Chapter 1. How We Got Here - Post A
Economies used to evolve slowly. But in the past three centuries, they periodically went through a rapid, transformative change that created massive new opportunities at the same time that old structures were destroyed. Each of these revolutions was caused by the emergence of a new underlying economic driver. Each brought with it new infrastructures that reshaped society. We are living through one of those transformative changes right now, and it is creating once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to build new wealth.
When you're living through it, it can be difficult to put it in perspective. Until 10,000 years ago, your ancestors were hunter-gatherers. The primary economic driver was food - meat protein and foraged plants. Their technology slowly evolved from clubs to stone axes and from knives to spears. Imagine their excitement when they invented the first trap. And the bow and arrow – wow! Always on the move, taking what food and shelter they found along the way, our distant ancestors rarely deferred current consumption to make investments that would pay off in the future
Not that there were many investment choices. They may have salted or smoked meat with dried berries for pemmican (the original energy bar) to save for the winter, but that was pretty much the limit of their ability to invest for the future. So they couldn't build wealth and there wasn't much of an infrastructure – mostly animal trails through the woods, and maybe some caves near a year-round spring.
Then - paradigm shift! - life evolved to the Neolithic agrarian society where some of your great-great-great (you get the drift) grandparents farmed the land, saved seeds for next year's crop, developed water systems, and built houses. Town sprang up to market crops and provide a village to buy supplies. The agrarian society lasted for thousands of years – until 300 years ago, give or take.
(Others of your great, great, great, etc., grandparents lived in Northern latitudes where it was hard to grow much, so they regularly raided the agrarian folks after the harvest. Some of them settled in the warmer Southern climes and said they were a “government” and the raids were not raids, they were “taxes.” That actually happened, but that's a rant for another time.)
What drove wealth building in this new society was land and crops. If you had land you were wealthy. If not, not. European aristocracies and British royalty built the first great agrarian-era fortunes, while Texas land barons marked the end of that era. The enabling technology was pretty much limited to hand tools and horses. The infrastructure consisted of dirt roads and couriers on horseback.
The United States was discovered and settled toward the end of the agrarian society. Having a limitless supply of land, lots of water, and not many regulations, the pioneers built great wealth rapidly. (Hong Kong did the same thing in the last 50 years of the 20th century on only 400 square miles, so we know that land isn't the issue anymore.)