TLDR;
- Economic development and technological advancement across mankind’s history can be framed as “chapters”.
- Chronologically order, each Chapter highlights the dominant economic activity of its time.
- This was/ is the ultimate driver of job creation, profits, and innovation - core aspects of any economy.
PREMISE 1: GLOBAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CAN BE BROKEN DOWN INTO SEMI-DISCRETE SEGMENTS
On one hand, the global economy is an enigmatic force.
It is constantly reshaping - creating and destroying wealth, lives and countries. Yet, when looked at from a historical perspective and if abstracted to a high-enough level, patterns also emerge. Therefore this first Premise supposes that the global economy has evolved (constantly changing) over long periods of time through certain somewhat-discrete eras - defined here as “chapters”.
This approach builds on my initial plan to think critically with the assistance of history. Though viewing economic development* through eras is not new, the abstractions to the global level and the observations of each are hopefully novel, in this post and others.
Although “Economic Development” is often used in the context of countries, this framework takes the bigger-picture approach to understand how the global economy evolved across time and countries. This takes the perspective of human civilisation in its entirety*, rather than that of select communities.*
Chapters can be defined through its dominant economic activity.
As described, I believe that, when abstracted to a high-enough level, patterns can emerge. This paves the way to cluster certain periods of time into a segment. Within this, I define each chapter by the predominant economic activity of its time.
The characteristics of this activity are as follows:
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Strong economic profitability, as organisations are able to differentiate themselves and out-compete due to the above.
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High investment, resources, investment and effort flow towards the predominant economic activity.
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High job creation potential, both in terms of quantity and quality. In other words, there are new ways to create value for society.
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Socio-economic premium, as individuals working in these sectors do comparatively well.
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Emergence of specialised hubs, as agglomerations of assets and people working in these sectors outperform other locations.
on.
All points are in relative terms, meaning that multiple economic activities can co-exist - just that one is better than another. These points also capture a key concept underpinning this framework - Differentiation.
< as a reminder to self: Points 5 and 6 breeds domestic inequality and international inequality, for the future post>
There are Seven Principle Economic Activities that have come to Define each Chapter
Applying the characteristics above, I suppose that the global economy has been evolved through the following chapters:
- Consumption
- Resource Development
- Manufacturing and Craftsmanship
- Global Trade
- Modern Services
- Digitalisation
- Platforms
I am aware of the recency bias for some of these chapters (platforms for example), but I believe they have been profoundly impactful to justify their inclusion into the list. Otherwise, just as this post explained the discrete/consistent patterns observed to define chapters, the next post adds on a further layer of commentary onto each of these.This more or less ends this post by summarising the principles of defining each chapter, but for a lengthier exposition of each of these chapters, please read on.