8 ms·

Reinventing the Wheel: Why no-tech ancient civilizations still can't catch up.

53 points by cwan 16y ago

lionhearted 16y ago
> In fact, the principal beneficiaries of Western largesse today -- African autocrats and dysfunctional regimes -- are themselves the main obstacles to development. If there's anything that "must be done" to spur future development, it's to create the conditions necessary to empower the ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones. I agree with all of this. After reading lots of history, it seems to me that the most enduring and effective form of government is the decentralized imperial republic. This is not a common viewpoint among non-historians, but the key elements of this form of government tend to produce healthy, growing, prosperous, safe societies. Here's the specific elements in more detail: Decentralized means allowing local areas in the republic to set largely their own laws, have their own worship, and their own customs. The head government sets minimum standards, and local governors see to it that they are met. These are basic conditions of infrastructure like roads and hospitals, communications networks, defense/garrisons, a few universal laws, and taxation. Everything else is up to the local regional governor. Imperial will be the most controversial element of this, because there's been a large movement for self-rule in the post WWII era. I think there's lots of merit to that movement, but I wonder if the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater to some extent. Imperialism works as a natural check and balance against corrupt government - in a world where imperialism is more acceptable, it's basically "fair game" to go conquer any dysfunctional place. Thus, you don't get governments like you have in Venezuela with the government bringing in trillions in oil money that supposedly belongs to the people, but 1/3rd of the population are living on less than a dollar a day, and then the country has one of the highest murder rates in the world and the government is basically a mafia. In an era where imperialism is acceptable, Chavez gets exiled or executed, and the Chinese or Americans or British or whoever install a local governor that brings peace, stability, infrastructure, and rule of law to Venezuela. Republic means some form of representative democracy. I think representative democracy actually performs worse on average than monarchy because corrupt, waste, and crime gradually increase in republics until the nation breaks, and it's very hard for a single leader to clean house. However, republics don't fall under the trap of having one horrifically bad leader who ruins the entire civilization. It's a tradeoff. I thought the British Empire did a good job with this, with a balance between the House of Lords, House of Commons, some strong constitution-type documents like the Magna Carta, the military, and local governors. Power was distributed in a decentralized way. The Prime Minister or Monarch could step up and assert authority when times got dire or massive house cleaning was necessary, but most of the time the Empire had some significant republican democratic elements to it keeping the aristocracy in check. Of course, this is all very unfashionable these days, and everyone compares ideas to the current era. But for producing high levels of science, commerce, invention, quality of life, safety, peace, rule of law, health, art, and other key things - decentralized imperial republicanism has absolutely outperformed just about every other form of government.
- revorad 16y ago
  And how do you propose one goes about establishing these decentralized imperial republics? Whatever the side effects may have turned out to be, the British empire certainly did not set out to "empower ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones." Superpowers pitying undeveloped countries and nominating themselves as Imperial rulers as the only solution to their plight sounds rather self-serving, don't you think?
  - cturner 16y ago
    Pretty hostile response. If you're angry, then the post arethuza made is a fine example of a response. The parent to your post didn't propose going about establishing them, he was just pointing out the advantages. Whatever the side effects may have turned out to be, the British empire certainly did not set out to "empower ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones." Good intentions have a poor record in politics and public policy, and are probably a weak place to start to make a point.
    - revorad 16y ago
      I'm sorry about the hostile tone. But honestly, it's how I felt. he was just pointing out the advantages. Maybe, but he did so without even a hint of how those advantages could be achieved in an alternate way or any mention of the disadvantages. To me, it sounded like he was implying establishing decentralized imperial republics.
      - anamax 16y ago
        > Maybe, but he did so without even a hint of how those advantages could be achieved in an alternate way He pointed out that other attempts haven't worked as well. Maybe he's wrong, or maybe there is something new that would work better, but that's a very different complaint. > or any mention of the disadvantages. he said that they existed. > To me, it sounded like he was implying establishing decentralized imperial republics. implying->recommending ? There are two ways to evaluate decentralized imperial republics, on an absolute scale and on a relative scale. On an absolute scale, they're bad. On a relative scale, they seem to work better than the alternatives. You seem to think that "they're bad" is the end of things. Unless you've got something better, it isn't.
mattmanser 16y ago
This article makes absolutely no sense. China was technologically more advanced once. As was the Middle East. The Mayans. We could go on listing 'peoples' who were at one point technologically advanced but are now way behind economically. This is just mistaking the effect of accumulated capital for technology. This is just wrong on so many levels, so obviously wrong.
- cturner 16y ago
  He's picking a particular point in time, and saying that this was important, not that it's a 500 year window that shifts continuously.
- dan00 16y ago
  "This is just mistaking the effect of accumulated capital for technology." And how do you accumulate capital? By hammering on stones?
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  China was technologically more advanced once. This doesn't work as a counterexample, because they are once again one of the world's largest economies. As was the Middle East. I wonder how (the absolute lack of) natural resources figures into this. Also, Easterly notes the terrible impact that bad leadership can have (indeed, I think that was a major sub-point of the article). And considering all the wars there, I'm guessing that a real infrastructure based on that technology can't accrete very deeply. About the Mayans, I don't know enough...
  - Symmetry 16y ago
    The Mayas compared well with the ancient Greeks in many areas but were still stone age some. If you're looking at contemporary comparisons they support the article's point.
