Summary: Throughout history, cities and nations have repeatedly sparked extraordinary—but relatively brief—periods of innovation. Cardwell’s Law is the idea that creative peaks are historically short-lived. Can any society sustain innovation over the long term? The conditions that support progress are fragile, but by identifying and safeguarding them, we can break out of this historical cage.

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Donald Cardwell, a British historian of science and technology, famously observed that “no nation has been very creative for more than an historically short period.” Known as Cardwell’s Law, this dictum haunts many people concerned about the future of innovation. Can the United States, or any other country, break free of the cage of Cardwell’s Law and create an environment that fosters innovation indefinitely?

To better understand this challenge, it helps to zoom in from the level of nations to that of cities, which often function as engines of innovation. While intended to describe whole societies, Cardwell’s Law scales down well to the level of individual urban centers. After all, city-states were the first states and served as the sites of institutional experimentation. And for a long time, it was cities, not larger nations, that commanded loyalty.

A grim message from my otherwise uplifting book, Centers of Progress: 40 Cities That Changed the World is that a city’s creative peak tends to be—as Cardwell noted—brief. As the British science writer Matt Ridley observed in the foreword to the book, “Global progress depends on a sudden series of bush fires of innovation, bursting into life in unpredictable places, burning fiercely, and then dying rapidly.”

Are there any exceptions to that rule? Have any cities managed to maintain longer-than-expected golden ages of innovation, and what can we learn from them?

The cities from earlier eras that I profiled in my book tend to be featured for their achievements over longer periods of time. That is, unfortunately, because in the distant past, progress was often painfully slow—not because someone had cracked the code to break Cardwell’s Law.

Writing, for example, developed over multiple generations, as simple pictographs that accountants invented for record-keeping purposes evolved into a symbolic script and eventually into highly abstract, cuneiform characters. The birthplace of writing was Uruk, an ancient Sumerian city. The most noteworthy part of Uruk’s history lasted for many centuries, but only because the city’s great achievement took generations to accomplish. We should hardly want to emulate a society that advanced at such a pace.

In contrast, when we turn to modern history, the pace of progress accelerates—but the creative window narrows. Manchester, the so-called workshop of the world, led the way during the Industrial Revolution, but only for a few decades. Houston’s heyday helping drive forward space exploration also only lasted a few decades. Today, the youngest living person to have walked on the moon is 89. Tokyo went from being a world capital of technology in the 1980s to decades of economic stagnation. The San Francisco Bay Area that birthed Silicon Valley and the digital revolution has lost its crown, with many technological breakthroughs now occurring elsewhere. In the modern era, the golden age of innovation in any locale tends to last only a few decades, or even less.

To understand why this pattern repeats so consistently, consider the underlying conditions that support—or sabotage—sustained innovation. The economic historian Joel Mokyr, in an illuminating 1993 essay, describes the narrowness of the path that societies must walk to promote creativity, a veritable tightrope where one wrong move can lead to everything crashing down. “In retrospect, the most surprising thing is perhaps that we have come this far,” he concludes.

What causes the downfall of centers of progress, making Cardwell’s Law so seemingly prophetic? While world-changing innovations have come from an extraordinarily diverse set of places, from Song–era Hangzhou to post–World War II New York, sites of creativity almost always share certain key features. It is the loss of those factors that spells their doom. These feature are: conditions of relative peace, openness to new ideas, and economic freedom.

Free enterprise and healthy competition encourage innovation, and the freedom to trade across borders plays an important role by increasing that competition. At the same time, free exchange across borders must not be confused with the total dissolution of borders: vast empires under centralized control tend to stagnate technologically, and complete integration of countries under a global government would in all likelihood be a disaster. A certain type of international competition can be beneficial—just not the kind of rivalry that leads to war.

War redirects creative energies toward making deadlier weapons and away from technologies aimed at improving living standards. And, of course, losing a war can lead to a society’s complete destruction.

Moreover, war prevents innovators from collaborating across borders, and even thinkers within the same country often cannot put their heads together due to the secrecy inherent in war. While some credit WWII with speeding up the creation of the computer, a case can be made that the conflict actually delayed the computer’s invention by preventing collaboration between many innovators, from Konrad Zuse in Berlin to Alan Turing in Great Britain. Even in peacetime, innovation can be stifled when freedom and openness are curtailed.

In short, progress is threatened when peace is lost to war, openness is stifled by the suppression of speech, and freedom is undermined by restrictive or authoritarian laws.

