(Today's insight from Hume brought to you courtesy of the fools at the University of Edinburgh who decided to cancel him, thereby causing me to start reading his essays.)
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"Commerce... is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable." — Hume (I.e. the reason autocracies are poor is that it's more prestigious to be one of the dictator's minions than to build things.)
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Makes sense. How do we explain China, though?
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Low GDP per capita, but lots of capita.
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It's also dangerous. If you build something, the dictator's minions will come and take it from you.
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Yes, that's exactly why I left my home country and migrated to Australia.
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This also applies at the corporate scale
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There will always be people who would rather be other people's minions than step up and build things.
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And commercial activity becomes a reservoir of potential difference or opposition.
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Indeed, rule of law depends on there being a large archipelago of such reservoirs of potential opposition that need common defenses. (Pardon for inverting the water in this image.)
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Does it also work with bureaucracies?
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Yes. There is even a version that happens when big companies are the prestigious place to work. http://paulgraham.com/re.html (Search for "elephants.")
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