From Rome to China, Robots, AI, and “Going Green”

The next few or several blog posts will trace economic history from ancient Rome to the present, in eras or chunks of time. I’m starting with Rome and going through Europe to the US in part because it’s what I know about, and in part because the “western” paradigm is largely dominant in the world economy at present.

But I will also include the rise of the economies of Japan, since World War 2, and China, more recently, including China’s claims, at least, to be going green.

And I will also explore the very imminent jobs displacement and changes impacting our culture by storms and waves brewing currently, as this is written in Feb 2019:

The extraordinary economic and political impacts of Climate Change, no longer in the future, and affecting everyone already in the present (not just our children and our grandchildren)

The False Urgency of Immigration as a Threat, but why this is happening now

The impacts of automation (not Obama environmental regulations) on the coal industry, which has been accumulating steadily for decades

The impacts of job displacement as workers are about to get displaced by technology, such as self-driving trucks replacing truck drivers, and vast reductions in the retail work force

The political-economic push-and-pull of globalization, reactions against it in the form of nationalist populism on one side and socialism on the other.

But first … tracing from Rome to the present … in terms of economic patterns and changes.