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The Industrial Revolution started in England. Its first success was to revolutionize the production of cotton cloth using new machines powered by water wheels and later by steam engines.
It is the political process that determines what economic institutions people live under, and it is the political institutions that determine how this process works.
Different patterns of institutions today are deeply rooted in the past because once society gets organized in a particular way, this tends to persist.
poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty.
South Korean politicians invested in education, achieving high rates of literacy and schooling. South Korean companies were quick to take advantage of the relatively educated population, the policies encouraging investment and industrialization, exports, and the transfer of technology. South Korea quickly became one of East Asia’s “Miracle Economies,” one of the most rapidly growing nations in the world.
Inclusive economic institutions also pave the way for two other engines of prosperity: technology and education.
the choice of institutions—that is, the politics of institutions—is central to our quest for understanding the reasons for the success and failure of nations.
The main barrier to political centralization is again a form of fear from change: any clan, group, or politician attempting to centralize power in the state will also be centralizing power in their own hands,
WE HAVE SEEN that neither geographic- nor cultural- nor ignorance-based theories are helpful for explaining the lay of the land around us.
World inequality today exists because during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries some nations were able to take advantage of the Industrial Revolution and the technologies and methods of organization that it brought while others were unable to do so.
inclusive political institutions allow a free media to flourish, and a free media often provides information about and mobilizes opposition to threats against inclusive institutions,
