this post was submitted on 30 May 2023
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Yeah, also because for a long time the limiting factor to steam engines was not the fact that we didn't know we could extract work from boiling water, but that we didn't have good enough metallurgy to build any kind of decent pressure vessel.
Besides, we're Marxists. A large part of the reason why the steam engine took off when it did was because the material conditions of western Europe favored improving efficiency in extracting surplus value from workers, when previously it wasn't necessary or particularly well rewarded.