Moral Innovations is a framework that connects historical events, highlighting the profit motive, to describe how industrialization has focused on innovations at the expense of morality. The impact is measurable in the widening wealth gap that propels increasing conflicts, leading to the eventual destruction of humanity unless we change course. A measure of future progress is to reverse the wealth gap concentration where, in 2022, 60 million humans on earth control 46% of all wealth among 8 billion humans.
Western Europeans’ GDP per capita (in 1990$) decreased from $576 in year 1 to $427 in year 1000 through the Crusades. It took the next 820 years to increase 300% to $1,202 but exploded 950% higher in the following 150 years to reach $11,417 by 1973 or 1800% in the following 190 years to reach $21,672 by 2008 with low cost land, labor and capital for 400 million Europeans in the year 2000. The USA story is similar: From $1,257 GDP per capita in the year 1820 to $16,179 by 1973 or $31,178 by 2008 for 281 million Americans in the 2000 census. In other words, Western Europe and USA annual GDP gained about $30 trillion (2010$) GDP within a century of China’s purchase of 1 million tons of opium for US$100 trillion (2010$). While it is true that, in macroeconomic terms, the velocity of money contributed to the growth especially in the 21st century, here we focus on high risk seed capital that launched industrialization.
Moral Innovations framework calls for each of us to pursue knowledge with integrity. If every human morally works hard to define their roles or passion regardless of faith or background, they can contribute within their community and control the realization of their potential. Epistemology tests the validity of faith with facts before action is taken. History has shown that faith-based actions lead to increasing conflicts with low morality. Over 90% of global human population follow Monotheism, Henotheism, or Atheism. Monotheism includes Rosicrucianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Henotheism includes Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. Atheism includes Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Zen. When measured in terms growth of wealth and global human population, our world has a clear demarcation line at manufacturing industrialization.
Background
Morality was formally introduced 2,500 years ago by Laozi and Confucius in China, Buddha/Ashoka in India, and Socrates in Europe. After the Chinese language was unified during the Qin Dynasty 2,200 years ago, all Chinese schools of thoughts were silenced and books were banned. Confucianism was revived after modifications by Dong Zhongshu and others beginning the Han Dynasty 2,100 years ago to emphasize conformity. For more than 2,000 years, China excelled in global trade using The Silk Road and the current Belt and Road Initiative. China was the world’s largest economy with 35% of Global GDP by the year 1820. The Four Great Inventions were used to enhance productivity in trades. For example, Gunpowder was used as fireworks to entertain in China until Monotheism developed weapons of mass destruction. Paper was used for books, reports, and recordkeeping in China until Monotheism, with the invention of Gutenberg printing press, created the most widely distributed book in the German language to spread the Protestant sect of Christianity. There were local conflicts around the world as Monotheism grew in Europe when Catholicism became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380ce and the emergence of Islam in 610ce. Both China’s Atheism and India’s Henotheism had many dynasties that, other than China’s Yuan Dynasty and the trade routes like the Silk Road, remained within Asia.
Before the first global industrial revolution around the year 1500, global human population needed over 200,000 years from the beginning of Homo Sapiens to reach 500 million humans. Humanity doubled from 500 million to 1 billion in 300 years between 1500 and 1800, before the availability of low-cost land, labor and capital propelled explosive growth from 1 billion to 8 billion, an 8-fold increase, in 200 years.
This explosive human population growth was driven by industrialization which, in its basic form, is the process of transforming economies from agriculture to manufacturing. By definition, manufacturing is the production of goods with the help of equipment, labor machine, tools and chemical or biological processing or formulation. The three pillars for production are Land, Capital, and Labor. Moral Innovations highlights how the historical focus on profit to drive innovations happened at the expense of morality, leading to today’s widening wealth gap among humans.
The pillar of Land was taken without morality by the 1494 Tordesillas Treaty. Drafted by the Spaniard Catholic Pope Alexander VI after the first of several Christopher Columbus voyages, this treaty between Portugal and Spain divided the world along a meridian 370 leagues that allowed Spain to claim North and South America (except for a slice of today’s Brazil) and Portugal to claim Africa and Asia, ignoring Native Americans and the larger and more advanced civilizations already living in those parts of the world. Knowing that earth is an imperfect sphere, a second antimeridian line was needed to divide the world into two regions. Another treaty, Zaragoza Treaty, was signed in 1529 for that purpose. The use of acknowledgements by two countries to take land has been repeated at other places, including two USA-Japan recognitions that Ryukyu Islands belong to Japan that is Okinawa today, and Hawaiian Islands belong to the USA that is now the State of Hawaii. Note that the Ryukyu King was kidnapped to Tokyo and the popular Hawaiian Queen Lili’uokalani was forced to abdicate in 1895. Other examples include the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain that divided the Middle East, a year before the 1917 Balfour Declaration that supported the existence of a home for Jews while nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Another example is the 1953 Project Ajax where President Eisenhower agreed with Britain’s Winston Churchill to deploy CIA assets and deposed Iran‘s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.
Note that the Tordesillas Treaty between Portugal and Spain did not include other European countries. British pirates started to loot Spanish treasure ships returning from North and South America that led to Spain’s 1588 Armada and its defeated by Britain. By 1600, Britain joined the race to claim colonies around the world through its empire using a risk-sharing entity called The British East India Company, followed by the Dutch East India Company in 1602.