Hong Kong provides a recent and illustrative example of how quickly the conditions for progress can disappear. During its whirlwind economic transformation in the 1960s, Hong Kong rose from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the wealthiest. It accomplished this feat through policies of “noninterventionism”: simply allowing Hong Kongers to freely compete and collaborate to enrich themselves and their society. But the city’s proud tradition of limited government, the rule of law, and freedom has been abruptly extinguished by a harsh and unrelenting crackdown from the Chinese Communist Party.

Despite sobering examples such as that of Hong Kong, there is reason for hope. Centers of progress are often short-lived, but the fact that throughout history most societies remained creative for only a short time should not discourage us. To defy Cardwell’s Law, all that is needed is a clear-eyed willingness to learn from the mistakes of the past and to fiercely protect the conditions needed for further progress.

This article was published at Econlib on 5/17/2025.

Summary: For nearly a century, corn production in the United States has far outpaced population growth, thanks to relentless agricultural innovation. While global elites warn of food scarcity and promote insect-based diets, American farmers continue to feed the nation—and the world—more efficiently than ever, defying the narrative of resource collapse.

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Corn has a rich history stretching back thousands of years to Mesoamerica, where it was domesticated from a wild grass called teosinte. Indigenous peoples in the Americas developed corn through selective breeding, making it a cornerstone of their diets, cultures, and civilizations. After Christopher Columbus introduced corn to Europe in 1493, it spread rapidly across the globe, becoming a dietary staple and key ingredient in countless cuisines.

Today, corn is the most widely produced grain in the world, with global production exceeding 1.2 billion metric tons. The United States leads the world in corn production, consumption, and exports—accounting for 31 percent of global output with 377.63 million metric tons, according to the USDA.

Over 95 percent of animal feed for US livestock—such as cattle, hogs, and poultry—comes from corn, which makes up roughly 40 percent of all corn used domestically. Despite this abundance, the Davos crowd would have us believe that our survival hinges on swapping steaks and burgers for worms and insects. Under the banner of “sustainability,” they propose shuttering our Texas Roadhouses, Dickey’s Barbecue Pits, and Chick-fil-As to make way for bug burgers. But are we really running out of beef, chicken, and pork?

Hardly. Corn is a foundational feed for producing those delicious meats. In the 1930s, US corn yields averaged 26 bushels per acre. Today, that number is 179.3 bushels per acre—with top-performing farms reaching an astonishing 624 bushels. That’s a 589.6 percent increase in yield over 88 years. One acre today produces as much corn as nearly 6.89 acres did in 1936, freeing up 5.89 acres for other uses—from conservation to recreation. Yields continue to rise at about 1.75 bushels per year, doubling every 31.6 years thanks to a 2.21 percent annual growth rate.

Meanwhile, the US population grew 165.6 percent between 1936 and 2024—from 128 million to 340 million. Yet every one percent increase in population has corresponded with a 3.56 percent increase in corn abundance. If each American consumed one bushel of corn in 1936, it would’ve required 4.9 million acres of land to grow the crop. Today, even with 212 million more people, it only takes about 1.9 million acres. We’ve reduced land needs by 61 percent. We’re growing smarter much faster than we’re growing people.

Corn was selling for around 68 cents a bushel in the 1930s. Unskilled workers were earning around 28 cents an hour. That would put the time price at 2.42 hours. The USDA currently estimates the season-average corn price at $4.20 per bushel for the 2025-2026 crop year. Unskilled workers are earning $17.17 an hour putting the time price at 0.24 hours or around 15 minutes. The time price has fallen from 145 minutes to 15 minutes, or almost 90 percent. For the time it took an unskilled worker to earn the money to buy one bushel of corn in 1930, they get 9.7 bushels today.

MIT’s Andrew McAfee highlighted this trend in More from Less, predicting continued innovation in agriculture. He’s even backing his confidence with a $100,000 bet: that by 2029, the US will produce more crops than in 2019 while using less land, fertilizer, and irrigation. If you think he’s wrong—and believe the World Economic Forum’s bug-eating future is inevitable—there’s your chance at easy money.

So yes, you could try a worm with your next meal—but there’s no reason to think we’re running out of corn or the land to raise your next steak, wing, or chop.

Find more of Gale’s work at his Substack, Gale Winds.

Summary: Throughout history, golden ages have emerged when societies embraced openness, curiosity, and innovation. In his book Peak Human, Johan Norberg explores how civilizations from Song China to the Dutch Republic rose through trade, intellectual freedom, and cultural exchange—only to decline when fear and control replaced dynamism. He warns that our current prosperity hinges not on external threats but on whether we choose to uphold or abandon the openness that made it possible.

