Exhibit B:
Now lets read together an article of Szabo on this subject:
http://unenumerated.blogspot.fr/2013/11/european-asian-divergence-predates.html...
"Higher labor productivity implies higher per capita income"
Exactly what I have written two time already. I will re-quote myself because it's the only thing to do with people who people overlook your wisdom because they think you are dumb:
"Real wage are 100% determined by the labor productivity"
"the increased efficiency of rice in converting solar power to consumable calories, for example, simply led to a greater population rather than a sustained increase in per capita income."
He says that the East failed to escape the Malthusian trap. He seems to wrongly attribute the cause of this to the rice cultivation, when a more robust explanation is a lack of creativity.
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So according to Szabo innovations, and therefore the labor productivity,
and therefore real wages, were higher in the West before the Black Death.
It's undermine your thesis (high real wages in Europe were not caused by the mortality caused by the plague, but were caused by the innovations which predate the Black Death) and sustain mine (high real wages were caused by the West greater creativity, ie an internal factor whose origin can be found in its culture, not an external factor like the plague).
Yet again you demonstrate myopic selective reading comprehension of your quoted sources and confirmation bias by failing to entertain all of the variables:
These innovations all long predate the Black Death, except that thereafter this biological divergence, especially in the
use of draft animals, accelerated. After a brief interruption the lactase persistent core resumed its thousand-year conversion of draft power from humans and oxen to horses, including super-horses bred to benefit from good fodder crops -- the Shire Horse, Percheron, Belgian, etc., and of course the famous Clydesdale of the beer ads. Draft horses figured prominently in the great expansion of the English coal mines from the 14th to 18th centuries.
Greater use of draft animals led to higher labor productivity and larger markets for agricultural output, and thus to greater agricultural specialization. Higher labor productivity implies higher per capita income, even if it cant be measured. For civilizations outside Western Europe by contrast, much less use was made of draft animals with the result that these effects were confined to within a dozen or less miles of navigable water.
The new innovations and natural shifts before the Black Death you cited
were largely ineffective at greatly accelerating the rate of labor productivity increases for Europe pre-Black Death because the economic incentive didn't exist for the land owners, because labor was too abundant. The feudal land owners were apathetic and had no real strong reason not the be. The Black Death shook up the balance-of-power between labor and master owners which accelerated the progress of Europe. Feudalism in Europe is cited to have taken hold in the 10th and not departed entirely until the 15th centuries.
By the way, if you re-read all my up thread discussion with you, I have never argued that the increase in labor productivity was not necessary to escape feudalism. I did however point out that increases in labor productivity do not lead to any one type of outcome, if for example the labor productivity growth among one sector in the domestic economy is offset by another domestic sector (e.g. perhaps Saudi Arabia). So just a warning in advance not to conflate orthogonal points in any future idiotic rebuttal you may attempt.
"these seem not to have had an anti-Malthusian effect in increasing labor productivity "
He says that the West had start to escape the Malthusian trap before the Black Death because of these innovations.
Your English comprehension is apparently about 7th grade level. That is not the meaning Szabo wrote.
Greater use of draft animals led to higher labor productivity and larger markets for agricultural output, and thus to greater agricultural specialization. Higher labor productivity implies higher per capita income, even if it cant be measured. For civilizations outside Western Europe by contrast, much less use was made of draft animals with the result that these effects were confined to within a dozen or less miles of navigable water.
Contrariwise, northern Europe has always been at a severe ecological disadvantage to warmer climates when it comes to growing rice, cotton, sugar, and most other economically important crops. However these seem not to have had an anti-Malthusian effect in increasing labor productivity -- the increased efficiency of rice in converting solar power to consumable calories, for example, simply led to a greater population rather than a sustained increase in per capita income.
Szabo is writing about the acceleration in the use of draft animals post-Black Death and the fact that there never existed any Malthusian trap, rather only the feudal land owners (a Coasian barrier) stomping on the free market.
Exactly what I told you up thread.
Now please STFU. You are wasting my time. Have you no shame?