What makes that a rule? Can causal chains not last more than X amount of time? What is the cutoff?
However, economic growth was basically flat before the Black Plague, and increases were basically random events that went back to Malthusian dynamics.
Only since the Black Plague has the world enjoyed exponential economic growth.
Most people talk about the industrial revolution, a lot of other comments talk about the british agricultural revolution before that, but economic historians have identified the inflection point at the black plague - that's where compound interest really started to be a driver of growth, it barely existed before that, at least on long time scales.
<quote> One cannot, of course, “know” this in the same way that one can know the date of the battle of Poitiers; applying economic analysis to the spotty record of commerce during late antiquity is a tricky business. However, as can be seen in a subtly reasoned 2003 paper by two development economists, Ronald Findlay of Columbia and Mats Lundahl of the University of Stockholm, it is compelling, as well, despite its reliance on a number of simplifications. </quote>
This would be like saying "well drunk driving doesn't cause accidents because I drive drunk once and didn't get in a crash"
Why other events did not have the same effects are very interesting questions for economic history.