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Edward West had written in 1815 that in economies already developed, there isn’t much room for more capital of the same kind. Its productivity disappears in capital glut and diminishing returns. There could still be growth when some of the new ideas would need only redeployment of existing kinds of capital, as in relocating production nearer to the market or cutting out the middleman. This redeployment was Solow’s “disembodied growth.” But growth after that have to come from capital new in kind. Hourglasses might have to give place to pocket watches, or sailing ships to steamships. Those were Solow’s “embodied” growth. The apparent problem here is that novelty is expensive. There are blind alleys and failure rates and learning curves that rote replication avoids. This is true somewhat even in disembodied growth, where redeployment is already a step into the unfamiliar. If depreciation investment is barely enough for balanced growth without new ideas, how can it also pay for the failure rates and learning curves? A tough question. And Mill was posing an even tougher one. The paragraph quoted is clearly describing capital acceleration. Capital as he describes it is not only innovating consistently as it keeps up with consumption, but picking up the pace, and still taking the innovation costs in stride. Is that too much even for Achilles? It is not. Charts and tables show that the kind of growth Mill describes has proved the only kind in every country and period where tests are practical. It has proved the only kind whether capital was growing faster or shrinking faster or anything between. The growth bronco bucks, and the consumption rider stays on. This is what clearly happens, or anyhow has happened so far, despite so many reasons to think it is impossible. What would explain it? First take the lesser puzzle. Balanced growth, where capital, output and consumption all grow at the same constant rate, must make do with depreciation investment. How can it in crowded niches where growth compels the costs of innovation? Chapter 2 showed my inference that these are the costs of being human. Chapter 4 Mill’s Idea 1/11/16 9 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011000