Mobile civilization

From a review by Reuven Brenner of David Goldman's How Civilizations Die.

Another point. He is contrasting land-based civilizations (immobile and dependent on agriculture and mineral extraction) with commercial civilizations (mobile, commercial, and industrial).

The origins of the conflict between the two types of civilizations is, as I once wrote, that the idea of “individual rights” did not exist in those land-based, immobile societies. By individual rights I mean the idea of negotiating rights and obligations that are unconnected to one’s inherited status. It was the idea of equality before the laws, and the freedom to contract unless explicitly prohibited, that eventually allowed people from all walks of life to use their talents, abandon the status they were born to, and bet on ideas without rulers’ favors.

Freedom to contract, backed by a variety of possible, independent sources of capital, made one “mobile” – upward, or if one failed, downward. This is what eventually brought about Europe’s first version, then, in a better way, the U.S.’s unique version of ”mobile civilization.”