'The Web was invented by the British but exported to theUS...We don't want that to happen again.'

M A Jones jones118 at lineone.net
Sun May 21 23:20:01 PDT 2000


Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> >Now that you mention it, Brits invented not just the web; there is also:
> >computers, radar, jet engines, antibiotics, DNA + cloning, central banks
>
> The Bank of Sweden - Sveriges Riksbank - is older. The B of E was
> founded in 1694; the SR in 1668.
>
> >(OK, the Scots), the steam engine, the power loom, television and a few
> >other things besides.
>
> Gosh, no wonder they call it Great Britain. Why'd the USA take the
> lead in developing and producing almost all the inventions you list?

The steam engine's development was essentially completed with the invention of compound engines by the (British) Arthur Woolf; its successor the multi-stage steam turbine was the invention of Charles Parsons, the (British) engineer who revolutionized marine propulsion. Arguably the power loom was a medieval Chinese innovation, as was Central Banking, probably first introduced by the emperor Kublai Khan (Genghis Khan's grandson) who at the end of the 13th C nationalised China's precious metals and issued paper money backed by the bullion (as Marco Polo's describes). But paper money had already been used by the Sung, who probably got thje idea from Korea. Nonetheless Kublai was first to make it sole medium of exchange and thus deployed the force of the state to control monetary emission, credit etc. The result was one of history's greatest bubble economies, in which a huge economic expansion led to hyperinflation, crash, followed by five centuries of depression and national humiliation. That's what happens when fiduciary money becomes fiat money and uncontrolled credit emissions are permitted.

As for why more recent British inventions were developed mostly in the US, it's because of the centripetal workings of imperial hegemony, innit?

As for who had the first Central Bank, if you say the Swedes I defer to you. I base myself on the fact that Britain was the first state to overcome the effect of Gresham's Law, by following the policy established by Sir Isaac Newton, then serving as master of the mint, to overvalue gold and thereby create a true gold standard. It was for this reason that Karl Marx describes the process of the formation of 'national debts' as dating from the foudnation of the B of E in 1694 (Cap I p920 Penguin edn); but this was based on earlier Scottish experience and theorised by the (Englishman) John Locke and the (Scot) David Hume. I am not aware of any specifically Swedish innovations.

Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list