Expectation of Industrialization

Industrial Revolutions…there’s been more than one. They’ve occurred at different times in different places in the world. However, the initial concept of Industrial Revolution is especially European, and even more specifically English. It’s a good enough example though, especially when comparing real world events to Civ IV.

Nearly every Civ IV game has its own form of an industrial revolution. How quickly this level of industrialization is achieved is one of the games most crucial requirements. When a nation becomes industrialized production skyrockets. Effectively, industrialization is the specialization of labor with the aid of performance enhancing machines. The production of windmills, machine shops, and railroads are all signs of reaching an industrialized society in Civ.

Along with, usually, a much higher standard of living for a populace, industrialization weaves an exceedingly high level of interdependence within a society. Adam Smith gives us our most famous example of this in The Wealth of Nations; he demonstrates how industrial specialization (the “division of labour” as he called it) increases the efficiency of producing pins. I quote, “Those ten persons, therefore, could make among them upwards of forty-eight thousand pins in a day. Each person, therefore, making a tenth part of forty-eight thousand pins, might be considered as making four thousand eight hundred pins in a day. But if they had all wrought separately and independently, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty, perhaps not one pin in a day…” (The Wealth of Nations.)

Many will argue that with this interdependence there comes the possibility of a catastrophic breakdown of the entire society because one small, specialized industry fails. Personally, I think that's pretty pessimistic; there aren't any other alternatives that will raise the standard of living so high for so many as does industrialization (except possibly killing off a large portion of the population and living off of their leftovers.) So I say we should stick with and support industrialization as it comes to us in both the real and virtual world.