Quotulatiousness

November 16, 2011

Stop the attempt to nationalize the internet (for the US government)

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:17

If you don’t already associate SOPA with evil, Michael Geist explains why you should:

The U.S. Congress is currently embroiled in a heated debated over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed legislation that supporters argue is needed combat online infringement, but critics fear would create the “great firewall of the United States.” SOPA’s potential impact on the Internet and development of online services is enormous as it cuts across the lifeblood of the Internet and e-commerce in the effort to target websites that are characterized as being “dedicated to the theft of U.S. property.” This represents a new standard that many experts believe could capture hundreds of legitimate websites and services.

For those caught by the definition, the law envisions requiring Internet providers to block access to the sites, search engines to remove links from search results, payment intermediaries such as credit card companies and Paypal to cut off financial support, and Internet advertising companies to cease placing advertisements. While these measures have unsurprisingly raised concern among Internet companies and civil society groups (letters of concern from Internet companies, members of the US Congress, international civil liberties groups, and law professors), [. . .] the jurisdictional implications demand far more attention. The U.S. approach is breathtakingly broad, effectively treating millions of websites and IP addresses as “domestic” for U.S. law purposes.

The long-arm of U.S. law manifests itself in at least five ways in the proposed legislation.

November 15, 2011

Stephen Gordon: One does not simply end supply management

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Food, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

Stephen Gordon in the Globe and Mail‘s Economy Lab on the economically indefensible Canadian anomaly known as “supply management”:

The best way to get a rise out of Canadian economists is to ask us about our dairy supply management system. It’s simply indefensible: a government-enforced cartel whose only purpose is to generate high prices for what most would view as essential goods. This sort of arrangement wouldn’t be — and isn’t — tolerated in another sector of the economy. Nor is it tolerated anywhere else in the world. So the news that the federal government is considering putting supply management on the table in order to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is guaranteed to generate a certain amount of excitement among my colleagues.

It’s hard to believe that the interests of 13,000 Canadian dairy farmers could consistently trump the interests of 34 million Canadian dairy consumers, but yet the system is still with us. Why can’t we simply end supply management and let consumers benefit from lower dairy prices?

The problem is that current dairy farmers are — for the most part — not earning monopoly rents from what they produce. In order to sell their output, dairy farmers must first obtain a permit to do so, and dairy quotas are not cheap: more than $25,000 per cow. To a very great extent, the higher prices that they receive simply cover this initial investment.

November 14, 2011

Bullying is bad: banning bullying would be worse

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Wendy Kaminer on the District of Columbia (DC) City Council’s proposed anti-bullying rules:

It started on college and university campuses, where repressive speech codes have been teaching generations of students that they have no right to offend someone, anyone, who can claim membership in a growing list of presumptively disadvantaged groups.

Now, this mindlessly censorious movement to force us to be nice to each other is encroaching on public life, off-campus: The District of Columbia (DC) City Council is considering banning the ‘harassment, intimidation, or bullying’ of students in public libraries and parks, as well as schools (including the District’s public university). Bureaucrats in charge of all relevant supervisory agencies are required to promulgate detailed policies that define bullying and harassment ‘no less inclusively’ than the City Council.

It would be difficult to define bullying more inclusively: according to the council bill, ‘harassment, intimidation or bullying’ is ‘any gesture or written, verbal or physical act, including electronic communication, that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or a mental, physical or sensory handicap, or by any other distinguishing characteristic’, which a ‘reasonable person’ would foresee as effectively intimidating or harmful to students or their property, or as effectively ‘insulting or demeaning’ to any student or group of students so as to disrupt ‘the orderly operation of a school, university, recreational facility, or library’.

Don’t bother trying to figure out what this vague and verbose definition of bullying includes. Focus instead what it might exclude — not much. Virtually no speech or behaviour that a student self-conscious about any ‘distinguishing characteristic’ might consider hurtful or that a petty bureaucrat might find offensive is beyond the reach of this ban. Its scope is simply breathtaking; although, sad to say, the ‘inclusiveness’ of this bill doesn’t distinguish it from other state and local bullying laws or campus speech codes. It is, however, shamefully distinguished by its application outside of schools to public libraries and parks. Imposing a subjective sensitivity code on the general public, it displays an astonishing contempt for the most obvious and fundamental freedoms of speech and belief, as well as astonishing ignorance of constitutional rights.

