Going back to the library, so I'll just end my posting about this one with a quote from his Conclusion:
Why did the West dominate the rest and not vice versa? I have argued that it was because the West developed six killer applications that the Rest lacked. These were:How many of those are under attack today from one quarter or another of the progressive sphere?
- Competition, in that Europe itself was politically fragmented and that within each monarchy or republic there were multiple competing corporate entities.
- The Scientific Revolution, in that all the major seventeenth century breakthroughs in the mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe.
- The rule of law and representative government, in that an optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private property rights and the representation of property-owners in elected legislatures.
- Modern medicine, in that nearly all the major nineteenth and twentieth century breakthroughs in health care, including the control of tropical diseases, were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.
- The consumer society, in that the Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better, and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.
- The work ethic, in that Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labour {sic--he's a Scot} with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.
This is one of the first books I've gotten from the library in quite a while that I felt like actually purchasing in hard cover...
Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer. Does the phrase "Honest graft" seem like a contradiction in terms to you? Yeah, me too. But not congresscritters. They have special "ethics" rules just for them.
What a bunch of crooks.
No comments:
Post a Comment