1) There is an asymmetry to perspective, not unlike Tolstoy’s “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. Every failed country fails for the same reasons: successful countries are successful in their own ways. His words are “National failure is programmed and predictable.I am still mulling the specifics of his list and in fact might raise each of them up in abstraction by a factor. Maybe something like:
2) Success is not a static condition but a process. What are the elements that allow for process (continuing) success? Or better; What are the elements of a successful process which permit the reversion to a desirable and improving mean despite the vagaries of circumstance? That’s much closer to the right question.
3) “No government can afford practices which retard development.” I’d put it as; No group can afford practices which retard productivity.
4) “The sink or swim poverty of northwestern Europe and Japan may have been their greatest natural advantage during their developmental phases.” A long standing nostrum which I have usually seen summarized simplistically that the harsh environments forced them to work harder to survive. Peters gets at a more subtle benefit of the harsh environment; a) it was critical during a phase of development and 2) it is about more than working harder. Harsh environments of the specific nature of NW Europe and Japan (poor soil, long hard winters, highly variable growing seasons, little alternative – geographically [can’t leave] or productively [i.e. can’t switch from fishing to gold mining]) encourage specific values and behaviors. Hard work is certainly one element (make hay while the sun shines) but from a productivity perspective there is also the need to plan ahead, assess risk and odds, have alternative plans in place, hold consumption below production in order to accumulate a margin of security, etc. It is not that you simply have to work harder than a more blessed environment but that you have to work harder in a particular way.
5) The corollary to this is the consequence that happens when those rooted values and behaviors are then transplanted to more abundant environments. The Europeans did not displace Native Americans simply because they had a better pathogenic condition (the overwhelming factor) or because they had a better constructed governance/production system (second most important factor) or because they had a static advantage in technology (third) but fundamentally because they had a superior portfolio of productivity oriented values and behaviors which, honed in a limited environment, led to an explosion of productivity in an endowed environment. That explosion created something of its own dynamic of expansion, accelerating faster than the newly connected populations could observe and absorb. Sikhs vs. Brazilians.
6) Peters identifies seven deadly attributes that guaranty the subversion of any development.
a. Restrictions on the free flow of information
b. The subjugation of women
c. Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure
d. The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization
e. Domination by a restrictive religion
f. A low valuation of education
g. Low prestige assigned to work
a. Freedom of thought, press and speech (free flow of information)
b. Equality before the law (vs. subjugation of women)
c. Agency (vs. failure to accept responsibility)
d. Individualism (vs. family or clan as basic unit)
e. Rationalism/scientific method (vs. domination by restrictive religion)
f. Futurity (vs. low valuation of education)
g. Work Ethic (vs. low prestige assigned to work)
Missing from his discussion: consent of governed, due process, competition.
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