A substantial portion of the 1 million tons of opium forcibly imported into China against Chinese law happened after the Opium Wars between 1840-1860. Near the end of the second Opium War between 1858-1860, Russia annexed Chinese territories adjoining the Amur River that was about 35% the size of China. This land is still used by Russia with year-round ice-free Pacific Ocean ports. It was from this annexed territory that Russia shot down the Korean Air Line Flight 007 in 1983. After the start of the 2021 Ukraine-Russian war, China finally regains Vladivostok Port after 163 years.
The pre-industrial pillar of labor included hunters/gatherers through the development of language and music after humans became farmers 10,000 years ago. The low-cost labor, under Monotheism, is frequently mentioned in the Bible, including the ongoing search for archaeological evidence to support the path Moses led the Jewish exodus out of slavery after the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah in 597 bce. The word slave came from the Slavic ethnonym Slavs from Eastern Europe and Jews were mentioned in. Under Henotheism, it was dalit or the “untouchables” caste in the caste system. Under Atheism, it was the indentured (almost exclusively) female servants pronounced Yahuan (丫鬟) or BiNv (婢女) who can be sold from generation to generation. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s 2016 book and Roger Ross William’s 2023 film “Stamped from the beginning” mentioned Portuguese had Africans to replace Slavs as early as 1444 while highlighting a history of racist ideas in the USA. After the Tordesillas Treaty, the pillar of Labor was first taken up by large scale shipments of slaves out of Africa then by exploited labor through Jim Crow laws and Chinese Exclusion Acts in the USA. On Christmas Eve of the year 1515, Bartolome de las Casas (1484-1566) met with an ill Spanish King Ferdinand and advocated the importation of black slaves from Africa to relieve the suffering Native American Indians. Stanford University Emeritus Professor Sylvia Wynter sees las Casas as the reason a young 18-year-old Charles V granted permission to bring the first of 4,000 African slaves to Jamaica in 1518. For the next two centuries, an estimated 20 million African slaves were shipped out of Africa to the Americas, with a small percentage to what is now USA. Unlike South America where most slaves were worked to death, the USA innovation was to breed slaves to become perpetual free labor. After the 1676 Bacon’s rebellion and the 1861-65 civil war ended slavery, Jim Crow laws emerged through the Gilded Age, followed by the civil rights movement. Women suffrage succeeded after World War 1, and Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was removed after the World War 2.
Also after the Tordesillas Treaty, the pillar of capital started with Vasco da Gama‘s sea voyage to Calicut and Goa, India. He left Lisbon in 1497 and reached India as early as 1498. Another Portuguese Jorge Alvares reached China’s Tamao (屯门) in 1513. After Alvares died, other Portuguese settled in what is now Macao in 1557. During the 16th century, Spain led the world in collecting treasures from around the world. After British East India Company (BEIC) joined the frontier in the 17th century to extract treasures from around the world, the British Empire grew through colonies until 1773 when the Boston Tea Party was among the first indications that USA was leaving the British Empire. In that same year, Britain decided to give monopoly power to BEIC to trade in opium. BEIC taught Indians how to produce opium and signed contracts in India to deliver opium mostly through the Hong Kong port into China against Chinese Law. BEIC lost the opium trade monopoly in 1833 and many more traders from European Monotheist countries like Portugal, sold opium into China after the opium wars. Most of the BEIC power returned to the British crown in 1858. Between 1820 and 1900, an estimated 1 million tons of opium were produced and sold into China in exchange for US$100 trillion (2010$), including 70,000 tons of Silver with Professor Atwell‘s research, opium import into China, and retail price of opium/heroin. This low cost capital was a major source of seed capital that significantly reduced the risks for investments such as infrastructure projects. For example, Olivier Crespi Reghizzi wrote that taxes and tariffs were used to finance the municipal infrastructure for cities like Paris and Milan between 1853 and 1925. Lisbon’s Avenue of Liberty, one of the most expensive streets in Portugal today, was built in 1879 in central Lisbon. Both infrastructure projects coincided with the 10-fold increase in per capital GDP in Western Europe and the low-cost capital for selling opium into China.
At the beginning of the 20th century, China was not able to pay for more opium and no longer the source of low-cost capital for industrialization. World War 1 ended with the Versailles Treaty where Germany had to pay US$31.4 billion (1919$) or $442 billion (2023$) to Allied Powers. This led to the rise of Hitler who was democratically elected based on his platform to stop payments in accordance with The Versailles Treaty. Hitler sought capital to wage world war 2 when he quickly learned USA’s eugenics movement and went through the ten stages of genocide to both took the Jewish wealth and killed the Jews in the Holocaust. There were very few cities like Shanghai, China that welcomed Jews during the Holocaust.
Near the end of World War 2, USA emerged as the global leader and introduced Bretton Woods System in 1944 after the British gold holdings had been depleted. However, there was not enough gold to sustain the fast growth of global industrialization. President Nixon cancelled the fixed-rate convertibility of US dollars to gold in 1971. At the same time, the global reliance on fossil fuels such as oil was increasing. Petrodollars became the dominant currency for oil trading. For countries with large amounts of petrodollars, the US can use sanctions as policies against oil exporting countries like Russia and Iran. In 2023, the expansion of BRICS membership to include Saudi Arabia and Iran could weaken the dominance of US Petrodollars.
Moral Innovations framework is important because the nexus of these three pillars cannot be sustained. As of 2023, 1) there is no more land to be explored on earth (perhaps other than arctic and antarctica), 2) there is no artificially low-cost labor that is consistent with the human rights doctrine, and 3) the artificially high OPEC oil prices may be phased out beginning in 2021 with COP26, COP27, and COP28.
There is a blog on this topic: https://moralinnovator.wordpress.com/
Moral Innovator 