Imagine that you have been given the assignment of designing the Industrial Revolution—retrospectively. With respect to its negative consequences, the assignment would have to read something like this: Design a system of production that • puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year • produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by future generations • results in gigantic amounts of waste • puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved • requires thousands of complex regulations—not to
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