Consider two of them: sugar and coffee. The first allowed people to work harder; the second to work smarter
Coincidence? Probably. Lots of other things could have explained the productivity dip. Equally, though, many of America’s most productive people rely on Adderall to get the job done. It often seems like half of Silicon Valley, the most innovative place on Earth, is on the stuff. And surprising things can causeto rise and fall, including holidays, strikes and the weather.
But stimulants can play a positive role, too. Consider two of them: sugar and coffee. The first allowed people to work harder; the second allowed them to work smarter. This changed when sugar imports from Britain’s colonies increased. Annual sugar consumption per person rose from around 5lbs a year in 1700 to 20lbs by 1800—several times higher than in continental Europe. After 1800 imports then soared as Britons developed a taste for sweet tea and cakes. The change from a fibre-heavy to a sugar-heavy diet, noted Robert Fogel, a Nobel prize-winning economist, “raised the proportion of ingested energy that [could] be metabolised”.
Coffee, meanwhile, pushed the middle classes to do bigger and better things. Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University has stressed the importance of a “culture of growth”, the title of a book he published in 2016, in explaining Europe’s industrialisation. During this period science became less academic, and more focused on solving real-world problems. Over time it became the handmaiden of inventions, such as the internal-combustion engine, which massively lifted living standards.
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