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I've just read most of "Kicking Away The Ladder" (2002, Ha-Joon Chang) and this work makes it clear that Henry VII started the whole textile business in the XVI

by forinti 16y ago

I've just read most of "Kicking Away The Ladder" (2002, Ha-Joon Chang) and this work makes it clear that Henry VII started the whole textile business in the XVI century. He had lived in the Netherlands, saw the wealth that it created, and put in motion policies geared towards building an industry in Britain (restricting exports and hiring dutch craftsmen). His successors continued his work and in the XVIII century this industry accounted for half of Britain's export revenue. This book is quite interesting; it argues that those economic policies that rich countries now sell to developing nations (through the Washington Consensus, for instance) were actually only put in place after they had become developed. These policies include IP rights, opening up of markets, less government intervention (that's laughable), etc.

Gormo 16y ago
Looking at IP alone might lead to confusion of causation and correlation. What factors led to the ability to create effective IP policies in the first place? Consider the broader context: in the early modern era, England was arguably the stablest and most evenly-governed country in the world, especially after 1688. There was a common body of law that applied throughout the country, centuries before legal codification; there were reliable courts of law end equity; there was a resilient balance between centralized interests and local ones; there was a deep cultural apprehension to arbitrary power. There was also the fact that, after the Act of Union, Great Britain had very little cause to worry about external military threats potentially destroying investments in physical infrastructure. Industrialization is about improving production efficiency, and thus scaling into larger and wider markets. Even if you have the technology to begin industrialization, if the society at large is unpredictable and its institutions unreliable, you still have a major impediment to scaling your enterprise, and so you have a disincentive to industrialization. If you do have stability and reliable institutions, as the early UK did, you're in a great position to industrialize. It makes you wonder what might have happened if Hero of Alexandria had brought his primitive steam engine to Rome a hundred years earlier, before the Republic collapsed (which would also have been around the same time as Spartacus' rebellion).

by forinti 16y ago

Gormo 16y ago

Looking at IP alone might lead to confusion of causation and correlation. What factors led to the ability to create effective IP policies in the first place? Consider the broader context: in the early modern era, England was arguably the stablest and most evenly-governed country in the world, especially after 1688. There was a common body of law that applied throughout the country, centuries before legal codification; there were reliable courts of law end equity; there was a resilient balance between centralized interests and local ones; there was a deep cultural apprehension to arbitrary power. There was also the fact that, after the Act of Union, Great Britain had very little cause to worry about external military threats potentially destroying investments in physical infrastructure. Industrialization is about improving production efficiency, and thus scaling into larger and wider markets. Even if you have the technology to begin industrialization, if the society at large is unpredictable and its institutions unreliable, you still have a major impediment to scaling your enterprise, and so you have a disincentive to industrialization. If you do have stability and reliable institutions, as the early UK did, you're in a great position to industrialize. It makes you wonder what might have happened if Hero of Alexandria had brought his primitive steam engine to Rome a hundred years earlier, before the Republic collapsed (which would also have been around the same time as Spartacus' rebellion).