alphaoverlord 16y ago
So, let me get this straight, the conclusion is that European countries are rich and African countries are poor? I'd hate to say the emperor has no clothes, but this does not seem revolutionary in any sense. In fact, there seems to be more counter-examples than examples when we look to the fact that the Middle East, India, China, and North America does not fit the pattern. The Middle East was technologically advanced in the 1500s, China was cited as a counter-example, and there was not much development in North America. In fact, the movement of people and ideas seems to contradict the authors thesis. This conclusion also fails on closer examination. Superficially, this might work when comparing Europe as a whole vs. Africa as a whole, but Finland is also noted as a previous technological backwater with high GDP now. I'm skeptical of any predictive power of this model. On the other hand, the author is relatively eloquent. I like the line: "There's a Thomas Edison born every minute. We just have to help them turn the lights on." Just not particularly insightful.
- thalur 16y ago
  What if the analysis were to be done based on where the people came from rather than modern geographical borders? I felt it a bit odd that the analysis was done by overlaying modern geographic boundaries on historical technology, considering how many modern countries owe their technological progress to other countries in older times. (e.g. America <- Britain/France/Spain <- Europe <- Middle East + Asia + Rome <- Ancient Greece). I think its less about who had what technology when, more about who inherited that technology.
sliverstorm 16y ago
This mostly just reminds me I need to finish reading Guns, Germs, and Steel
- pbourke 16y ago
  William Bernstein's "A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World" is also quite interesting. It correlates social and technological development with increased trade by examining various societies throughout history. http://amzn.com/0802144160 http://amzn.com/0802144160
- nck4222 16y ago
  The article reminded me of that book too. GG&S's explanation would be that the environment for certain regions of the world produces technology a lot faster than other regions. So yeah if one region was tech. advanced 1000 years ago the advantage would snowball over time.
ThomPete 16y ago
The main reason is protectionism and trade barriers it's really that simple IMHO. Right now western companies can sell rice cheaper in africa than the africans can themselves and they have no access to the western markets unless it's somehow owned by european or american companies. They can't catch up because they are not allowed to play the game.
smackay 16y ago
There is a risk of looking at this as just another "The West is best" article but for me the most interesting part was the examples of technology that were cited. Most were easy distributed and had no need of some form of central organization that made it difficult if not impossible for governments to control. A lot of new technology is now inherently centralized or has choke points that make it easy to stifle their use or adoption - though in the case of mobile phones it might be as an act of desparation for a goverment to restrict use. Perhaps the path of development needs some rethinking to ensure they are inherently transferrable or at least have a high-level of empowerment in situations where the level of capital required is substantial or out of reach of individual or small groups.
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Rome ignored gunpower, horse collars, innovations in shipbuilding out of arrogance. Not a good example of innovation.
  - alan 16y ago
    Eh? Citation needed. Most anything I've ever seen suggest that gunpowder was unknown world wide before the Western Empire fell, and horse collars were just being introduced.
    - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
      Horse collars invented (int China) before 500AD, Europe didn't adopt until 1000AD. !wiki horse collar
      - metageek 16y ago
        Horse collars invented (int China) before 500AD, Look at that article again. Some early form of the horse collar may have been around in China around AD200-250, but the finished form wasn't until 450-500. Rome fell in 476. Besides, consider what kind of contact Rome had with China. Nobody traveled all the way from Rome to China; instead, goods were relayed: China to India, India to Arabia, Arabia to Constantinople, Constantinople to Rome. And the caravans through Arabia didn't use horses; goods were carried on camels. So there was no route for the horse collar to take, as a live technology. Somebody in China could have tried exporting horse collars, but it wouldn't have worked--only very valuable items were worth shipping all that way. Europe didn't adopt until 1000AD. We weren't talking about Europe, we were talking about the Roman Empire.
meric 16y ago
Countries are richer when its population inherits more technology from their ancestors, except when bad governments are in charge. That is kind of obvious, really. If I was asked the question "Why are some countries richer than others in 2010?" yesterday I'd have provided the same explanation - It's because they were richer before that. What the article is saying can be reduced further: Descendants of civilizations that have moved ahead of others will stay ahead unless they stop moving. And further still: When you move ahead of someone in a race, you'll stay ahead until you slow down. That might be nice to point out, but his mission at World Bank was how to bring the less technologically advanced countries forward, not explaining why countries who used to be technologically advanced happens to be richer today. Obvious point, well argued. He says interesting things about people carrying technology around. I wonder what you can do with immigration to make your country become more technologically advanced.
- __bjoernd 16y ago
  Apart from the points appearing obvious, the article also points out that this was exactly not what his employer did back in the 80s and 90s. And his arguments appear to be more researched than some answer you and I could come up with by using plain intuition.
kia 16y ago
Single page: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/reinventing_the_wheel?page=full http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/reinventing...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ahi 16y ago
"When I worked at the World Bank..." Sit down and shut up, you've done enough damage. As far as I can tell his thesis is that civilizations that weren't technologically developed aren't technologically developed. Uhh, ok.
nl 16y ago
Guns, Germs and Steel has already been mentioned in this thread, but there are two Hans Rosling talks that also provide some interesting data points: The rise of the Asian economies: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_how_and_when.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_h... Talking to foreign aid policy workers: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html

