The fourth chapter explains how Eurasian regimes looked to the Qing dynasty’s Chinese empire, engendering a period of so-called sinomania and physiocracy, which was little more than an enshrinement of feudalism and mercantilism as the paramount universal program of political economy. Caught between the zero-sum socioeconomic pyramids of both national and ecumenical slave regimes, their working classes were increasingly compelled to emigrate toward the New World in search of frontiers, population valves and the economics of hope. In response, the Malthusian Challenge of Old World economists proposed that only by increasing limits on access to ownership of finite resources like gold and land could working populations be adequately disciplined (i.e. clearances). The ensuing suffering was seemingly mitigated by the beginnings of the “Industrial Revolution.” This ostensibly new historical phase brought unprecedented growth coupled with unprecedented immiseration for the working classes. Despite economic expansion far surpassing demographic expansion since industrialization, this often came at the zero-sum expense of working classes in the Eurasian empires. The expanding pie was still managed based on zero-sum principles and the myth of linear industrial progress framed the industrialization of production as a “revolution” while avoiding a real one. The unintended consequence of this was that the forces of liberalism confronted slavery, enshrining the former as victors in a zero-sum struggle against slavers.