In the last few days, we’ve seen a lot of discussion online about technopessimism (i.e., the theory that we have entered a period of slow technological progress). Technopessimism has been an important theme in debates about economic policy since 2011, when Tyler Cowen published The Great Stagnation. [ I blogged about the book at the time]. Cowen had some semi-hard numbers to back up his point that technological progress slowed down in the mid 1970s, but his main evidence was anecdotally.  Cowen noted that everyday life in the US changed profoundly during the lifespan of his grand mother,  who was born in a farmhouse lit by kerosene lamps and who died in an era of colour TV, heart transplants,  and microwave ovens. According to Cowen, the technologies of everyday life haven’t changed much since the 1970s with the exception of IT.

Technopessimism is popular for several reasons. First,  it seems to explain our current economic malaise: in the West and Japan, the growth has been,  at best anaemic since the 2008 GFC.

Second,   the US political context,  technopessimism is useful because it allows conservatives to change the national conversation away from income inequality and towards technology. There is a near-consenus that the living standard of the typical American family improved rapidly from the 1940s to the 1970s, it increased slowly,  if it all, since then. Progressives blame Reaganite policies,  particularly those that emasculated organized labour.  Conservatives say that a slow down in inventiveness is at fault.

Lastly,  the future hasn’t delivered the breathtaking technologies promised in the sci-fi produced during the long boom after 1945. It’s 2013 and I still can’t take Pan-Am to the moon. If this is the future,  where is my goddam flying car?

Joel Mokyr,  who is revered in economic history circles for his brilliant work on the history of technology during the Industrial Revolution,  recently appeared on the PBS Newshour to refute the technopessimists. He made some good points. I really liked the sentence in which Mokyr alludes to Digital Humanities: “Above all, no scientific research today, from English literature to economics to nanochemistry, is even thinkable without computers.” However, I found that the most powerful argument for refuting the technopessimists was missing from his remarks.

The best reason for techno optimism is that an increasing proportion of the human brains on the planet are being given the opportunity and the incentive to contribute to scientific and technological progress.  A few hundred years ago, only a tiny proportion of the world’s population lived in countries where technological innovation was legal, respected,  and financially worthwhile.  Moreover,  even in Westerns Europe and North America, the technical talents of  half the potential inventors,  the women,  were largely squandered, (although we know from patent records that there were an increasing number of female inventors , especially after the passage of Married Women’s Property Acts), Many of the men who could have grown up to be inventors died from childhood diseases or from dumb wars like the First World War. (I would imagine that there is some wonderful household gadget that is missing from my life because a brilliant potential inventor got killed off on the Western Front).

The worldwide diffusion of liberal democracy to progressively more countries has meant that a larger proportion of the human race now live under systems that reward innovation. That means more people can get to work on solutions that can be shared world wide. (I’m writing this on a device that was designed in South Korea). Gender and racial equality,  along with subsidized education,  have prevented brainpower from going to waste. Thanks to better nutrition and the Flynn Effect,  there is more brain power to go around. Today’s world is remarkably peaceful, which means that all relatively few of today’s high IQ brains get ruined by bullets.

Taking all of these broad structural factors into consideration,  I am cautiously optimistic about the future. Yes, there are problems with US patent law, as the Becker-Posner blog recently pointed out. Yes, excessive protection of Intellectual Property is probably slowing progress down a bit. However, as a civilization, we are getting the fundamentals right and we should expect technological progress to continue.

That’s how distinguished Canadian historian Michael Bliss characterizes the constitutional issues raised by the deeply flawed royal succession bill passed by the Canadian parliament earlier this year.  See here.

I’m inclined to agree.

As most readers will know, Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, recently had a child who will likely inherit the Crowns of the sixteen nations that have Queen Elizabeth as their head of state. Until now, the rules governing the royal succession have discriminated on the basis of gender: a monarch’s daughter can inherit the throne only if she has no brothers. For many years, feminists have suggested that the eldest child should, regardless of gender, inherit the throne. The marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011 moved the issue up the agenda, since William is second in line the throne, right after Prince Charles.

