human capital's fourth turning.

from protestantism to wokism.

To produce GDP, you must first produce human capital.

“Production of human capital” — sounds like a breeding farm, the Matrix, eugenics! It could mean those things, if we see human capital as a genetic or biological asset. However, there is a sociological dimension to human capital which cannot be ignored, even by hereditarians.

Training a dog takes time and energy. It is an investment in the dog’s latent abilities. Without training, a dog will remain useless for farm work, hunting, or herding sheep. But with proper training, a dog can provide ROI. Similarly, babies are fairly useless, and raising them into adults is a huge investment. But eventually, they grow up and bear fruit.

Today we will cover a brief history of the development of human capital, from medieval times to the present, with a prediction on the next and final stage of development.

1350: the human capital explosion.

Anti-colonialists assert that European wealth was stolen from non-white colonies. Some go as far as to claim that, before Columbus, Europe had no economic growth. Supposedly, prior to the industrial revolution, Europe was in a stagnant “dark age.”

Contrary to these claims, between 1350 and 1450, Europe experienced the greatest period of fundamental economic growth in recorded history. Growth created colonization, not the other way around.

By fundamental economic growth, I am referring to growth in human capital:

1. The rate of change in social mobility (movement between socio-economic classes) was greater than ever before;

2. Literacy and numeracy increased at a rate never seen before;

3. The guild system was replaced with free craftsmen (or free-masons).

Economic growth wasn’t spurred by colonialism, or by economic theories or ideologies consciously advocating for “economic freedom,” “capitalism,” or “classical liberalism.” Those terms were invented later to justify or explain a trend already in progress, with Adam Smith (b. 1723) and David Ricardo (b. 1772) acting as economic historians describing existing conditions.

There was no such thing as an ideology of “economic liberalism” in the 14th or 15th centuries. Instead, the Black Plague created massive labor shortages which shocked the economies of Europe and destroyed the guild system. It was a disaster that developed human capital.

plague is great for human capital!

In the aftermath of the plague, tradesmen and craftsmen no longer needed guilds, because the economy was desperate for workers, which created an effective “black market” for labor. Population decline from the plague lowered the price of land, and wages rose.

Higher wages and cheaper land meant that, for the first time since the collapse of Rome, many serfs suddenly had the ability to purchase their own land. This class became known as “Husbandmen,” since they were not nobles.¹ Husbandmen were the rural version of Burgesses (bourgeois), who were free inhabitants of towns.

Husbandmen and Burgesses could become Freeholders, and then Yeoman, who were the lowest rank of the nobility. The growing influence of Burgesses, Husbandmen, and small Freeholders threw the feudal system into chaos. For almost 1,000 years, land owning was exclusively the right of the nobility. Noble titles could not be obtained by purchase, but through awards in war or in marriage. Land was not bought or sold, but exchanged through ties of blood.

Eight decades after the start of the plague, an “overproduction of the middle class” threatened the nobility. The nobility were concerned that they were being democratically swamped by this growing middle class:

Before 1430 [..] the right to vote for the knights [equivalent to the election of sheriff today] of the shires in English county elections was given to “every free inhabitant householder, freeholder and non-freeholder.” There was no requirement for freeholders to be landed freeholders; the freehold could relate to something other than land.

In response to this development, the nobility lobbied to limit the franchise:

In 1429, a petition was presented to the King by the Commons which expressed concern that some elections had involved “too great and excessive number of people…of whom the greater part are by people of little or no means” and that these people “pretend to have an equivalent voice…as the most worthy knights or esquires dwelling in the same counties”. The petition called for the vote to be restricted to those freeholders resident in a county with a freehold value of 40 shillings a year. A freehold was not restricted to land; it could refer to many types of property.

Assuming that a war-horse cost the equivalent of $100k, 40 shillings would represent a yearly income of $40k, which represented the top 1.35% of the country:

The proportion of the population able to vote in Parliamentary elections to elect county Members varied. The total across England [..] was [..] (1.35%).²

Despite limitation, burgesses were granted the franchise in 1444:

In 1444 an Act of Parliament [..] stated that the election of Members of Parliament should be by citizens and burgesses.

