I am a little over half way through my current most favorite book: “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (Crown Business, NY: 2012). I expect to finish it in the next few days. I’m racing through it like several earlier “most favorite books,” 1491 and 1492 (by CharlesC. Mann) and “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (Jared Diamond). Sadly, I may have to start over entirely with “A Secular Age” by Charles Taylor in order to finish that one (kinda hard to finish a c. 800 p book when your notes roughly equal the length of the text … it’s really great). I mention these former title holders (i.e., of my “current most favorite book”) because their authors have all very positively blurbed this one. And well they should. Anyway, I DO expect to finish this one soon. The authors answer the question, “why nations fail,” by starting with “why they have succeeded.” Their historical surveys span the globe and history, running from the Neolithic revolution to the present, from the economic depths of the “third world” (can I still say that? Or is that considered indecently bad manners now?) to the heights of the first. They ask, “why Nogales, Arizona (USA), prospers, and brilliantly, while Nogales, Sonora (Mexico), barely subsists,” divided only by a fence and a border. Or, “why does North Korea differ so greatly in every measure from South Korea?” The answer to economic disparity is in political choice. In fact, the answer to economic disparity is in the presence or absence of pluralistic political choice vs. extractive despotism. These choices, like every choice, are subject to historical contingency involving internal responses to external change. In other words, history is a complex adaptive system possessing the chaotic feature of “high sensitivity to initial conditions.” Just another reason to love this book. Of course, in the interests of full disclosure, I must confess. This, like all my other “current most favorite books,” is guilty of “big think” and filled with reams of history. Plus, it confirms what I already believe about metaphysics (non-linear, complex systems/interrelated network) and politics (social stability + freedom within minimal but significant constraints = maximum prosperity and opportunity for pursuit of happiness for the greatest number … and mostly for the gospel). For example, from my first exposure to Africa in the early 1980s. It seemed obvious to even my most naïve and inexperienced self the reason traditional African peoples so quickly and easily adopted socialistic forms of post-colonial government. Not solely because “capitalism” was tainted by colonialism. That was true for liberal westerners but the Africans didn’t really experience that much capitalism (it being reserved mostly for the colonialists). Not primarily because socialist nations had several natural advantages in these Cold War proxy conflicts. It was because socialism was just traditional chieftanship in other clothes. In the 1960s, it required the least amount of change to understand and implement. The free market and multiparty democracy, however, were innovations quite alien to them. No wonder then, that a generation or two after colonialism, they gained the experience and education to appreciate what they then adopted in the 1990s. Soooooo many reasons to love this book, and even to recommend it …Though I must complain on one point. The authors are great (so far) at explaining how things started and developed. They haven’t really given as much thought as I would’ve liked to the end point of this process. At some point, the snake either swallows its own tail or it says, “enough.” For example (p. 317), they lump a variety of leftist economically pernicious policies of both the UK and US at the turn of the 20th century into their “inclusive” model. Granted, their political analysis is necessarily fine grained while their economic, much more course grained. Still, for the preceding 316 pages, my question was how they might explain the present liberal (in the American usage) attempts to further “inclusivity” when these seem rather to have ridden off the rails, to fall more and more into the absolutist, extractive despotism category. So far, the authors haven’t said. But they have said so many other delightful things that I think I can over look this one. Maybe they’ll write a sequel! One can only hope.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 00:57:57 +0000
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