Prediction: the final conclusion will include the observation that China did have rule of law and property rights - they were just outside the country, but accessible, through increasing globalism and/or the cultural networks carried by diaspora communities. With HK mentioned in here somewhere.
Thank you for lots of readings and Happy Christmas & NY.
PS Apart from Bondi we've had another cultural quake this week with the Jacob Savage article in Compact, and its fallout. Looks like you're busy for a while but I'd love an opinion, particularly if the great rollback has begun. Robert Manne sounds afraid.
Sadly what Adam Smith characterized as universal was specific, at least in the sense of it as a product of experience and not theory. Heinlein better captures the universal...
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is a nice autopsy on the anthropology of culture showing how culture can be analyzed and that it shouldn't be taken for granted. All cultures are moral and hold to social norms of morality which are an outcome of human evolution. They preserve behavioral standards for the greater good of a community if such norms are to prevail. And these are fragile things.
Prediction: the final conclusion will include the observation that China did have rule of law and property rights - they were just outside the country, but accessible, through increasing globalism and/or the cultural networks carried by diaspora communities. With HK mentioned in here somewhere.
Thank you for lots of readings and Happy Christmas & NY.
PS Apart from Bondi we've had another cultural quake this week with the Jacob Savage article in Compact, and its fallout. Looks like you're busy for a while but I'd love an opinion, particularly if the great rollback has begun. Robert Manne sounds afraid.
Sadly what Adam Smith characterized as universal was specific, at least in the sense of it as a product of experience and not theory. Heinlein better captures the universal...
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
This is a nice autopsy on the anthropology of culture showing how culture can be analyzed and that it shouldn't be taken for granted. All cultures are moral and hold to social norms of morality which are an outcome of human evolution. They preserve behavioral standards for the greater good of a community if such norms are to prevail. And these are fragile things.
Blackstone the Jurist in one word: Property.