I've Seen the Future, and It Works"

今日は第4章から第6章の途中、163ページまで。

第4章 Small Differences and Critical Junctures: The Weight of History

How institutions change through political conflict and how the past shapes the present.

タイトルの通り、同じような条件下にあった国に作られた制度の違いが、後に大きな差をもたらしたという話。黒死病後のヨーロッパや、アジア諸国と日本の欧米の侵入に対する対応の違いなどをもとに説明しています。黒死病から市民革命、名誉革命、そして産業革命への流れていくところが興味深いです。

This institutional divergence was the result of a situation where the differences between two areas initially seemed very small: in the East, lords were a little better organized; they had slightly more rights and more consolidated landholdings.

Though in 1346 there were few differences btween Western and Eastern Europe in terms of political and economic institutions, by 1600 they were worlds apart.

The events leading up to the Glorious Revolution forged broad and powerful coalition able to place durable constraints on the power of the monarchy and the executive, which were forced to be open to the demands of this colition.

Elizabeth I was far less financially independent, so she had to beg Parliament for more taxes. In exchange, Parliament demanded concessions, in particular restrictions on the right of Elizabeth to create monopolies. It was a conflict Parliament gradually won. In Spain the Cortes lost a similar conflict. Trade wasn't just monopolized; it was monopolized by the Spanish monarchy. These distinctions, which initially appeared small, started to matter a great deal in the seventeenth century. Elizabeth I and her successors could not monopolize the trade with the Americas. Other European monarchs could. So while in England, Atlantic trade and colonization started creating a large group of wealthy traders with few links to the Crown, this was not the case in Spain or France.

The English traders resented royal control and demanded changes in political institutions and the restriction of royal prerogatives. They played a critical role in the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution.

Once a critical juncture happens, the small differences that matter are the initial institutional differences that put in motion very different responses.

The outcome, however, is not historically predetermined but contingent. The exact path of institutional development during these periods depends on which one of the opposing forces will succeed, which groups will be able to form effective coalitions, and which leaders will be able to structure events to their advantage.

第5章 I've Seen the Future, and It Works": Growth under Extractive Institutions

What Stalin, King Shyaam, the Neolithic Revolution, and the Maya city-states all had in common and how this explains why China's current economic growth cannot last.

収奪される経済では、戦中戦後のソ連のように成長することはあっても、経済的なインセンティブがなく、革新に向かわなかったり、生産性の高い分野への超過配分が起こり、持続的には成長できません。

growth under extractive institution differs in nature from growth brought forth by inclusive institutions. Most important, it will be not sustained growth that requires technological change, but rather growth based on existing technologies.

The communist state did not have an effective tax system, so instead Stalin "collectivized" agriculture. This process entailed the abolition of private property rights to land and herding of all people in the countryside into giant collective farms run by the Communist Party. This made it much easier for Stalin to grab agricultural output and use it to feed all the people who were building and manning the new factories. The consequences of this for the rural folk were calamitous. The collective farms completely lacked incentives for people to work hard, so production fell sharply.

Industrial growth in the Soviet Union was further facilitated because its technology was so backward relative to what was available in Europe and the United States, so large gains could be reaped by reallocating resources to the industrial sector, even if all this was done inefficiently and by force.

In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997.

The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been allocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat.

...paying such bonuses created all sorts of disincentives to technological change. For one thing, innovation, which took resources away from current production, risked the output targets not beeing met and the bonuses not being paid. For another, output targets were usually based on previous production levels. This created a huge incentive never to expand output, since this only meant having to produce more in the future, since future targets would be "ratched up." Underachievement was always the best way to meet targets and get the bonus.

it was a consequence of the society's having experienced the types of institutional, social, and political innovations that would have allowed sedentary life and then farming to emerge.

The history of the Maya city-states illustrates a more ominous and, alas, more common end, again implied by the internal logic of extractive institutions. As these institutions create significant gains for the elite, there will be strong incentives for others to fight to replace the current elite. Infighting and instability are thus inherent features of extractive institutions, and they not only create further inefficiencies but also often reverse any political centralization, sometimes even leading to the total breakdown of law and order and descent into chaos, as the Maya city-states experienced following their relative success during their Classical Era.