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Notes -
I don't know if "constrained" is the right word.
I think some cultures are inherently better at adapting to new technology. Others are almost incapable of it, with a bell curve inbetween.
Think Japan versus India versus Australian aborigines.
I guess I’m trying to disentangle culture (meaning interpersonal relations, obligations, division of labor) from culture (meaning societal organization).
I have a suspicion that the average English peasant had similar interpersonal relationships as the average Congolese. English adaptation to tech would then be driven more by a culture that let it cajole them into useful labor anyway. That probably means state capacity, but also norms about rent extraction and the available alternatives to industrial work.
Dump a Chinese railroad company into pastoral 1790 England, and I’d expect them to come up with all the same criticisms from the documentary—unless they took on more statelike powers.
It’s a nice story, partly because it avoids the standard /pol/ conclusion exhibited on that KnowYourMeme page. But I don’t really know much about how England supplied labor in early industrialization. I’ll do a bit more research and probably make a top-level later.
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