53 points by cwan 16y ago

> In fact, the principal beneficiaries of Western largesse today -- African autocrats and dysfunctional regimes -- are themselves the main obstacles to development. If there's anything that "must be done" to spur future development, it's to create the conditions necessary to empower the ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones. I agree with all of this. After reading lots of history, it seems to me that the most enduring and effective form of government is the decentralized imperial republic. This is not a common viewpoint among non-historians, but the key elements of this form of government tend to produce healthy, growing, prosperous, safe societies. Here's the specific elements in more detail: Decentralized means allowing local areas in the republic to set largely their own laws, have their own worship, and their own customs. The head government sets minimum standards, and local governors see to it that they are met. These are basic conditions of infrastructure like roads and hospitals, communications networks, defense/garrisons, a few universal laws, and taxation. Everything else is up to the local regional governor. Imperial will be the most controversial element of this, because there's been a large movement for self-rule in the post WWII era. I think there's lots of merit to that movement, but I wonder if the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater to some extent. Imperialism works as a natural check and balance against corrupt government - in a world where imperialism is more acceptable, it's basically "fair game" to go conquer any dysfunctional place. Thus, you don't get governments like you have in Venezuela with the government bringing in trillions in oil money that supposedly belongs to the people, but 1/3rd of the population are living on less than a dollar a day, and then the country has one of the highest murder rates in the world and the government is basically a mafia. In an era where imperialism is acceptable, Chavez gets exiled or executed, and the Chinese or Americans or British or whoever install a local governor that brings peace, stability, infrastructure, and rule of law to Venezuela. Republic means some form of representative democracy. I think representative democracy actually performs worse on average than monarchy because corrupt, waste, and crime gradually increase in republics until the nation breaks, and it's very hard for a single leader to clean house. However, republics don't fall under the trap of having one horrifically bad leader who ruins the entire civilization. It's a tradeoff. I thought the British Empire did a good job with this, with a balance between the House of Lords, House of Commons, some strong constitution-type documents like the Magna Carta, the military, and local governors. Power was distributed in a decentralized way. The Prime Minister or Monarch could step up and assert authority when times got dire or massive house cleaning was necessary, but most of the time the Empire had some significant republican democratic elements to it keeping the aristocracy in check. Of course, this is all very unfashionable these days, and everyone compares ideas to the current era. But for producing high levels of science, commerce, invention, quality of life, safety, peace, rule of law, health, art, and other key things - decentralized imperial republicanism has absolutely outperformed just about every other form of government.

