In a world before plastic, textiles are everywhere. And that is why they have both been a huge source of employ ment over time and ahuge source of unemployment. The dynamism that makes for progressd has led to such huge gains in the standard of living. So you get real displacement in the short term and real suffering in the shortterm, but enormous gains over, i would say, the medium term.
Author and journalist Virginia Postrel talks about her book The Fabric of Civilization and How Textiles Made the World with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Postrel tells the fascinating story behind the clothes we wear and everything that goes into producing them throughout history. The history of textiles, Postrel argues, is a good way of understanding the history of the world.