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“Every act of major technological innovation … is an act of rebellion not just against conventional wisdom but against existing practices and vested interests,” says economic historian Joel Mokyr. He could have said the same about artistic, business, scientific, intellectual, and other forms of innovation.

Swedish scholar Johan Norberg’s timely new book—Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages—surveys historical episodes in which such acts of rebellion produced outstanding civilizations. He highlights what he calls “golden ages” or historical peaks of humanity ranging from ancient Athens and China under the Song dynasty (960-1279 AD) to the Dutch Republic of the 16th and 17th centuries and the current Anglosphere.

What qualifies as a golden age? According to Norberg, societies that are open, especially to trade, people, and intellectual exchange produce these remarkable periods. They are characterized by optimism, economic growth, and achievements in numerous fields that distinguish them from other contemporary societies.

The civilizations that created golden ages imitated and innovated. Ancient Rome appropriated and adapted Greek architecture and philosophy, but it was also relatively inclusive of immigrants and outsiders: being Roman was a political identity, not an ethnic one. The Abbasid Caliphate that began more than a thousand years ago was the most prosperous place in the world. It located its capital, Baghdad, at the “center of the universe” and from there promoted intellectual tolerance, knowledge, and free trade to produce a flourishing of science, knowledge, and the arts that subsequent civilizations built upon.

China under the Song dynasty was especially impressive. “No classic civilization came as close to unleashing an industrial revolution and creating the modern world as Song China,” writes Norberg.

But that episode, like others in the past, did not last: “All these golden ages experienced a death-to-Socrates moment,’” Norberg observes, “when they soured on their previous commitment to open intellectual exchange and abandoned curiosity for control.”

The status quo is always threatening: the “Elites who have benefited enough from the innovation that elevated them want to kick away the ladder behind them,” while “groups threatened by change try to fossilize culture into an orthodoxy.” Renaissance Italy, for example, came to an end when Protestants and Catholics of the Counter-Reformation clashed and allied themselves with their respective states, thus facilitating repression.

Today we are living in a golden age that has its origins in 17th-century England, which in turn drew from the golden age of the Dutch Republic. It was in 18th-century England that the Industrial Revolution began, producing an explosion of wealth and an escape from mass poverty in much of Western Europe and its offshoots like the United States.

And it was the United States that, since the last century, has served as the backbone of an international system based on openness and the principles that produced the Anglosphere’s success. As such, most of the world is participating in the current golden age, one of unprecedented global improvements in income and well-being.

Donald Trump says he wants to usher in a golden age and appeals to a supposedly better past in the United States. To achieve his goal, he says the United States does not need other countries and that the protectionism he is imposing on the world is necessary.

Trump has not learned the lessons of Norberg’s book. One of the most important is that the factors that determine the continuation of a golden age are not external, such as a pandemic or a supposed clash of civilizations. Rather, says Norberg, the critical factor is how each civilization deals with its own internal clashes, and the decision to remain or not at a historical peak.

A Spanish-language version of this article was published by El Comercio in Peru on 5/6/2025.

Summary: The belief that economic growth is unsustainable has long been challenged by the history of human ingenuity. From Malthus’s failed predictions of famine to Julian Simon’s wager demonstrating resource abundance, evidence consistently shows that technological progress allows us to produce more with less. While climate change presents a genuine challenge, continued growth remains the most effective means of addressing environmental concerns while improving global prosperity.

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“We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.” Or so claims Sir David Attenborough, a non-economist (or, as one of my friend’s economics professors refers to them, a muggle).

The madmen and economists, however, have economic history on their side—along with a litany of failed predictions of eco-catastrophe and a better understanding of what economic growth actually entails. 

The continued progress of humanity depends on these optimists winning the debate in the public square.

The Malthusian Fallacy

The idea that we live on a finite planet on the brink of collapse dates back to at least 1798. Thomas Malthus, an English preacher and economist, famously predicted an impending famine. The population was growing at an exponential or compounding rate; the food supply had historically grown at a linear or constant rate. One plus one equals starvation. The only solution, he argued, was moral restraint—people needed to suppress their natural urges and refrain from having children to save the planet. Sound familiar?

Malthus’s theory had two shortcomings: he failed to anticipate the sudden rise in health and material living standards enabled by factors such as the Agricultural Revolution, the mechanization and energy efficiencies of the Industrial Revolution, and major public health investments during the 19th century. He also didn’t foresee the advent of effective birth control in the latter half of the 20th century. While we can hardly blame Malthus for these oversights, his intellectual descendants would make similarly catastrophic predictions despite witnessing these very developments.