revorad 16y ago
And how do you propose one goes about establishing these decentralized imperial republics? Whatever the side effects may have turned out to be, the British empire certainly did not set out to "empower ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones." Superpowers pitying undeveloped countries and nominating themselves as Imperial rulers as the only solution to their plight sounds rather self-serving, don't you think?
- cturner 16y ago
  Pretty hostile response. If you're angry, then the post arethuza made is a fine example of a response. The parent to your post didn't propose going about establishing them, he was just pointing out the advantages. Whatever the side effects may have turned out to be, the British empire certainly did not set out to "empower ordinary individuals who will create new and unforeseen technologies out of old ones." Good intentions have a poor record in politics and public policy, and are probably a weak place to start to make a point.
  - revorad 16y ago
    I'm sorry about the hostile tone. But honestly, it's how I felt. he was just pointing out the advantages. Maybe, but he did so without even a hint of how those advantages could be achieved in an alternate way or any mention of the disadvantages. To me, it sounded like he was implying establishing decentralized imperial republics.
    - anamax 16y ago
      > Maybe, but he did so without even a hint of how those advantages could be achieved in an alternate way He pointed out that other attempts haven't worked as well. Maybe he's wrong, or maybe there is something new that would work better, but that's a very different complaint. > or any mention of the disadvantages. he said that they existed. > To me, it sounded like he was implying establishing decentralized imperial republics. implying->recommending ? There are two ways to evaluate decentralized imperial republics, on an absolute scale and on a relative scale. On an absolute scale, they're bad. On a relative scale, they seem to work better than the alternatives. You seem to think that "they're bad" is the end of things. Unless you've got something better, it isn't.

mattmanser 16y ago

This article makes absolutely no sense. China was technologically more advanced once. As was the Middle East. The Mayans. We could go on listing 'peoples' who were at one point technologically advanced but are now way behind economically. This is just mistaking the effect of accumulated capital for technology. This is just wrong on so many levels, so obviously wrong.

cturner 16y ago
He's picking a particular point in time, and saying that this was important, not that it's a 500 year window that shifts continuously.
dan00 16y ago
"This is just mistaking the effect of accumulated capital for technology." And how do you accumulate capital? By hammering on stones?
CWuestefeld 16y ago
China was technologically more advanced once. This doesn't work as a counterexample, because they are once again one of the world's largest economies. As was the Middle East. I wonder how (the absolute lack of) natural resources figures into this. Also, Easterly notes the terrible impact that bad leadership can have (indeed, I think that was a major sub-point of the article). And considering all the wars there, I'm guessing that a real infrastructure based on that technology can't accrete very deeply. About the Mayans, I don't know enough...
- Symmetry 16y ago
  The Mayas compared well with the ancient Greeks in many areas but were still stone age some. If you're looking at contemporary comparisons they support the article's point.

alphaoverlord 16y ago

So, let me get this straight, the conclusion is that European countries are rich and African countries are poor? I'd hate to say the emperor has no clothes, but this does not seem revolutionary in any sense. In fact, there seems to be more counter-examples than examples when we look to the fact that the Middle East, India, China, and North America does not fit the pattern. The Middle East was technologically advanced in the 1500s, China was cited as a counter-example, and there was not much development in North America. In fact, the movement of people and ideas seems to contradict the authors thesis. This conclusion also fails on closer examination. Superficially, this might work when comparing Europe as a whole vs. Africa as a whole, but Finland is also noted as a previous technological backwater with high GDP now. I'm skeptical of any predictive power of this model. On the other hand, the author is relatively eloquent. I like the line: "There's a Thomas Edison born every minute. We just have to help them turn the lights on." Just not particularly insightful.