November 13, 2011

Tyler Cowen on traditional values

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:54

In his latest New York Times column, Tyler Cowen looks at the relationship of wealth to traditional values of self-discipline and hard work:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has raised important questions about the respect paid to wealth in our society. There is a good deal of unfairness in the American economy, and by deliberately targeting the “top 1 percent,” the demonstrators have opened up a dialogue that is quite useful.

Nonetheless, as someone from a conservative and libertarian background, I find that I am hearing too much talk about riches and not enough about values. It’s worth recalling why so many Americans have respected the wealthy in the first place.

The United States has always had a culture with a high regard for those able to rise from poverty to riches. It has had a strong work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit and has attracted ambitious immigrants, many of whom were drawn here by the possibility of acquiring wealth. Furthermore, the best approach for fighting poverty is often precisely not to make fighting poverty the highest priority. Instead, it’s better to stress achievement and the pursuit of excellence, like a hero from an Ayn Rand novel. These are still at least the ideals of many conservatives and libertarians.

The egalitarian ideals of the left, which were manifest in a wide variety of 20th-century movements, have been wonderful for driving social and civil rights advances, and in these areas liberals have often made much greater contributions than conservatives have. Still, the left-wing vision does not sufficiently appreciate the power — both as reality and useful mythology — of the meritocratic, virtuous production of wealth through business. Rather, academics on the left, like the Columbia University economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Jeffrey D. Sachs among many others, seem more comfortable focusing on the very real offenses of plutocrats and selfish elites.

November 7, 2011

Charles Stross on “evil social networks”

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

You could say that Charles Stross isn’t a fan of social networks in general, and Klout in particular:

“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

In the past I’ve fulminated about various social networking systems. The basic gist is this: the utility of a social network to any given user is proportional to the number of users it has. So all social networks are designed to tweak that part of the primate brain that gets a dopamine reward from social activity — we are, after all, social animals. But providing a service to millions of customers is expensive, and your typical internet user is a cheapskate who has become accustomed to free services. So most social networks don’t charge their users; they are funded indirectly, which means they’ve got to sell something, and what they’ve got to sell is data about your internet usage habits, which is of interest to advertisers.

So the ideal social network (from an investor’s point of view) is one that presents itself as being free-to-use, is highly addictive, uses you as bait to trap your friends, tracks you everywhere you go on the internet, sells your personal information to the highest bidder, and is impossible to opt out of. Sounds like a cross between your friendly neighbourhood heroin pusher, Amway, and a really creepy stalker, doesn’t it?

So what is it about Klout that sets it apart from the other social networks?

Klout operates under American privacy law, or rather, the lack of it. If you created a Klout account in the past, you were unable to delete it short of sending legal letters (until November 1st, when they kindly added an “opt out” mechanism). More to the point, Klout analyse your social graph and create accounts for all your contacts without asking them for prior consent. It also appears to use an unwitting user’s Twitter or FB credentials to post updates on their Klout scores, prompting the curious-but-ignorant to click on a link to Klout, whereupon they will be offered a chance to log in with their Facebook or Twitter credentials. So it spreads like herpes and it’s just as hard to get rid of. Is that all?

[. . .]

Anyway: if you sign up for Klout you are coming down with the internet equivalent of herpes. Worse, you risk infecting all your friends. Klout’s business model is flat-out illegal in the UK (and, I believe, throughout the EU) and if you have an account with them I would strongly advise you to delete it and opt out; if you’re in the UK you could do worse than send them a cease-and-desist plus a request to delete all your data, then follow up a month later with a Freedom of Information Act request.

Another throwback to Victorian views of women as weak and in need of protection

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:56

Brendan O’Neill thinks much better of women than those pushing for censorship (or worse):

One of the great curiosities of modern feminism is that the more radical the feminist is, the more likely she is to suffer fits of Victorian-style vapours upon hearing men use coarse language. Andrea Dworkin dedicated her life to stamping out what she called “hate speech” aimed at women. The Slutwalks women campaigned against everything from “verbal degradation” to “come ons”. And now, in another hilarious echo of the 19th-century notion that women need protecting from vulgar and foul speech, a collective of feminist bloggers has decided to “Stamp Out Misogyny Online”. Their deceptively edgy demeanour, their use of the word “stamp”, cannot disguise the fact that they are the 21st-century equivalent of Victorian chaperones, determined to shield women’s eyes and cover their ears lest they see or hear something upsetting.

