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August 20 - November 13, 2022
with the spread of the Industrial Revolution the aristocracies weren’t just the economic losers; they also risked becoming political losers,
Artisans whose manual skills were being replaced by mechanization likewise opposed the spread of industry.
They were the Luddites,
John Kay, English inventor of the “flying shuttle” in 1733,
James Hargreaves, inventor of the “spinning jenny,”
In England, industrialization marched on, despite the Luddites’ opposition, because aristocratic opposition, though real, was muted.
Why were they not real? Less political power existing?
In the Austro-Hungarian and the Russian empires, where the absolutist monarchs and aristocrats had far more to lose, industrialization was blocked.
Conflict over scarce resources, income and power, translates into conflict over the rules of the game,
In the same way that there is no reason why political institutions should automatically become pluralistic, there is no natural tendency toward political centralization.
many actors with sufficient powers
Too many actors with sufficient power evenly acquired
The reason for this poverty, and the reluctance of Kongolese farmers to adopt better technologies when they learned of them, is clear from existing historical accounts. It was due to the extractive nature of the country’s economic institutions.
São Salvador.
Slavery was central to the economy, used by the elite to supply their own plantations and by Europeans on the coast.
Taxes were arbitrary;
Instead of investing to increase their productivity and selling their products in markets, the Kongolese moved their villages away from the market;
most fundamental market of all, an inclusive labor market where people can choose their occupation or jobs in ways that are so crucial for a prosperous economy, did not exist.
The absolutist institutions of Kongo were kept in place by the army.
Why the king and the aristocracy so eagerly adopted European firearms is thus easy to understand.
The advent of European rule in this area, and deeper into the basin of the River Congo at the time of the “scramble for Africa” in the late nineteenth century, led to an insecurity of human and property rights even more egregious than that which characterized the precolonial Kongo.
though the few now were Belgian colonialists, most notably King Leopold II.
When Congo became independent in 1960, the same pattern of economic institutions, incentives, and performance reproduced itself.
European colonialism created a polity, Congo, made up of many different precolonial states and societies
Zairianization program of 1973,
This lack of political centralization, almost to the point of total collapse of the state, is a feature that Congo shares with much of sub-Saharan Africa.
how political institutions determine economic institutions and, through these, the economic incentives and the scope for economic growth.
neither that extractive institutions can never generate growth nor that all extractive institutions are created equal.
elites can directly allocate resources to high-productivity activities that they themselves control.
Caribbean Islands between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Soviet Union from the first Five-Year Plan in 1928 until the 1970s.
when the institutions permit the development of somewhat, even if not completely, inclusive economic institutions.
Park
promote economic growth, and in fact did so very actively—perhaps partly because the regime was not directly supported by extractive economic institutions.
South Korea transitioned from extractive political institutions toward inclusive political institutions in the 1980s.
the economic elite had little to gain from their own or the military’s dominance of politics.
The relative equality of income
The key influence of the Uni...
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no transition of this sort took place in the Soviet Union. In consequence, Soviet growth ran out of steam, and the economy began to collapse in the 1980s and then totally fell apart in the 1990s.
Even today, the state and the Communist Party play a central role in deciding which sectors and which companies will receive additional capital and will expand—in
political centralization is key to both ways in which growth under extractive political institutions can occur.
A major dividing line between extractive political institutions is therefore their degree of political centralization.
extractive institutions can generate some growth, they will usually not generate sustained economic growth, and certainly not the type of growth that is accompanied by creative destruction.
the arrangements that support economic growth under extractive political institutions are, by their nature, fragile—they can collapse or can be easily destroyed by the infighting that the extractive institutions themselves generate.
Roman Empire
Maya cities
even if a society under extractive institutions initially achieves some degree of state
centralization, it will not last.
Finally, when growth comes under extractive political institutions but where economic institutions have inclusive aspects, as they did in South Korea, there is always the danger that economic institutions become more extractive and growth stops.
IN 1346 THE BUBONIC plague, the Black Death, reached the port city of Tana at the mouth of the River Don on the Black Sea.
Giovanni Boccaccio.
the fuck lol