Perhaps the most striking example is Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book “The Population Bomb.” Its opening declaration was apocalyptic: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” This prediction proved dramatically wrong as agricultural productivity soared and population growth began to slow. In fact, the average population weighted food supply per person has increased from 2,196 in 1961 to 2,962 in 2017.

Ehrlich’s predictions faced an even more direct challenge in 1980 when economist Julian Simon wagered that any five metals of Ehrlich’s choosing would be cheaper in real terms a decade later. Simon won decisively as the average inflation-adjusted price of the metals fell 36 percent despite a nearly twenty percent increase in the global population.

The Simon Solution

In honor of the great economist, the Human Progress team at the Cato Institute has created the Simon Abundance Index, which measures the abundance of fifty commodities across food, energy, natural resources, and other categories. Their research reveals these commodities have become 509.4 percent more abundant. Meanwhile, their “time prices”—work hours needed for an average worker to afford them—have fallen by 70.4 percent.

This seeming paradox is explained by human ingenuity: each new person brings not just another mouth to feed but another mind to solve problems. Thus, attempts to limit population growth to save the planet are self-defeating—they reduce humanity’s capacity to innovate and develop solutions to environmental challenges.

No one better demonstrates this principle than Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution. His development of high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties saved over a billion people from starvation. These innovations also limited the need for ever-increasing farmland, leaving more room for nature. Had Borlaug never been born, the world’s food and land supplies would have been less, not more, abundant.

Borlaug’s legacy points to a broader truth: geniuses like him are rare yet play an outsized role in humanity’s progress across a variety of domains, from health and science to freedom and prosperity. More people equals more geniuses and more progress. Fewer people mean the opposite. Increasing fertility rates is thus one of the defining issues of our time. A world with fewer people is one with fewer Borlaugs, fewer Einsteins, and fewer minds to tackle humanity’s most pressing challenges.

The Case for Growth

And economic growth isn’t a sign of reckless decadence—it’s a measure of our progress. Growth enlarges the pie and enables humanity to produce more with less.

The historical record powerfully vindicates this view. As economic historian Deirdre McCloskey documents, average living standards remained stagnant for most of human history until increasing sixteenfold over the past two hundred years. The rise of liberal institutions and ideas allowed humanity to become far more productive with the same natural resources and constraints faced by past generations.

Even more remarkably, as MIT economist Andrew McAfee highlights in “More From Less,” we’re now experiencing widespread “dematerialization”—achieving greater material prosperity while reducing resource consumption. Of the 72 resources tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey, 66 have peaked and are declining in use. We’re creating more wealth while leaving a lighter footprint on the planet.

Climate Change

Unlike fears of overpopulation and resource depletion, climate change presents a genuine threat that demands serious attention. The Industrial Revolution and the economic rise of developing nations have increased carbon emissions and global temperatures. This warming will lead to more frequent and severe natural disasters, rising sea levels, and disrupted ecosystems in the medium to long term.

Yet this same industrialization has achieved something remarkable: lifting billions out of grinding poverty. This historic triumph deserves celebration, even as we grapple with its environmental costs.

While the environmental movement rightly acknowledges the threats posed by climate change (though their predictions of imminent human extinction echo the discredited catastrophism of Malthus and Ehrlich), they often forget a crucial truth: growth is good.

Growth is also Green

Growth elevates humanity. Growth creates problems that need solving. Growth also provides the means to solve these problems through technology and innovation.

Green energy, adaptation, and potentially even bioengineering will all play roles in addressing climate change, but these solutions depend on growing wealth. As Maslow teaches, people have a hierarchy of needs. If people’s basic needs aren’t met, they can’t progress to addressing higher-level challenges.

We’ve already seen economic growth decouple from carbon emissions in 33 developed economies. This process validates economist Simon Kuznets’s insight about how countries initially increase pollution as they develop but then reduce emissions as they adopt greener technologies and take action to protect the environment. Our task now is to accelerate this environmental decoupling in wealthy nations while helping developing nations catch up economically.

Innovation Without Limits

Rather than viewing human progress and environmental stewardship as opposing forces, we should recognize them as complementary goals achievable through continued innovation and economic development.

The evidence is clear: human ingenuity, when coupled with economic freedom and technological advancement, has consistently overcome environmental constraints while improving living standards. Our challenge isn’t to limit growth or population but to foster conditions that allow human creativity and enterprise to flourish. 

Far from being madmen, those who believe in humanity’s capacity for infinite growth understand a fundamental truth: our greatest resource isn’t the finite materials beneath our feet, but the infinite potential of the human mind.