| Subject: | [socialcredit] Replying to Jeff: Mancur Olsen | | Date: | Monday, May 1, 2006 10:11:04 (-0700) | | From: | William B. Ryan <w_b_ryan @.....com>
|
In point of clarification, Jeff, the comments to which
you were replying were mine, not Chris Cook's.
In answer to your question, yes, I believe that
"Islamic banking and other non-Western monetary
systems are 'more crudely' or 'less' 'developed' than
those of the Western world."
It is not the only explanation but certainly a major
explanation for the ascendancy of the West. And it is
also a major explanation for its continued ascendancy.
There are other technologies that first developed in
the West that were significant.
For example, the navigational technology that enabled
Europeans to travel across the open ocean from point A
to point B, then return to point A, then to return to
point B--was possessed only by Europeans when Columbus
"discovered" America. The technology is what made
possible trade routes across the open ocean, without
which they would have been impossible. Indeed, it is
the reason we may justifiably say that Columbus in
fact discovered America.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"The only remaining plausible explanation is that the
great differences in the wealth of nations are mainly
due to differences in the quality of their
institutions and economic policies."
Excerpted from a paper available on the Internet:-
------
"From a political economy point of view, it has been
forcefully argued by Mancur Olsen and Douglas North
that it is the lack of efficient institutions that
explains why so many countries remain poor, despite
growth in the world economy. Without efficient
institutions, agents can usually not produce public
goods and the transactions costs in economic exchange
can become detrimental to economic growth. Buying
private protection to protect ones property rights is
usually both expensive and an uncertain investment
(North 1990; Olson 1996). To quote Mancur Olsen's last
published article:
'...the large differences in per capita income across
countries cannot be explained by differences in access
to the world's stock of productive knowledge or to its
capital markets, by differences in the ratio of the
population to land or natural resources, or by
differences in the quality of marketable human capital
or personal culture. Albeit at a high level of
aggregation, this eliminates each of the factors of
production as possible explanation of most of the
international differences in per capita income. The
only remaining plausible explanation is that the great
differences in the wealth of nations are mainly due to
differences in the quality of their institutions and
economic policies'"
-
--- jeff mascornick <jjm4114@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Chris (and all):
>
> Is it not a socially constructed value
> judgement to say that Islamic banking and other
> non-Western monetary systems are "more crudely" or
> "less" "developed" than those of the Western world?
> - I find Graeme's comment that - if we give primacy
> to the efficacy of the western monetary system it
> does suggest that many "more crudely" or "less"
> "developed" societies NATURALLY become phased out
> (collatoral damage, as Graeme eloquently put it)
> because they are not as efficient our own - to be
> very interesting.
> - Do you (Chris) believe this? Certainly you have
> every right to believe this if you choose and you
> certainly aren't alone - I simply wanted to clarify
> this and to ask you to elaborate further on this
> statement. (P.S. Believe me, I am not "picking a
> fight" here at all - I'm interested to hear your
> response [or anyone else who would like to]).
>
> Jeff
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