North on Adaptation

"Think of the steam engine, which was first designed over 2000 years ago by Hero of Alexandria." Oh come now, a toy steam turbine is not the same thing. Don't spoil a good case by such petty acts of journalism.

He said the industrial revolution could have begun hundreds of years earlier, not thousands.

Did North ever look at the two Germanies? I believe East Germany was the most efficient Communist bloc country. No matter the economic system, modern Germans rise to the top.

dearieme: a toy steam turbine is not the same thing.

From what I've seen on the history channel, the steam engines of two thousand years ago weren't toys. They were large, complicated devices used in temples to fool worshippers into believing they had witnessed a miracle. The abundance of slaves and fear of unemployment prevents the application of steam and hydraulics to production.

But steam engines weren't necessary for development. The Dutch used wind power for saw mills, iron forges, seed crushing and other work. The Dutch made the first leap to a modern free market economy and enormous wealth. The use of wind power, and water power, had been known for millenia, but institutions and tradition kept people from using them.

Historians such as Harvard's Israel credit the Dutch with a revolution in building the first rational institutions, free markets, and sound private property rights.