How Progress Ends - bookrastinating.com

eBook, 552 pages

Published Sept. 16, 2025 by Princeton University Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-691-23507-3

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.

By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had …

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.

By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.

Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.

3 editions

Ben Waber reviewed How Progress Ends by Carl Benedikt Frey

A Decent Book that Could Have Been Great

4 stars

This book is an impressive but mostly surface level comparative review of national economic and technological progress from the 1500s to the modern day. There's a lot of insight here, but it's often marred by contradictory analyses (e.g. cartels are why German industry grew quickly in the 1800s, cartels are why the US didn't grow fast until the 1900s), and some shockingly false economic assertions (e.g. claiming economic growth post WW2 never matched 19th century growth - by any measure, the period from 1945-1979 was the highest growth period in world history). There's also a disturbing anti-worker vein throughout the book, with Frey never passing up an opportunity to criticize workers for their advocacy and glossing over huge advances such as the weekend and the end of child labor. The sections on the Soviet economy, however, cover material that is rarely collected in a single source and is definitely the …

This book is an impressive but mostly surface level comparative review of national economic and technological progress from the 1500s to the modern day. There's a lot of insight here, but it's often marred by contradictory analyses (e.g. cartels are why German industry grew quickly in the 1800s, cartels are why the US didn't grow fast until the 1900s), and some shockingly false economic assertions (e.g. claiming economic growth post WW2 never matched 19th century growth - by any measure, the period from 1945-1979 was the highest growth period in world history). There's also a disturbing anti-worker vein throughout the book, with Frey never passing up an opportunity to criticize workers for their advocacy and glossing over huge advances such as the weekend and the end of child labor. The sections on the Soviet economy, however, cover material that is rarely collected in a single source and is definitely the highlight of the book.

Overall, however, the biggest weakness in the book is the unit of analysis. There are simply too few countries and too many variables for a constrained analysis to offer a convincing explanation of what drives innovation and economic growth. I don't mind economists or historians laying out hypotheses, but Frey frames these factors as clearly causal. As a chronology, there are some good nuggets here. As a work of analysis, however, this feels like a missed opportunity

Ben Waber

rated it

April 17

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