thalur 16y ago
What if the analysis were to be done based on where the people came from rather than modern geographical borders? I felt it a bit odd that the analysis was done by overlaying modern geographic boundaries on historical technology, considering how many modern countries owe their technological progress to other countries in older times. (e.g. America <- Britain/France/Spain <- Europe <- Middle East + Asia + Rome <- Ancient Greece). I think its less about who had what technology when, more about who inherited that technology.

sliverstorm 16y ago

This mostly just reminds me I need to finish reading Guns, Germs, and Steel

pbourke 16y ago
William Bernstein's "A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World" is also quite interesting. It correlates social and technological development with increased trade by examining various societies throughout history. http://amzn.com/0802144160 http://amzn.com/0802144160
nck4222 16y ago
The article reminded me of that book too. GG&S's explanation would be that the environment for certain regions of the world produces technology a lot faster than other regions. So yeah if one region was tech. advanced 1000 years ago the advantage would snowball over time.

ThomPete 16y ago

The main reason is protectionism and trade barriers it's really that simple IMHO. Right now western companies can sell rice cheaper in africa than the africans can themselves and they have no access to the western markets unless it's somehow owned by european or american companies. They can't catch up because they are not allowed to play the game.

smackay 16y ago

There is a risk of looking at this as just another "The West is best" article but for me the most interesting part was the examples of technology that were cited. Most were easy distributed and had no need of some form of central organization that made it difficult if not impossible for governments to control. A lot of new technology is now inherently centralized or has choke points that make it easy to stifle their use or adoption - though in the case of mobile phones it might be as an act of desparation for a goverment to restrict use. Perhaps the path of development needs some rethinking to ensure they are inherently transferrable or at least have a high-level of empowerment in situations where the level of capital required is substantial or out of reach of individual or small groups.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
Rome ignored gunpower, horse collars, innovations in shipbuilding out of arrogance. Not a good example of innovation.
- alan 16y ago
  Eh? Citation needed. Most anything I've ever seen suggest that gunpowder was unknown world wide before the Western Empire fell, and horse collars were just being introduced.
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    Horse collars invented (int China) before 500AD, Europe didn't adopt until 1000AD. !wiki horse collar
    - metageek 16y ago
      Horse collars invented (int China) before 500AD, Look at that article again. Some early form of the horse collar may have been around in China around AD200-250, but the finished form wasn't until 450-500. Rome fell in 476. Besides, consider what kind of contact Rome had with China. Nobody traveled all the way from Rome to China; instead, goods were relayed: China to India, India to Arabia, Arabia to Constantinople, Constantinople to Rome. And the caravans through Arabia didn't use horses; goods were carried on camels. So there was no route for the horse collar to take, as a live technology. Somebody in China could have tried exporting horse collars, but it wouldn't have worked--only very valuable items were worth shipping all that way. Europe didn't adopt until 1000AD. We weren't talking about Europe, we were talking about the Roman Empire.

meric 16y ago

Countries are richer when its population inherits more technology from their ancestors, except when bad governments are in charge. That is kind of obvious, really. If I was asked the question "Why are some countries richer than others in 2010?" yesterday I'd have provided the same explanation - It's because they were richer before that. What the article is saying can be reduced further: Descendants of civilizations that have moved ahead of others will stay ahead unless they stop moving. And further still: When you move ahead of someone in a race, you'll stay ahead until you slow down. That might be nice to point out, but his mission at World Bank was how to bring the less technologically advanced countries forward, not explaining why countries who used to be technologically advanced happens to be richer today. Obvious point, well argued. He says interesting things about people carrying technology around. I wonder what you can do with immigration to make your country become more technologically advanced.

__bjoernd 16y ago
Apart from the points appearing obvious, the article also points out that this was exactly not what his employer did back in the 80s and 90s. And his arguments appear to be more researched than some answer you and I could come up with by using plain intuition.

kia 16y ago

Single page: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/reinventing_the_wheel?page=full http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/11/reinventing...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

ahi 16y ago

"When I worked at the World Bank..." Sit down and shut up, you've done enough damage. As far as I can tell his thesis is that civilizations that weren't technologically developed aren't technologically developed. Uhh, ok.

nl 16y ago

Guns, Germs and Steel has already been mentioned in this thread, but there are two Hans Rosling talks that also provide some interesting data points: The rise of the Asian economies: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_how_and_when.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_asia_s_rise_h... Talking to foreign aid policy workers: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_at_state.html