Hello, I am a member of the Progress Studies community. The original poster posted in our Slack channel. I am cross-posting so you EA can see it. There is in fact a huge and growing literature on the historical impact of current economic development. I think it is one of the most exciting trends among historian. You mentioned a few articles, but there are far more. In addition, there are dozens of awesome books that at least touch on the subject. I want to point out that this literature is about UNDERSTANDING the present by studying the past. How ACTIONABLE the conclusions is less clear. I do believe that a study of history is the only way the we can increase our chances of making positive contributions to the future. The biggest impact is letting us understand what has been tried before and the results of those actions as best as we can tell. Even if all we learn is that an idea has been tried before and the results were poor, that is of HUGE benefit. You seem more interested in values than material conditions. I would encourage you to expand your interests to material conditions. Material conditions strongly influence values. I have a summary of just a few of them in my online library of book summaries. I think it is a very useful resource for EA research. In some ways, all 280 books summaries are relevant to this question. https://techratchet.com/effects-of-history-on-economic-development-learning-path/ (edited)
Hello, I am a member of the Progress Studies community. The original poster posted in our Slack channel. I am cross-posting so you EA can see it.
There is in fact a huge and growing literature on the historical impact of current economic development. I think it is one of the most exciting trends among historian. You mentioned a few articles, but there are far more. In addition, there are dozens of awesome books that at least touch on the subject.
I want to point out that this literature is about UNDERSTANDING the present by studying the past. How ACTIONABLE the conclusions is less clear. I do believe that a study of history is the only way the we can increase our chances of making positive contributions to the future. The biggest impact is letting us understand what has been tried before and the results of those actions as best as we can tell. Even if all we learn is that an idea has been tried before and the results were poor, that is of HUGE benefit.
You seem more interested in values than material conditions. I would encourage you to expand your interests to material conditions. Material conditions strongly influence values.
I have a summary of just a few of them in my online library of book summaries. I think it is a very useful resource for EA research. In some ways, all 280 books summaries are relevant to this question.
https://techratchet.com/effects-of-history-on-economic-development-learning-path/ (edited)