According to the Guardian, these campaigners want to stamp out “hateful trolling” by men — that is, they want an end to the misogynistic bile and spite that allegedly clogs up their email inboxes and internet discussion boards. Leaving aside the question of who exactly is supposed to do all this “stamping out” of heated speech — The state? Well, who else could do it? — the most striking thing about these fragile feminists’ campaign is the way it elides very different forms of speech. So the Guardian report lumps together “threats of rape”, which are of course serious, with “crude insults” and “unstinting ridicule”, which are not that serious. If I had a penny for every time I was crudely insulted on the internet, labelled a prick, a toad, a shit, a moron, a wide-eyed member of a crazy communist cult, I’d be relatively well-off. For better or worse, crudeness is part of the internet experience, and if you don’t like it you can always read The Lady instead.

November 6, 2011

Redefining “anarchism” to mean “statism”

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:41

Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register:

I don’t “stand with the 99%,” and certainly not downwind of them. But I’m all for their “occupation” continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What’s happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: the government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest — the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the “scholars” whiling away a somnolent half-decade at Complacency U — are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about “social justice” and whatnot.

[. . .]

America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet, curiously, the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged “revolutionary” movement itself. It’s the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It’s more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don’t mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al, but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old “unemployed cosmetologist” with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it’s London, 1977, and she’s killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that’s three-and-a-half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America’s revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can’t even invent their own hideous fashion statements? [. . .]

At heart, Oakland’s occupiers and worthless political class want more of the same fix that has made America the Brokest Nation in History: They expect to live as beneficiaries of a prosperous Western society without making any contribution to the productivity necessary to sustain it. This is the “idealism” that the media are happy to sentimentalize, and that enough poseurs among the corporate executives are happy to indulge — at least until the window smashing starts. To “occupy” Oakland or anywhere else, you have to have something to put in there. Yet the most striking feature of OWS is its hollowness. And in a strange way the emptiness of its threats may be a more telling indictment of a fin de civilization West than a more coherent protest movement could ever have mounted.

November 4, 2011

Reason profiles Gary Johnson

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:11

I took the “scientific* survey” at the Reason web site and it matched me up with Gary Johnson as the GOP candidate who most closely matched my interests:

Aliases: Gov. Johnson, Iron Man, that libertarianish guy who’s not Ron Paul

Experience: Johnson founded his construction company Big-J Enterprises in 1976 and ran it for nearly two decades before becoming the Republican governor of the overwhelmingly Democratic state of New Mexico in 1995. Big-J, which Johnson sold in 1999, remains a leading construction firm in the Land of Enchantment. Johnson was re-elected governor in 1999, his tenure marked by a record number of vetoes, a winning struggle against tax increases, and prosperity in the state.

Hangups: low name recognition, severe soundbite challenges, Ron Paul’s prior claim on the uncoveted “mild-mannered libertarian” position

Spending/size of government/entitlement reform: Along with Ron Paul, Johnson is part of a fairly recent phenomenon: Republican candidates who take their small-government rhetoric seriously. In the New Mexico statehouse, he vetoed 750 bills, fired 1,200 state employees and left the state with a billion-dollar budget surplus. His presidential platform includes cutting Medicare and Medicaid by 43 percent and turning them into block grant programs. His budget cutting plans extend even to the bipartisan sacred cow of defense, which would also come in for a 43 percent cut. Tells ConcordPatch, “I believe that less government is the best government.”

The libertarian subtext to . . . Harold and Kumar?

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:05

David Boaz reviews the philosophical and economic underpinnings of the Harold and Kumar movies:

Escaping persecution, poverty, and hunger . . . to find ample food and unlimited choices . . . the pursuit of happiness . . . the American Dream. Yes, I think writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg were on to something.

And then in the sequel, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, after another improbable road trip, the fugitive youths literally dropped in on George W. Bush’s Texas ranch. In the increasingly fantastic plot, the president invited them to join him in hiding from the scary Cheney, shared his pot with them, and then promised to clear up the unfortunate misunderstanding that landed them in Guantanamo Bay. An uninhibited but still skeptical Kumar said, “I’m not sure I trust our government any more, sir.” And President Bush delivered this ringing libertarian declaration:

    Hey, I’m in the government, and I don’t even trust it. You don’t have to trust your government to be a patriot. You just have to trust your country.

Harold & Kumar: more wisdom than a month of right-wing talk radio. Hurwitz and Schlossberg get what America is about.

Not having seen any of the movies, that certainly sounds like the kindest treatment George W. Bush has ever received from Hollywood.

November 3, 2011

Fleming: Obama takes off the gloves, warns of danger if he’s not re-elected

Filed under: Government, Humour, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Frank J. Fleming reports on the warning President Obama gave during a speech last week:

At a San Francisco fund-raiser last week, President Obama warned the audience that if he’s not re-elected, it will bring a new era of self-reliance in America.

