimate—or perhaps my very crude personal guess—of the average worldwide pace of what is at the core of humanity’s economic growth shot up from about 0.45 percent per year before 1870 to 2.1 percent per year afterward, truly a watershed boundary-crossing difference.

A 2.1 percent average growth for the 140 years from 1870 to 2010 is a multiplication by a factor of 21.5.

…

The growing power to create wealth and earn an income allowed humans to have more of the good things, the necessities, conveniences, and luxuries of life, and to better provide for themselves and their families.

THIS DOES NOT MEAN HUMANITY IN 2010 WAS 21.5 TIMES AS RICH IN MATERIAL-WELFARE TERMS AS IT HAD BEEN IN 1870.

There were six times as many people in 2010 as there were in 1870, and the resulting increase in resource scarcity would take away from human living standards and labor-productivity levels.

…

As a rough guess, AVERAGE WORLD INCOME PER CAPITA IN 2010 WOULD BE 8.8 TIMES WHAT IT WAS IN 1870, meaning an average income per capita in 2010 of perhaps $11,000 per year.

Hold these figures in your head as a very rough guide to the amount by which humanity was richer in 2010 than it was in 1870—and never forget the riches were vastly more unequally distributed around the globe in 2010 than they were in 1870.

…

Suppose we could go back in time to 1870 and tell people then how rich, relative to them, humanity would become by 2010.

How would they react?

MOST PEOPLE OF 1870 WOULD ALMOST SURELY THINK THE WORLD OF 2010 WOULD BE A PARADISE, A UTOPIA.

People would have 8.8 times the wealth?

Surely that would mean enough power to manipulate nature and organize humans that all but the most trivial of problems and obstacles hobbling humanity could be resolved.

But, we are still, at best, slouching toward utopia.

(end of section 1)

… …

(own comments)

“We are still, at best, slouching toward utopia.”

The author later says he believes a go along – get along centrist capitalism/socialism government, economy, and society has the best chance of bringing us utopia.

Personally believe tHAT far-off-corner libertarianism/capitalism has the best chance.

We All will progress Forward to utopia, but it will be against the wishes of half of people who will be rewarded by, experience and relish it nevertheless.

Reps must change, Dems must remain the same.

The start be All Republicans acceptance of HATomic philosophy reality:

47.5% of us are proton positives, 47.5% of us electron negatives, and 5% are quark shapeless-forms.

Positives move (We currently retreating) toward happy and prefer capitalism which brings tHAT.

Negatives move (currently defeating We) toward misery and prefer socialism which brings zat.

The shapeless-forms slide from side to side, depending on which is stronger, to survive and thrive.

Everyone is good but 47.5% are unfortunate and sing the wrong songs.

All be veracity and/or efficacy.

We’ll All go together as (mixed) purple people to wealth and happiness excess utopia, with dire but desired dem negatives fussing, dragging, nagging and firing us up forever.

(The Byrds songs Change Is Now, Chimes of Freedom, Wild Mountain Thyme)