Name: The Rise and Decline of Nations
ISBN: 9780300030792

The Rise and Decline of Nations

Explores the relation between economic development and collective action, hypothesizing that small collectives are dynamic and flexible enough to quickly react to changes, encouraging economic development, while large collectives are slow and inflexible when faced with change, leading to economic decline.

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MrBuddyCasinoAug 2021

> I feel like academics don’t do enough to help understand why some countries succeed and why some don’t

What have you read so far? Did you do any research? The field of philosophy and political science does not lack publications.

I can recommend "The Rise and Decline of Nations" by Mancur Olson. Further authors which I still have to go through, but seem relevant:

    Theodore Dalrymple
    René Girard
    Roger Scruton
    James Burnham

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dredmorbiusAug 2021

... why some countries succeed and why some don’t ...

Not for want of trying.

That's literally the topic of the foundational book of modern economics, Smith's An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. And there've been many, many, many subsequent attempts at answers. If there is a modern concensus, it's that there is no accepted answer or understanding.

There are several reasons. It's difficult to run controlled experiments. There are a limited number of examples to study. There is a phenomenally entangled set of factors. And many attempts are influenced by specific experiences, ignorance, or ideological alignment.

You'll find free-market fundamentalists, institutionalists, Keynesians (fiscal policy), monetarists, American School (National System, following a national policy), socialists, communists, neoliberal school, feudalists, physiocrats, cyberntics / systems theorists, complexity economists, biophysical economics, and numerous others.

Among texts I'd recommend:

Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations.

Lloyd Jeffrey Dumans, The Overburdened Econommy.

Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms. (The series this is part of contains numerous other explorations of economic history.)

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation

Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution.

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jeffreyrogersDec 2018

I read a lot. These were the best books I read this year.

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński. Kapuściński was a Polish journalist who traveled around the (mostly developing) world, reporting on civil wars, coups, revolutions, and other tumultuous events. This book recounts many of his experiences in Africa over several decades and is interesting in its insight into the lives of ordinary people. Someone told me Kapuściński had the most interesting life of anyone in the 20th century and I'm inclined to agree with that.

Congo: An Epic History of a People by David Van Reybrouck. Congo is one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources, but one of the poorest and least functional in terms of economics and institutions. This book gives a good overview of the history of Congo and explains why the problems are so deeply rooted.

The Rise and Decline of Nations and Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships, both by Mancur Olson. Why do some nations develop into relatively free, relatively rich countries, while others stagnate in perpetual conflict and poverty? How can countries transition from one of these states to the other? Why is it so hard to get obviously beneficial changes to occur in developed countries? These books try to answer these questions. I don't think they have the entire answer, and they don't have much in the way of easy solutions, but they get a lot of it right.

Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud. I thought Freud was largely discredited and his theories superseded by better ones, but reading this book showed me how insightful Freud really was. He is one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. This book helps you answer questions like: Why are most people unhappy? Why do our societies have so many problems? How can we simultaneously satisfy our desire to live in a community with our desire to be independent?

Spring by Knausgaard. I don't think I can do justice to this by summarizing it. It's a beautiful, sad, and short book. Definitely worth reading.

Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty. I'd been hearing a lot about postmodernism, mostly in a derogatory way, over the past year, but I had a hard time believing many of the criticisms of it were true. These two books do a pretty good job of articulating a postmodern worldview and you realize postmodernism isn't the boogeyman it's been made out to be. In fact, it seems like a fairly obvious step from the Enlightenment ideals of rational inquiry to postmodernisms primary project of questioning where the truths that this rational inquiry finds come from and whether they are valuable or not.

The Burden of Responsibility by Tony Judt. Only worth reading if you are interested in French politics. Profiles three French public intellectuals who stood apart from the mainstream in their opposition to totalitarian communism. Not a hagiography; this book offers criticism of these figures at times, though is largely admiring.

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dangoldinApr 2018

For those interested in the theory of lobbying and special interest groups one of my favorite books is Mancur Olson's Rise and Decline of Nations (https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation-Rigi...). It's an incredibly approachable read that does a wonderful job digging into the incentives and explains why lobbying exists and why it works.

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PercevalApr 2011

Off the top of my head, Mancur Olson's book 1982 The Rise and Decline of Nations is one of the better explanations. It's a formal modeling of lobbying and interest groups. The incentive structure is such that small groups capable of action can easily push for their specific interests, exceptions, loopholes, and other private goods. Whereas, the general public, which in general would prefer simplified and rationalized laws that treat everyone equally, has a hard time mobilizing to protect their interests because of their size and diffuse character.

Wikipedia summarizes the core of the argument:

The idea is that small distributional coalitions tend to form over time in countries. Groups like cotton-farmers, steel-producers, and labor unions will have the incentives to form lobby groups and influence policies in their favor. These policies will tend to be protectionist and anti-technology, and will therefore hurt economic growth; but since the benefits of these policies are selective incentives concentrated amongst the few coalitions members, while the costs are diffused throughout the whole population, the "Logic" dictates that there will be little public resistance to them. Hence as time goes on, and these distributional coalitions accumulate in greater and greater numbers, the nation burdened by them will fall into economic decline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson

So, the idea is a kind of 'death by a thousand cuts' where each little loophole or exemption is not so large that the public will rally against it, but the cumulative effect of interest groups ends up creating a byzantine system of laws which become unintelligible and hold back growth.

Politicians, while running under the banner of broad ideologies, know that their practical support comes from smaller groups capable of mobilization (whether it's financial contributions or unions getting out the vote). So, interest groups win out over the general public interest.

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mclinSep 2010

Read Rise and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson. http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Decline-Nations-Stagflation-Rigid...

It explains this phenomenon. Basically, for a group of size n, members only get 1/n of the value they contribute towards any collective goal, so noone bothers, unless coerced, like with unions.

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