In this dystopian future, people wouldn’t be able to rely on the government to give them health care or college or anything else we now consider a need. That’s just an awful, scary thought these days. Which begs the question: Are we too sissy for freedom anymore?

Not everyone acknowledges how scary true freedom is. Sure, you get to make your own choices, but then government won’t be there to catch you when you fall.

[. . .]

But we’re a different kind of people now. All the federal government did back then was basically keep an eye on Canada and make sure it didn’t invade. Today, more than half of the federal government’s budget is spent on entitlements and safety nets. In fact, a fifth of federal spending is devoted to making sure we have crummy retirement savings that no one can live on.

If the Founding Fathers ever found out about that, they’d probably shoot us with muskets. But the fact is they’re dead, and we’ve decided we have other needs as a people.

Right now, getting rid of any entitlements is unthinkable. If left to our own resources, we’d be too worried about starving to death or not having access to broadband.

“It’s easy to give up a liberty that is unimportant to you”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:33

Lorne Gunter explains why giving government the power to limit one liberty inevitably leads to the government limiting other liberties:

My interest in guns is purely philosophical: I can’t trust any government that doesn’t trust my law-abiding fellow citizens to own whatever guns they want. It’s the instinct to ban — rooted in the notion that governments or “experts” know better than we ourselves what is best or safest for us — that scares me far more than the thought of my neighbour owning a sniper rifle. The banning instinct is never slaked. Once it has succeeded in prohibiting guns, it will turn itself to offensive speech or unhealthy food.

[. . .]

But above all, it always worries me when the concept of “need” enters the debate, as in (to quote one of my colleagues): “Why do farmers and hunters need sniper rifles?”

The concept of “need” is antithetic to freedom in a democracy where the citizens are sovereign. No one needs a car that goes more than 110 km/ hr, because that is the highest speed limit in the country. So should any of us who want to drive more than a Smart Car or Fiat have to go cap in hand to a government official and explain our “need” for, say, a sports car, before we are granted the right to buy one? Many more Canadians — thousands more — are killed by speeding automobiles each year than by high-powered rifles that are beyond what ranchers “need” to kill coyotes.

If you are guilty of no crime, what you “need” is none of my business, or the government’s. In fact, it is the reverse. Any government that seeks to restrict the liberties of law-abiding citizens should have to prove it needs to do so, and that it is not just pandering to popular emotions and political sentimentality.

A “fat tax” would not improve anyone’s health or the healthcare sector

Filed under: Government, Health, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Politicians and “food celebrities” in many western countries are calling for a tax on obesity, either on the foods that “make people fat” or on obese people themselves. Other than being incredibly regressive (poor people in the west tend to be fatter than well-off people), such a tax would do nothing to address the problem it is supposed to solve:

The regular calls for a fat tax — whether on the ‘wrong’ foods or on fat people themselves — are symptomatic of two regressive trends in society. The first is the view that experts know best, that these latter-day sages can come to an impartial view based on The Science, then guide government about the appropriate policy action. The new, evidence-based policy usually involves some kind of manipulation of our individual behaviour from gentle ‘nudges’ and increasing taxes through to criminalisation, as in the case of the smoking ban.

But this is not evidence-based policy, but policy-based evidence, with preconceived ideas being pushed through in the name of science at a time when those at the top of society have lost the ability to convince the electorate on the basis of a moral or political argument. This style of policymaking rarely solves social problems, but it does distort both politics and science.

The second worrying trend is the sheer intolerance towards obese people. Being very overweight has always attracted a certain amount of moral opprobrium. But Hatton’s outlook reflects a sea-change. Once, the NHS reflected a progressive outlook that disease was a misfortune that could strike any of us at any time and that the best thing to do was to share that burden across society. Now it’s every man and woman for themselves. In the worldview of Hatton and Coren, some morally weak individuals are costing them money and must be punished.

Ironically, this flows from a left-wing view of disease as having social causes. In the late Seventies, left-wingers correctly saw that some ill-health was the result of poverty, poor housing, polluted air, and so on rather than infection or bad luck. Unfortunately, this has morphed into the idea that disease is caused by individual behaviour — and so health professionals have taken to camping out in our private lives, demanding we stop smoking, drinking and eating the wrong things. Every naughty little pleasure must now be sacrificed to the god of longevity. If we don’t play ball, this intolerance suggests we should lose our right to treatment.