The expansion of the franchise was two steps forward, one step back. Franchise expansion contributed to the Congregationalist (Puritan) idea that clergy should be elected by parishioners, rather than appointed by Bishops. In this way, the development of a proto-capitalist middle class directly led to the concept of open-franchise (non-noble) democracy.

It is possible to see the expansion of the franchise in the 15th century as a return of the Roman Conflict of Orders, where the Plebeians struggled with the nobility for a recognition of political rights.

Protestantism investment in human capital.

Out of the collapse of feudalism, Protestantism created a feedback loop between human capital development (literacy) and egalitarian ideology. More Protestantism, more capitalism. More capitalism, more Protestantism:

1. The economy grows, which creates a large class of literate non-nobles.

2. Protestantism encourages peasants to become literate in order to read the Bible.

3. Literacy drives greater economic growth.

Switzerland, the Hanseatic ports, and river cities like London and Paris developed a strong merchant class in the aftermath of the Black Plague. Max Weber’s “Protestant Work Ethic” wasn’t the result of Protestantism, but the other way around: the mercantile capitalist ethic preceded Protestantism and allowed it to flourish.

Where the European economy was the most dynamic, the Catholic Church weakened in favor of secular bureaucracies. Some Protestant founders were former Catholic priests (like Luther), but others were lawyers or clerks (like Calvin), and most of the proto-Protestant were non-nobles (John Wycliffe, John Ball, Jan Hus).

machiavelli’s plan for human capital development.

During the century of plague, nobles began to eschew the duty to fight, which was their previous justification for existence. “We rule because we fight the wars.” Instead, they used the profits of land ownership to buy mercenaries to do the fighting on their behalf. In Italy, the mercenaries were called condottieri.

Machiavelli’s critique of mercenaries was at follows:

1. Mercenaries are only loyal to a purse, and will follow the money and switch sides at any time;

2. Mercenaries only fight when they have overwhelming superiority. When death seems likely, they flee without honor, abandoning their masters;

3. Mercenaries are not sympathetic to the citizens they are employed to protect, and end up pilfering the states that hire them.

In the opinion of Machiavelli, it is necessary to “do the work” to raise national, local, patriotic armies. In other words, Machiavelli wanted princes to invest in human capital at home, rather than outsourcing jobs to foreigners. This was a slower process than simply hiring mercenaries, but he believed that it would pay dividends, by providing these benefits:

1. Patriotic armies are less likely to betray the state.

2. Patriotic armies find it sweet to die for their fatherland, and will fight as fanatics in the face of death. As such, they are more reliable soldiers.

3. Patriotic armies see the citizenry as their mothers and father, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. Therefore, they will not pilfer the state, which allows for the citizenry to grow in their love for the army, and dedicate their sons more freely to that institution.

Machiavelli derives these principles from his humanism, and his study of the classical world. Specifically, he states that Moses as a leader of Israel and Lycurgus as a leader of Sparta could not have achieved anything lasting if they did not build up armies on the basis of patriotism, but instead hired mercenaries.

Machiavelli claims that, where it is necessary to confront the fear of death, money is a very weak guarantee of the stability of the state and its laws. Instead, Machiavelli praises religion, pagan or Christian, as the foundation of a state, because it inspires loyalty, morality, and fearlessness.

Religion manages Human Capital.

Christianity, for 1,000 years, served as the religious foundation of European states. However, by the time of Machiavelli, the Catholic religion had weakened to the point that he openly criticized the church and praised paganism. What was to replace Catholicism? There were two answers:

1. Freemasonry advocated for ecumenical deism, a worship of the classical world, and a reconstruction of a Golden Age based on Platonism, metaphysics, astrology (later astronomy), and alchemy (later chemistry).

