I agree this is puzzling, and I’d love to see more discussion of this.
However, it seems to be that at least in principle there could be a pretty boring explanation: The HGH is correct about the fundamental trend, and the literature on the Industrial Revolution has correctly identified (and maybe explained) a major instance of noise.
Note also that the phenomenon that social behavior that is individually contingent is nevertheless governed by simple macro-laws with few parameters is relatively ubiquitous. E.g. the exact timing of all major innovations since the Industrial Revolution (electricity, chemical engineering, computers, …) seems fairly contingent, and yet overall the growth rate is remarkably close to constant. Similarly for the rest of Kaldor’s facts.
I agree this is puzzling, and I’d love to see more discussion of this.
However, it seems to be that at least in principle there could be a pretty boring explanation: The HGH is correct about the fundamental trend, and the literature on the Industrial Revolution has correctly identified (and maybe explained) a major instance of noise.
Note also that the phenomenon that social behavior that is individually contingent is nevertheless governed by simple macro-laws with few parameters is relatively ubiquitous. E.g. the exact timing of all major innovations since the Industrial Revolution (electricity, chemical engineering, computers, …) seems fairly contingent, and yet overall the growth rate is remarkably close to constant. Similarly for the rest of Kaldor’s facts.