The disease of intolerance is likely to have a far more detrimental effect on society than obesity ever could.

November 2, 2011

The decline and fall of Righthaven

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:40

Ars Technica has what should be the final legal chapter in the Righthaven saga:

Looks like it’s time to turn out the lights on Righthaven. The US Marshal for the District of Nevada has just been authorized by a federal court to use “reasonable force” to seize $63,720.80 in cash and/or assets from the Las Vegas copyright troll after Righthaven failed to pay a court judgment from August 15.

Righthaven made a national name for itself by suing mostly small-time bloggers and forum posters over the occasional copied newspaper article, initially going so far as to demand that targeted websites turn over their domain names to Righthaven. The several hundred cases went septic on Righthaven, however, once it became clear that Righthaven didn’t own the copyrights over which it was suing. Righthaven, ailing, was soon buffeted by negative court decisions as a result.

[. . .]

The appeals court has refused to act on Righthaven’s request to delay its August judgment further, and the money was due last Friday. When it didn’t show up, Randazza Legal Group went back to the Nevada District Court to request a Writ of Execution to use the court’s enforcers, the US Marshals, to collect the money. The court clerk issued the writ today, and Righthaven’s $34,045.50 judgment has now ballooned to $63,720.80 with all the additional costs and fees from the delay.

I spoke to Marc Randazza this evening, who tells me, “We’re going to enlist the US Marshal in marking sure this court’s order has some meaning.” He looks forward to heading over to Righthaven’s offices as soon as possible. Should Righthaven not have the cash in its bank accounts, the writ allows Randazza to “identify to the US Marshal or his representative assets that are to be seized to satisfy the judgment/order.”

The degree of threat that Righthaven and other lawfare groups posed to bloggers and anyone else who quoted material on the internet was discussed back in May.

Universities are far from being bastions of free speech

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:28

George Jonas on the sorry state of free speech in Canadian universities:

Are Canadian universities a threat to free speech? If you ask me, yes, and if you ask civil rights lawyer John Carpay, he’ll go even further. Carpay has ranked universities so that you can see which one is a bigger threat than the other. He demonstrated it last week at a breakfast organized by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce, where guests in the Fireside Parlor were treated to a preview of Carpay’s “Campus Freedom Index.”

[. . .]

Saying that universities reflect the Zeitgeist is an understatement. Universities are more fashion conscious than Women’s Wear Daily. Academics go sashaying and flouncing like so many models on a catwalk in their ivory towers as they display the latest whim of the great designer, Intellectual Currency. Philosophers have better centuries and worse centuries, as the spirit of the times changes. The 18th century was good; the 19th century mixed, the 20th century baneful. Universities incubated both fascism and communism, along with their many sub-versions (pun intended). Although the great democracies defeated those two particular monstrosities in the end, it was a close-run thing and no thanks to their academic elites. As for the 21st century, with jihadists infesting campuses all over the world, we’re off to a rocky start.

[. . .]

When some brave souls associated with universities speak out against censorship, as they do on occasion, they’re the inspirational exception. The rule is an obedient dissemination of the dogma of the day, including terrorist chic, with Hamas apologists shouting: “No freedom of speech for racists.” I heard them do it at the Alma Mater of a noxious doctrine called “Israeli Apartheid,” a.k.a. University of Toronto.

A Canadian institution of higher learning is the least likely place, I’d say, to encourage a clash of ideas to discover the truth. Greasing the squeakiest wheel of an intellectual bandwagon, then handing out honorary doctorates to those who hitch a ride on it, would be more of its speed.

November 1, 2011

Niall Ferguson on the West’s “killer applications”

Filed under: Economics, History, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:08

Niall Ferguson points to several key institutional innovations that were key to the rise of the West, compared to the rest of the world:

The West first surged ahead of the Rest after about 1500 thanks to a series of institutional innovations that I call the “killer applications”:

1. Competition. Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and republics, which were in turn internally divided into competing corporate entities, among them the ancestors of modern business corporations.

2. The Scientific Revolution. All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe.

3. The Rule of Law and Representative Government. An optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private-property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures.

4. Modern Medicine. Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans.

5. The Consumer Society. The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better, and cheaper goods, beginning with cotton garments.

6. The Work Ethic. Westerners were the first people in the world to combine more extensive and intensive labor with higher savings rates, permitting sustained capital accumulation.

For hundreds of years, these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia. They are the best explanation for what economic historians call “the great divergence”: the astonishing gap that arose between Western standards of living and those in the rest of the world.

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