Superpower Similarities, How Human Trafficking Financed the Industrial Age, Plus The Profile that Wins LinkedIn – and more!

Also – How Seville stops toasting itself, the psychology of climate apathy, and how to get a ‘velo halo’.

Adrian Monck

Sep 01, 2022

Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck. Welcome to this newsletter featuring seven things that caught my attention this week.

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1️⃣ China vs the USA?

The great power rivals are fighting the same enemies.

No need for Wolf Warrior style great power punch ups says Yuen Yuen Ang, one of the smartest commentators on the big geopolitical rivalry of our time:

“Both the U.S. and China confront sharp inequality, corruption or capture of state power by economic elites, and persistent financial risks to common people who have no way to indemnify themselves.
“Both are struggling to reconcile the tensions between capitalism and their respective political systems, albeit with greater intensity in China’s nominally communist system.
“Both U.S. President Biden and Chinese President Xi have staked their legacy on ending the excesses of capitalism, except under different banners.
“Whereas Biden pledges to ‘build back better,’ Xi dubs his campaign ‘common prosperity.’”

Her most important observation?

“Competition can be a force for self-renewal instead of mutual destruction”

We could use more voices like hers.

⏭ Both countries may want to consider this: restorative innovation.

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2️⃣ Slavery and the First Industrial Revolution

The money behind the first machines.

Historians like to invoke things like institutions, labour costs, and innovation when it comes to explaining the first industrial revolution.

They’ve spent less time looking at where the money came from to put all that to work. One of the unpleasant answers? Slavery. Research just out explains:

Britain would have been substantially poorer and more agricultural in the absence of overseas slave wealth.

Here’s how the researchers built their case:

“We compare areas of Britain with high and low exposure to the colonial plantation economy, using granular data on wealth from compensation records.
“Before the major expansion of slave holding from the 1640s onwards, both types of area exhibited similar levels of economic activity.
“However, by the 1830s, slavery wealth is strongly correlated with economic development – slave-holding areas are less agricultural, closer to cotton mills, and have higher property wealth.”

We like the idea of passing on wealth and property to our children. We seem less inclined to pass on responsibility for how it was acquired.

⏭ A far better way to create wealth: the countries leading Africa’s startup scene.