How The West Grew Rich

"The underlying source of the West’s ability to attract the lightning of economic revolutions was a unique use of experiment in technology and organization to harness resources to the satisfaction of human wants. The key elements of the system where the wide diffusion of the authority and resources necessary to experiment; an absence of more than rudimentary political and religious restrictions on experiment; and incentives which combined ample rewards for success, defined as the widespread economic use of the results of experiment, with a risk of severe penalties for failing to experiment. The thematic terms are thus autonomy, experiment, and diversity*."

Nathan Rosenberg & L. E. Birdzell, Jr.

So, did the West grow rich because of the monopolistic and capitalistic preying of large corporations on the masses of the ignorant and uneducated, suppressing their advantages and to gain advantage at their expense?

NO!

An underlying economic system of free markets, combined with the politics of liberty and rugged individualism, allowed for immigration which came to take advantage of those things - freedoms economic and religious - to make better lives for themselves than any one of them could have in the repressive places from which they came.

And immigrants came by the millions to take advantage of these freedoms.

* Diversity did not have anything to do with cultures but with the various skills and contributions individuals were able to make to the whole. Each worker, from the coolie to the accountant, made the whole work.

Corporate entities are interactive systems. Every aspect of the macro-system is influenced by what goes on in each of the micro-systems which make it up. One needs a systems approach to make it work.

Economies are interactive systems. Every aspect of the macro-system is influenced by what goes on in each of the micro-systems which make it up. One needs a systems approach to make it work.

And to the extent that bureaucrats and inexperienced gubment whiz bangs think that they can manage and control the trillions of voluntary interactions of each micro piece of this huge macro pie breaks down the whole, and affects it to work less efficiently than it can operate on its own.

Gubment intervention and regulation is to the detriment of all. Wasn't George Stigler awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Economics for proving the same?

Working together from the bottom up we can help get gubment out of our abilities to progress. Yes we can!

P.s. I HIGHLY, HIGHLY RECOMMEND READING THE BOOK!