The industrial revolution started when we figured out that large mechanized facilities could produce lots of identical items at a low cost. 

This resulted in a tremendous increase in the amount of stuff the average citizen could afford. 

And, as with all our technological revolutions, this one comes with its own set of pros and cons. 

Incredible production growth

Yesterday’s post mentioned how the agricultural revolution drove a 20x population increase over the past four centuries. Well, the industrial revolution create a 100x increase in production over just the last two. 

Think about it… All the value the world produced in the entire year of 1820 can be produced in 3 or 4 days this year! 

This is the power of the industrial revolution. 

The good, the bad and the ugly

This revolution made capitalism a big thing. People could now deploy some capital up front and expect to see large returns from the greatly increased productivity it yielded. 

I wrote a previous post on the consequences of this revolution:

• The good: Billions lifted out of poverty (still ongoing).
• The bad: Minimal or even negative impact on health and happiness beyond a certain point. 
• The ugly: Environmental destruction, social injustice and self-destructive behavior. 

Time to evolve

Our mission in the 21st century is simple: address the bad by stimulating the good and eliminating the ugly. 

As mentioned earlier, a sense of purpose is an excellent antidote to the disappointing absence of happiness from excess consumption. And there are few better purposes than improving other people’s lives. 

The good news is that there are encouraging signs of such a trend starting to develop among younger generations. This trend needs all the encouragement it can get 🙂

We’ll come back to that next week…