EmpiricalRequires evidence

Autocatalytic processes are where the book locates historical leverage, and this is the method core's first mechanism. Part I defines them as processes that catalyse themselves and therefore speed up over time, and argues they produce the greatest impact on history because the eventual effect is wholly disproportionate to the initial effort. The British instance is specified rather than gestured at: incipient specialisation created labour demand in cities and labour surplus in the countryside, which fuelled urbanisation, which created external demand for the produce of locally sufficient market communities, which funded market intermediation, which drove further agricultural specialisation that would previously have depressed local prices, which spread the commercial mindset into farming, which produced more specialisation. Each step is the cause of the next and none of them is anyone's plan.

Capital mechanisms