From Peter S Magnusson via Instapundit we get notice that the world is post agricultural and surprisingly post industrial as well.
“And thus passes a tremendous milestone in the history of our species. Farming, invented around 8000 BC, quickly dominated human activity and has so continued to for the following 10,000 years (give or take a few). And we even find that the tradition agriculture->industry->services transition doesn’t hold up globally. The industry segment simply isn’t big enough, so many workers skip to services.”
This is a REALLY BIG DEAL.
For the first time in thousands of years, agriculture is no longer the largest “employment” sector of the world’s economy.
In the US, there were major political and demographic changes as the number of people farming declined.
For example, children are a economic benefit to a farmer and an expensive luxury to a factory or service worker. To a farmer, every child is an extra field hand that’s cheap to feed and provides economies of scale. In industrial, post industrial, information/service economies each additional child is more expensive. As in the “industrialized” countries, we’ll see birth rates decline world wide as children become luxury goods.
Attitudes about laws, politics and social norms change as well. The Red State/Blue State polarization in the US pretty much breaks across urban/rural lines. Increasing federalization of everything results in laws designed for cities to cope with dense populations that are also applied to rural communities in a one size fits all attitude.
We”ll see the social upheaval of the last hundred years in the US replayed across the world over the next few decades.
