Niall Ferguson: On Prosperity
Niall ferguson .. brilliant economic historian and speaker..'
This is his short summary on "what makes a society prosper", in which he echos findings of others and highlighted the main factor as institutions: competition, property right, consumer society, and some other scientific/technological advancements
"one of the most profound insight from studies in historical institutions is that a complicated society always work on the edge of chaos......"
This speaks truly to the hearts of anyone looking at how the society is at work today; many times i am extremely amazed at how convoluted our institutions and bureaucracy are in, how much debt we accumulated, how little clue and preparations we have for the technological disruptions, how grant projects and infrastructure gets build but no one person managing or building it have no clue how the whole things in details strings together, how information and efforts are duplicated among various organizations and labs that live next door to each other, how disciplines on the proximity of each other have no clue of each others project...yet we are supporting this humongous colossal of societies resulted from millions of minds and decades of times, with no one person who knows all how it works..it is delicate and a strike to a major node can destroy it all...its a beautiful , resilient yet fragile knit of web...it cannot fail, and much more greater things can come out of it on the other end but it very much could fail---the node of bi-furification