In October 2011, the leaders of the Commonwealth agreed to change the succession rules so as to eliminate the element of gender discrimination. They then had to tackle the issue of how to modify the rules. At one time, the British parliament could simply pass a law changing the rules of the royal succession that would bind the entire British Empire. That arrangement made sense in the days when Britain had the right to declare war on behalf of its colonies. Moreover, the British North America Act of 1867 said that Canada was “one dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.”

In the early twentieth century, however, the Canadian and British Crowns became distinct. Moreover, the Canadian Crown is actually eleven Crowns– the Crown in right of Canada and the Crown in right of each province. This is a crucial point. Since the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 any change to the rules of the royal succession has required the passage of legislation in the parliaments of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as well as the United Kingdom. This procedure was followed in 1936-7, when the rules were changed after the abdication of King Edward VIII, who gave up the throne so he could marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée.

In early 2013, the Harper government rushed a bill on the subject of the royal succession through parliament. The issue was urgent because the Duchess of Cambridge had recently announced her pregnancy. The Harper government’s bill did not actually change Canada’s rules of succession and merely expressed approval of the British law changing the rules related to the British Crown. It appears that the authors of this poorly drafted bill overlooked both the 1931 Statute of Westminster and the patriation of the constitution in 1982.

In a recent op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen, University of Ottawa professor Philippe Lagassé  discussed some of the problems with the Harper government’s Succession to the Throne Act. Professor Lagassé complains, quite rightly, that the law symbolically reduces Canada to the status of a British colony. I agree that this move may have serious legal ramifications. When Canada sends diplomats and soldiers abroad, they do so as servants of the Canadian Crown, not the British Crown. The British Crown may be at war with a country that is at peace with the Canadian Crown: let’s remember the Falklands War of 1982. Britain is resented in parts of the world because of its history of imperialism. Canada, which lacks such baggage, is one of the most popular nations, at least according to global surveys. It is, therefore, important for the Canadian and British Crowns to be kept distinct in the eyes of the world.

The Succession to the Throne Act also has important implications for federal-provincial relations. Section 41(a) of the 1982 constitution clearly states that the consent of all ten provincial legislatures must be obtained before the “office of the Queen” is changed. Modifying the rules of succession constitutes a fundamental change to the office, so the federal government should have got the provincial legislatures to sign off on its royal succession law. Professor Lagassé notes that the constitutionality of the Succession to the Throne Act, 2013 is currently being challenged in the courts by two law professors in Quebec, although he implies that their court case will probably fail.

I feel more confident that the courts will side with the law professors, for they have an important precedent on their side: Australia, which is the Commonwealth’s other federal monarchy. Elizabeth is the Queen in Right of Canada, but she is also the Queen in Right of Ontario, Queen in Right of Manitoba, and so forth.  The Queen of Australia is also the head of state in Victoria, New South Wales, and all of the other Australian states. Australia has decided to include its state parliaments in the process for changing its royal succession law. All of Australia’s state governments have, of course, approved of the proposed changes. In Canada, the federal government adopted the view that consultation with the provinces was unnecessary.  Not involving the provinces was a gamble that risks creating a constitutional crisis for a future generation.  Law professors in Australia, who presumably have no hostility towards Stephen Harper and his government, have expressed concerns about Canada’s royal succession law.

Their worst case scenario is that this thoughtless law causes one individual to inherit the Canadian Crown, while another person acquires all of the other Crowns in the Commonwealth.  Moreover, the fact that each Canadian province and Australian state is a monarchy is an important symbol of their autonomy within their respective federations. Allowing the federal government to change the office of the Queen without the consent of the provinces sets a bad precedent that could threaten provincial autonomy, a principle the Harper government has invoked in the past.

Canada has an obligation to the other nations of the Commonwealth to ensure that the changes to the rules of the royal succession are constitutionally valid. The new Minister of Justice in Harper government should admit that his predecessor made an honest mistake in accepting some flawed advice about the constitution. It should then introduce a new royal succession bill, this time with the consent of the ten provincial legislatures.

Answer: They are both post-industrial landscapes. As a recent article in The Atlantic shows, Silicon Valley has de-industrialised in the last three decades as the manufacturing, as opposed to design, of chips has moved offshore.

The Black Country

This fascinating piece is a reminder of the overlap between business and environmental history.

Silicon Valley

Hat tip to Jan Oosthoek.