Apparently the relevant unit in the last singularity was Western Europe; Britain was too small to support the industrial revolution by itself. From the May American Economic Review: This paper sets out to test, with a formal CGE model, the role of trade with the New World, and trade itself, in explaining the growth of productivity and income in Britain in the Industrial Revolution era. We find, to our surprise, that the New World was only very modestly important, even by the 1850s. Had the Americas not existed, or not been discovered, the effects on productivity and income growth would have been perceptible, but the Industrial Revolution would have looked much as it does to us today. There were ready substitutes for the cotton, sugar, corn and timber of the New World in Eastern Europe, the Near East and South Asia.
We need a new empire of liberty to increase TFP even more so we can all live forever by uploading ourselves to computers, after which we can start over again at a point of our liking. We have to force everyone into our non-zero sum game. The United Provinces, United Kingdom, and United States. What a run.
> We need a new empire of liberty [...] to force everyone
How simple life would be if, whenever something worked, more of the same would work more.
We need a new empire of liberty to increase TFP even more so we can all live forever by uploading ourselves to computers, after which we can start over again at a point of our liking. We have to force everyone into our non-zero sum game. The United Provinces, United Kingdom, and United States. What a run.