( 13 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 22 2009
I very much appreciated Prof. Bernstein's book and have recommended it to my board. I have worked extensively on international development in the Middle East and Africa so can compare it with my experience. I would make two observations: 1. His conditions are likely necessary but not necessarily sufficient. Other cultural factors, such as the culture of generosity for family and clansmen that is so widely evident in Africa could restrict development even if the four factors were true. 2. I would argue that Societal Acceptance of Change, a broader concept than simply Acceptance of the Scientific Method is necessary. Development inevitably changes the power structure. People who were poor and without power find that they now have power. People who had traditional power may find they now have much less or none. If the society is not willing to accept changes built on investment and efficiency of the scientific method, they will likely not development.
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Posted: Jun 18 2009
I was loaned my copy by a friend who raved about it, and midway through the first page I could see why. Bernstein is a very engaging writer with a talent for exposition, and his arguments- most of them- are firmly rooted in historical and economic fact. He has produced a volume that's at once educational and entertaining- I have to admit I learned a lot reading it- while managing to avoid some of the usual cliches. His explanations of how and why some societies flourished while seemingly identical ones failed should be required reading for politicians. Bernstein's thesis is that any society requires four factors to achieve growth and wealth: firm property rights, a modern, rationalist view, capital markets, and communications and transport. Now I would quibble with this on a couple of counts: First, I would include most of those factors under the heading of the existence of free markets in goods, capital, and information. This is simply orthodox classical economics, and Bernstein's formulation doesn't really add anything, although it does allow him to tell the story his way. Second, I think he confuses the notion of scientific method with the idea of a rationalist and non-religious view of the world, and I think history is against him here, as you can cite any number of brilliant scientists- Newton comes to mind- who revolutionized science yet believed they were doing so as part of a further understanding of the works of the Creator. But these are minor quibbles. The bulk of this book consists of economic histories ranging from the Mycenaean Greeks to the fall of the USSR that illustrate his points, and I think in this Bernstein does a superb job. He makes use of a wide range of sources, almost all of them well regarded economists and historians in support of his thesis, and for the most part his conclusions can't be faulted- at least, not by me. I do have a few issues with some of his conclusions, particularly in his comparisons between the US and the more successful Western European democracies. For example, he states that many of these countries manage to maintain a reasonably high standard of living even as the government spends over 50% of GDP on various social welfare programs. Not only does his own data gainsay this- there's a table on page 317 showing how government expenditures over 30% correlate with negative growth- but he overlooks the free rider aspect- how many European countries have profited indirectly from the higher rates of technological innovation in the US, whether in health care, or in industry. One only has to look at the repeated billion-dollar shakedowns of Microsoft and more recently, Intel, by the EU, nominally to protect a non-existent EU microprocessor and operating system industry. His discussions of the government's role in capital markets are very good, but he gives somewhat short shrift to the role of a strong national bank, and too much to the role of government securities in providing a benchmark for "zero risk" bonds. Then there's Bernstein's section on overall satisfaction, which gets into some of the the fuzzier realms of my field, psychology, and constructs like Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Need. He does take a careful, objective approach to this issue, and uses objective measures where available, but in the end much of it it still based on constructs that I have little faith in. Nonetheless, I still strongly recommend this book. I think there's something in it for everyone from socialists to die-hard followers of Hayek, and even those who find much to disagree with will still find much that opens their eyes.
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Posted: Oct 12 2008
Everyone who yearns for a better time in our past should read this book (and some others) to gain an appreciation how much wealthier and better off we are then 99% of our recorded history. This books not only describes our road to wealth, but gives the fundamental reasons why we all live so much longer, healthier, and better then anytime in the past. Essential.