2. Egalitarian-Protestantism, as advocated for by John Ball, advocated for a genocide of the upper classes, and a theocratic dictatorship of the proletariat, on the basis that “the meek shall inherit the earth.”

Both of these approaches had success.

• The Proto-Freemasonic Renaissance rediscovered art, architecture, science, literature, poetry, aesthetics, and philosophy. These liberal arts inspired the printing press, the explorations of Columbus, and the development of firearms (through experimentation on Turkish cannons).

• Egalitarian-Protestantism had its own political revolutions and colonial experiments, which smashed entrenched bureaucracies in the Netherlands, Sweden, Scotland, and England. These four kingdoms were disproportionately successful in colonizing the rest of the world: Sweden and the Netherlands developed the basis for the New York stock exchange; England and Scotland absorbed these developments to create the basis for America, later expanding into India, Africa, and Australia.

By the failure of the Spanish Armada (1588), it is clear that the Iberian powers had become junior partners to northern Europeans.

In France, the Huguenot experiment failed to convert France to a Protestant state, but it succeeded in driving Free Thinkers underground into secret societies, which became the basis for the French Revolution. In “shutting out” Protestants, rather than integrating them into the state (as Germany and England had done), the Catholic monarchy painted itself into a corner. That Revolution created the basis for Napoleon, and the fulfillment of Machiavelli’s prophecy:

A state returning to classical wisdom, fielding a great patriotic army, would gain eternal fame.

Marxism and Unions.

Marxism developed out of the French Revolution, and attempted to provide humanity with a structure for the production of human capital, on the following basis:

1. Poverty is a waste of human capital.

2. By keeping humans in poverty, they remain illiterate and uneducated, wasting their latent talents.

3. By lifting everyone out of poverty, we will all discover our innately equal abilities, and everyone will be capable of the same intellectual output.

Marxism can be seen as an accelerationist strategy, in a feedback loop with capitalism:

1. The economy grows, which creates a large class of factory workers.

2. Marx predicts that these factory workers will unite to unleash greater economic efficiency.

3. Marxists take over backward states like Russia and China, and force the agrarian population of those states to rapidly industrialize.

The problem with Marxism is that there are diminishing returns to lifting everyone out of poverty. Marxism is an efficient way to industrialize a country by brute force, like Russia or China, because the vast majority of people are capable of working industrial factory jobs. However, for post-industrial economies, it is much harder to “brute force” everyone into becoming programmers, doctors, lawyers, or engineers.

Now that Marxism has failed, Republicans like Trump and JD Vance are attempting to revitalize American human capital through unions, protectionism, and tariffs. But unions are bad for economic growth. In fact, they are even worse than taxes.

unionism as machiavellian civil religion.

Although unions were (and are) bad for the economy, they served a larger and more important purpose in providing a Civil Religion. In Europe, this Civil Religion is a point of pride. Europeans boast of their vacations, paid maternity leave, and protections against termination.

It doesn’t matter that Europeans are wrong, in the same way that it doesn’t matter that praying to the Rain God doesn’t actually make rain fall. Religions are a necessary glue to keep post-Dunbar groups cohesive. Both unions and churches produce a collective identity with a plan for salvation:

1. Join the church and be blessed;

2. Join the union and be blessed.

People were “union men” in the same way that they were Christians. It was an identity to belong to a union. It provided workers with pride, honor, and a sense of collective destiny.

It doesn’t matter how silly the Cargo Cult is. Trying to replace a silly Cargo Cult with cold, libertarian, atheistic rationality creates a moral vacuum, which soon is filled with an even sillier (or more evil) Cargo Cult.

The decline of unions and churches created a moral vacuum that led to the twin movements of wokism and right-wing spiritual Marxism (Gribbles).

marx vs darwin.

During the 19th century, as the church weakened in favor of secularism, tension between Egalitarian-Protestantism and Freemasonry was growing. Marx abandoned Christian theology, but embraced its social teachings. Darwin took a different approach: instead of morally asserting how the world should be, he attempted to scientifically discover the mechanism of nature as it is.

