In other words, in the pre-modern world, technological advances and increases of production it allowed invariably led to even faster growth of the population, so per capita measure changed very little or even declined. In modern times by contrast, technological advances and increases in production - which no doubt are faster than those in pre-modern times - were accompanied by progressively slowing of the population growth rates. Therefore, using per capita measure may overestimate the growth rate of the total volume of production.
Wojtek
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 7:41 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 4, 2013, at 11:49 PM, Gar Lipow <gar.lipow at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not really a good source. He starts at most a couple of centuries
>> before capitalism. Not that I don't think your point is not probably
>> valid, but your source does not support it. As I understand it, and
>> it has been a while since I last glanced an the literature on this,
>> there was actually a huge drop in standard of living in the transition
>> from hunter-gatherer to agriculture.
>
> Maddison makes the same point over a much longer time period: http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/publications/wp4.pdf
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-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."