Calculating the Decline

Some time back in Underwear, Bleach, and the rise of Sarah Palin, I posted about the Industrial Revolution and how it had literally changed people's lives:

It started with cloth making, where initially water power drove a set of rapidly evolving machine types that made cloth literally thousands of times easier to make. Prices plummeted, and consumption rose by a factor of 12 between 1770 and 1800. People's lives began to change, as now underwear was affordable to more than just the wealthy.

In it, I discussed how regulation is slowing down the emergence of new industries:

The reason is regulation (and its bastard child, litigation). That's the problem. We have buildings full of people that make us stop what we're doing, fill out forms in triplicate, and then wait months or years before we are allowed to pick up where we stopped. Think for a minute what this does. It pushes some of the middle of the S-Curve into the flat part, reducing the overall value of the industry, as resources get sidelined instead of being engaged in production. More damagingly, it pushes the next S-Curve to the right, increasing the time that it takes to bring a new industry online. Most damagingly of all, it possibly completely eliminates some S-Curves from appearing at all, because the risk is too high to attract investors.

But I didn't calculate the impact, because the post was too long and I was traveling then and didn't have easy access to the data.  And because I'm lazy, I didn't go back later and "show my work".

Fortunately, Captain Capitalism has done the work for me, and it's eye-popping.  Ever wonder what our GDP per capita would be without OSHA, the EPA, and all the other balls and chains? (hint: more than it is today.  Way more)

The next time some smarmie leftist smugly tells you that corporations manage for the next quarter rather than for the long term, show them what could have been.