Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity

Abstract

POWER AND PROGRESS: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. PublicAffairs, 2024. 560 pages. Paperback; $21.99. ISBN: 9781541702547. *In this book, two highly acclaimed MIT economists, and Nobel prize winners, make the bold claim that technological progress does not automatically result in prosperity for all. This is contrary to the claims of what they call the "technology bandwagon," founded on the economic dogma arising from the rise in productivity and wages that occurred over the 20th century. Put simply, this dogma states that "when businesses become more productive they expand their output" which results in "a need for more workers" so they "get busy with hiring" and "collectively bid up wages" (p. 15). *To make its case, the book examines the relationship between technology, wages, and inequality over a thousand years with a view to determining what needs to be done to ensure that all parts of society share in the prosperity arising from innovation. From the opening chapter, it is clear that the authors are concerned about the current direction of digital technology, especially AI and its control by an elite few in Big Tech, what they term "a vision oligarchy" (p. 33) that needs to be "reigned in" (p. 34). Anyone interested in the ethics around technological development and its consequences on society, particularly recent developments in AI, will be interested in these perspectives. *Interpreting the economic and social data over a thousand years through to the present, the authors show how the economic prosperity of the post-World War II years was an outcome of a long struggle over the direction of technological progress and a balancing of power between employer and employee. Various examples are cited by the authors to justify their view that to create an economic elite involves a compelling vision and a social standing that affords opportunity to frame and set the agenda for debates on innovation, prosperity, human flourishing, and how to solve the world's big problems. The influence of the powerful becomes self-perpetuating if they have access to influence policy makers and if their ideas and arguments are persuasive and have broad appeal. *Many illuminating economic facts are employed throughout the book. Typical is that, apart from famine years or other disturbances such as war, food production remained roughly in line with population growth until the early 19th century, and that, despite the innovation of the middle ages, the quality of life of a European peasant changed little over several millennia. Productivity improvements benefited a very small elite of kings and their retinue, nobles, and the clergy. *Turning to the Industrial Revolution, the authors claim the poor did not share the wealth generated through technology innovation because of the bias in automation which favored those wealthy enough to purchase machinery and because of the lack of worker representation in setting wages. They also argue that the "aspirant" class in this period focused on accumulating wealth for themselves and did nothing to alleviate the appalling conditions in the first half of the 19th century. In making this claim, a glaring omission in the authors' analysis of the 18th and 19th century in Britain is the influence of evangelicals in the reform movement, such as the Clapham Sect, and businessmen, such as Cadbury, who conducted his business differently to most, providing homes for his workers and education for their children. This omission is surprising given that these evangelicals shaped institutions and public opinion in ways that the authors view as crucial to bringing about a change of vision in business leaders and institutions, as well as in the public. *The change in direction of technology in the second half of the 19th century plus and institutional changes up to the post-World War II period, ground the authors' conclusion that "the productivity bandwagon depends