It is not a new book, but still I wanted to review it.
Open-access orders are likely to be highly stable. Everyone who is ambitious and able to organize others is free to attempt to earn a profit or address a political problem. This gives citizens a feeling of having a stake in the system. Moreover, the layers of beliefs, norms, and institutions that precede the open-access order all serve to reinforce the order once it is in place. For example, Americans are culturally committed to free speech, disdain for corruption, and obedience to the Constitution.
This leads one to be relatively optimistic about the prospects for the United States, regardless of how one feels about recent political and economic trends.
“For example, Americans are culturally committed to free speech, disdain forcorruption, and obedience to the Constitution.”
Really?
Americans are culturally committed to free speech
Ha! I can’t think of anything more constrained that public speech in America. Watch as Donald Trump is put on a small boat that drifts away from the shore.
And obedience to the Constitution? Who pays attention to that document? Ruth Bader Ginsberg gives interviews where she suggests new countries shouldn’t even consider looking to the US constitution as a guide.
In the United States, large banks, public-sector unions, and regulated professions, particularly in law, higher education, and health care, have arguably become the ruling coalition, while others find themselves squeezed out of political and economic life… it seems to me that the extent of rent-creation activities is larger and the competitive political forces feebler than North, Wallis, and Weingast suggest.
(the last paragraph is a quote from Arnold’s review)
> Ha! I can’t think of anything more constrained that public speech in America.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I suggest you’re not thinking very hard if we take your statement literally. Mass murders within churches or implicit mutual consent to sexual activity come to mind as immediate, topical counterexamples to activities more heavily constrained than public speech in America.