Darwin discovered the mechanism of evolution in 1859, which challenged Christian morality, but also the morality of Marxism. Nietzsche began to expand on the moral implications of this naturalistic worldview in 1872. Between Marxism and Darwinism, Christianity faced its new and final crisis, resulting in the battle between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

Darwin's Revenge

If the Black Plague was the greatest thing to ever happen to the working class, the post-industrial revolution was the worst thing for it. Automation, computation, digitization, cloud storage, algorithms, and robots are killing the value of the working class. What Machiavelli once saw as the foundation of the state, the people, has become, like the appendix, a vestigial structure. Rather than the state withering away, like Marx predicted, it is the working class which is withering away.

As the working class has declined as a political force, unions have become anachronistic. Unions had events, rallies, newsletters, certifications, meetings, and other rituals to bring people together. In their place, right-wing spiritual Marxism promotes resentment against “leftist elites.”

The right is capable of imposing costs on the country, but it is uncertain to what extent. The right-wing meme of “drop out and buy some land” is not necessarily harmful in itself. But the active hostility toward academic and civil participation, including military service, is likely depriving the state of latent talent. How much?

wokeness and human capital.

So far, we have observed three feedback loops of human capital development:

1. Between Protestantism and literacy;

2. Between Marxism and Industrialism;

3. Between Unionism and Nationalism.

Developed nations are starting to hit hard Darwinian limits where it is no longer possible to get more out of the masses by instilling them with religious fervor or spending more on education. As a result, we are now undergoing a woke cycle, whose goal is not to increase literacy, numeracy, or competency, but pro-social cooperative behavior:

1. Demonstrate your pro-social cooperation by signaling support for outgroups (Jews, blacks, Catholics).

2. Integrate and assimilate those outgroups.

3. Find a new, more distant outgroup to competitively signal your pro-social cooperation (trans, Haitian immigrants, Hamas).

Wokeness is a status signal, and an effective one, according to Mr. Zagrebbi:

The proles don’t become woke because wokeness continuously evolves to alienate them—that is what makes the status signal accurate in the first place.

Wokeness imposes costs which have collective benefits. It isn’t entirely new, however. The Founding Fathers were in favor of toleration, liberal-mindedness, and accepting men of all sects and creeds into their country. The Founding Fathers weren’t woke because the pro-social cooperative signal was not yet singular — there were many other feedback loops going on, like the Protestant-Education loop, or the Marxist-Industrial loop, or the Unionist-Nationalist loop. Now that those other three loops have played out, all we have left is wokism to develop our human capital.

Conclusion

The victory of Marxism in 1945 was a short-lived Pyrrhic victory. Marxism never destroyed science, which was the origin of Darwin’s power. As science has developed, Marx’s prophecies have fallen flat. The working class has not developed “class consciousness.” The state has not “withered away.” People are not using their free time to “creatively self-actualize,” but waste their time getting angry on social media, in-between gooning and gaming sessions. Birth rates are collapsing. Is the Woke Mind Virus a new Black Plague?

If so, that is very good. A global population collapse will decrease the price of land, increase the price of wages, reduce pollution, and spur innovation, just as it did in 1350 in Europe. Those who oppose wokism are like the Catholic opponents of Protestantism, the Monarchist and Fascist opponents of Marxism, and the Hooverite opponents of Unionism. Human capital marches on, whether you like it or not.

The fifth turning of human capital is the solution to the Darwinian brick wall: direct genetic manipulation of human capital. The best way to achieve this is a Genetic Manhattan Project, with massive, unrestricted government investment in biology and AI. This will create a new feedback loop, where genetic manipulation leads to advances in science, spurring new genetic development.

1. The term refers to the profession of “animal husbandry” or the practice of tilling.

2. This most excellent document is provided by the House of Commons, "The History of the Parliamentary Franchise," Neil Johnson, 2013.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP13-14/RP13-14.pdf