If you are an evolutionist . . .

[JMAnon]

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My knowledge of the late 1800s is not strong, but post ww2 saw a dramatic DECREASE in regulations and centralized control when compared to the 1930s and ww2 years.


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I don't think you are correct about that. The amount of centralized regulations has rapidly increased ever since the Supreme Court's famous "switch in time" during the 1930's. If measured by number of laws in the U.S. Code or regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations, that number has perpetually increased. It is true that some of the draconian price control and other economic regulations were removed after the war, but the overall trend of the 20th Century was a massive increase in centralized power and regulation. At the same time, there was an explosion of wealth and technological progress. I am not saying the increased regulation is a necessary cause of all the progress. Indeed, I am sure that much of it is not; but the overall point I made was not about incremental differences in the amount of regulation. The issue raised by OP is anarchy v. state, which is a much bigger distinction than some regulation v. more regulation. It may well be true that the ideal amount of regulation is far less than we have today, but it is also almost certain that some regulation is preferable to no regulation (i.e., anarchy).

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England, Rome, and Ancient Greece all had strong central governments in place during the periods of greatest innovation in arts and sciences.

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Periods of greatest innovation is misleading. The 1990s was a period of phenomenal innovation, and those innovations were far more complex than the much simpler agricultural innovations that turned Europe around after the dark ages. Crop rotation, proper fertilization and irrgation, proper breading and selection, these things are "simple" when compared to the wealth of knowledge and capital that is required to build a computer. Yet the agricultural innovations are what built up enough capital to allow that beginnings of the industrial revolution by freeing people from having to farm and allowing their labor to be put to use elsewhere.

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This is a fair point, but it does not detract from my main argument. Even the "simple" innovations you describe were made and widely used in areas with governments, not in anarchies.