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Great set of categories, based on availability of food and the work effort required to obtain it. Such a top level and over arching viewpoint seems reasonable to me - but as you say, honest (tactful, respectful) critique can lead to enhanced understanding.

Are there any metrics of such energy expenditure per capita or per man-hour that might support your thesis, presumably with at least a modest if not appreciable step function over the previous threshold?

I suspect even SWAGs would be educational and illustrative (with suitable caveats).

Unfortunately it appears that there are 5 or 6 different ways of expressing energy and power within the English and the metric measuring systems. Hard to remember all of the conversions, etc.

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Your definitions for commercial and industrial societies is overly limiting. The difference between industrial and commercial societies is organizational and technological, its relation to fossil fuels is a situational artifact. For example, early steam engines in American used wood as fuel rather than coal. In England, coal was used as it was readily available and the trees had been cut done long ago. Also, early textile manufacture using the inventions typically used to define the start of the industrial revolution were often powered by water, a tech in used since the 12 century.

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Dec 20, 2023·edited Dec 20, 2023Author

Thanks for the comment.

Please keep in mind that my posts are limited excerpts from my book "From Poverty to Progress." I believe that I deal with all your points in more detail in my book. I will give a brief overview below:

1) I am not sure why my definition is "overly limiting."

What societies are excluded from that definition? I would argue that my definition is precise enough to sort entire societies into meaningful categories that help us to understand history at a conceptual level.

2) Yes, there are profound technological differences between Commercial societies and Industrial societies. Most of them stem from the use of fossil fuels. That is why creating definitions based on food and energy usage is so useful.

3) How would you make the separation between commercial and industrial societies on an organizational basis? Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a way of doing so.

4) The inclusion of fossil fuels is absolutely essential to understanding those two types of societies. It is not a "situational artifact." Yes, there is a transition between initial wood, water, wing, and muscle in manufacturing to the use of fossil fuels, but that is a profound change that affected every element of society.

I do admit the possibility of an industrial society in the distant future that does not use fossil fuels at all, but that is purely hypothetical at this point. If it occurs, I will revise the definition.

5) You are correct that early steam engines used wood. That is exactly why the US in the 19th Century was a Commercial society. The shift to fossil fuels later in the 19th Century was a key reason for the profound changes that occurred in American society.

6) Yes, England used coal before 1800 for home heating in London. Home heating did not transform societies, and the rest of England used wood for home heating. But English society overall used wood. That is why it was a Commercial society.

It was only with the widespread adoption of railroads that general coal use in England really took off outside of home heating in London. In addition, coal was not widely used in manufacturing, except in a few key industries.

It is a myth that manufacturing adopted coal in manufacturing because of a scarcity of trees. This was true of home heating in London.

7) You are correct in that the early textile industry was powered by water (and wind in the Low Countries). That is exactly why they were Commercial societies, and why they were so different from Industrial societies.

8) All categories have edge cases that are subject to disagreement. That does not invalidate the definitions or the benefits of categorization.

9) All of my definitions stem from one factor: how a society transforms the natural environment to create food and useful energy. That gives the definitions a tightness that other potential definitions do not.

Can you come up with another set of definitions that is that useful? I do not know of any.

Anyway, thanks for the comment. One of the best things about Substack is the great discussion in the comments.

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I see where you are coming from. Using energy is one way to see things. For organization I would suggest capitalism as one of the breakpoints. Another would be the development of axial religions. In between you would have (in Europe only) the rise of WEIRD psychology, and so on.

How are Fishing societies different than hunter-gatherer societies. Both are extracting the naturally available resources.

Similarly how is horticulture really different than agrarian? Both are planting and harvesting domesticated plant resources. They would both be sedentary as opposed to nomadic?

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I think this graphic shows the usefulness of Society Types. It enables us to understand human history from a very high level, and it helps us to understand the origins of modern progress in a very different way from economic historians.

https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/all-of-human-history-in-one-graphic

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1) Not sure how capitalism is a breakpoint. It just leads to a discussion of exactly what capitalism is. I would argue that both Commercial societies and Industrial societies are capitalist, but then you have to exclude Totalitarian regimes which clearly are not.

Totalitarian regimes are very different from Liberal democratic capitalist societies, but they share more in common with each other compared to other society types.

Which is more similar USA, USSR and Hunter-Gatherer tribes?

2) Axial religions were important developments, but I would argue that they were exclusively in Agrarian societies. The concept of society type explains why.

3) "and so on" is exactly right. You can categorize in many different ways, but doing so based on food and energy is by far the most useful and comprehensive. That is why the concept of Society Type has stood the test of time.

4) All of your other questions are answered in my original definitions, and I will be posting on every society type over the coming weeks.

My guess is it will gradually become obvious that this method of categorization is more useful than all others.

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I will read these and think about them. However I don't think you can assert that people "got richer" from the transition from hunter gatherer to horticulture to agrarian. Elites did because the size of the population from which they extracted income rose, but the people themselves seem to have gotten poorer, as least as suggested by things like statute.

https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/how-have-we-changed-since-our-species-first-appeared/#:~:text=10%2C000%20years%20ago%3A%20European%20males,humans%20occurred%20at%20this%20time.

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It is important to distinguish between "change" and "progress."

Progress leads to an increased standard of living for the masses. Change does not.

Cultural Evolution and Society types are key concepts that give us a great way to understand how societies change.

My work is basically an extension of those key concepts to understand progress.

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Yes, I agree with you 100%

I never made that claim. In fact, I repeatedly state the opposite (although not in this post).

My claim is that human material progress started with Commercial societies circa 1200. All previous society types did not generate increased standard of living for the masses, nor could they.

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Well you this in the post:

Hunter-Gatherer societies are uniformly poor by the standards of any other society. Horticultural, Agrarian, Commercial and Industrial societies were step-by-step wealthier than the previous society.

Based on the height decline with the onset of agriculture, I wouldn't say this was right, unless it was specified that we were speaking of the elites in the society only.

I see you are a fan of Peter Turchin and Joe Henrich. I'm a huge fan of both. Also Boyd and Richerson, and for Xmas I am getting Michael Mukrishna's new book (he was one of the Henrich's PhD students, while Henrich worked with Boyd or Richerson, so that's three generations of cultural evolution researchers.

You have a lot of material here. I'll well take me a while to get through it.

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