WHY NATIONS FAIL
New York Times WHY NATIONS FAIL by Thomas L. Friedman March 31, 2012
The persistent problem with this columnist is his apparent belief that all problems (and all solutions) are economic in essence. And yet we have all kinds of experience to tell us that a society may be ever so rich and enjoy ever so much freedom, and yet be ever so miserable. The chance that happiness and a good life may have some connection with psychology, or culture, or community, or spirituality is beyond this man's ken.
Our country (to take one example at perfect random) was a ten-times better place in, say, 1950, than it is today, and also was ten times less wealthy. My observation is that once a society begins to move above a certain decent level of per-capita income, it also begins right away to fall into that form of radical self-indulgence called decadence.
Hellenic Greece was much less prosperous than in Hellenistic times, but made far greater contributions to the world. Spain grew rich and decadent at the same time. Rome was much more admirable as a republic than as an empire. And that's just three examples out of about a thousand.
But let me stop here and offer my apologies to those libr... progressives who like to believe pre-post-modern times were just awful. Very few of them were there.
The persistent problem with this columnist is his apparent belief that all problems (and all solutions) are economic in essence. And yet we have all kinds of experience to tell us that a society may be ever so rich and enjoy ever so much freedom, and yet be ever so miserable. The chance that happiness and a good life may have some connection with psychology, or culture, or community, or spirituality is beyond this man's ken.
Our country (to take one example at perfect random) was a ten-times better place in, say, 1950, than it is today, and also was ten times less wealthy. My observation is that once a society begins to move above a certain decent level of per-capita income, it also begins right away to fall into that form of radical self-indulgence called decadence.
Hellenic Greece was much less prosperous than in Hellenistic times, but made far greater contributions to the world. Spain grew rich and decadent at the same time. Rome was much more admirable as a republic than as an empire. And that's just three examples out of about a thousand.
But let me stop here and offer my apologies to those libr... progressives who like to believe pre-post-modern times were just awful. Very few of them were there.
posted by Tito at 12:36 PM
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