Development with Dignity by Tom G. Palmer Matt Warner

Author:Tom G. Palmer, Matt Warner [Tom G. Palmer, Matt Warner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Developing & Emerging Countries
ISBN: 9781000536720
Google: sddSEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2022-01-31T04:17:38+00:00

Olson strengthens his point by applying the same logic to the common democratic experience of super-encompassing majorities in systems of representative government. When one focuses on blocking innovation and not solely on redistribution of tax revenues, Olson’s point is strengthened even further, because the great bulk of the gains from innovations lies in the future and tends to accrue to large and unorganized swathes, if not to virtually the entirety, of the population. In contrast, the much smaller losses from innovation tend to fall more immediately and on far more concentrated, known, and easily organized segments of the population, e.g., already established producers who do not adopt the innovation or whose capital is specific to the pre-innovation form of production and which thus falls in value.

The problem of succession of power means that the time horizons of autocrats tend to be not longer, but shorter than those of encompassing majorities.16 Although electoral cycles suggest time horizons for political leaders that are shorter than those of investors, the time horizons of democratically elected leaders are still likely to be longer and more encompassing than autocrats who fear losing power to a rival, partly because the losing politician is generally still able to run for office again in future. Not fearing imprisonment, exile, or execution also works to lengthen the horizon of politicians in democratic polities.

The dispersion of knowledge played a key role in the scientific revolution that had a transformative impact on European societies. Joel Mokyr has focused attention on the emergence of a “culture of progress.”17 A Republic of Letters dispersed across many political jurisdictions, with regular communication among its members, meant that no entity was able to suppress the emergence of new ideas.18 What facilitated the emergence of a Republic of Letters was not simply investment in education, as we are often told, for the stultifying Chinese mandarinate was nothing, if not highly educated, but the difficulty faced by established authorities who tried to prevent, but failed to prevent, the emergence and spread of new ideas. The growth of a Republic of Letters contributed to, but was not the essential ingredient in, the emergence of a culture of progress. What else was needed was a liberal revaluation, which drove the extension of the presumption of liberty to every class and creed, to every color and language, to everyone. The resulting culture of progress welcomes value-creating innovation, as well as freedom to work, capital accumulation, investment, freedom of contract, freedom of entry and exit, and the other central elements of economic development.

In 1920, historian J. B. Bury distinguished two theories of progress that correspond to the two approaches described here, that of the authoritarian “developmental state,” on the one hand, and what Deirdre McCloskey calls “innovism,” on the other.

Theories of Progress are thus differentiating into two distinct types, corresponding to two radically opposed political theories and appealing to two antagonistic temperaments. The one type is that of constructive idealists and socialists, who can name all the streets and towers of the city of gold, which they imagine as situated just round a promontory.

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