In Maddison I was surprised by the sprinting… | Econproph[Comp. Systems 2016]

In Maddison, I was surprised by the sprinting effect that the scientific revolution has had through the centuries. Maddison begins by comparing the last thousand years of income, mineral usage, energy consumption, etc between the Western Hemisphere and the Eastern, and the difference sharpens with the scientific revolution. Not only did it leapfrog the West ahead of the “rest,” but I began to wonder if that’s also what made it difficult for the former states of the USSR to enter the free-market… being tied down to one particular system for so long, that while was advancing just maybe not at the same pace as the other side, consequently might feel like walking into a social party and feeling a bit awkward and intimidated, because everyone else knows each other and you don’t know where to begin.

Eli Zumberg 5:37 pm on January 30, 2016

Recent history indeed had the western powers get an advantage and then exploit it. Though I’d guess the problem the former USSR states were more impacted by the fact that most of them only had puppet governments during the soviet union, leading to almost all of their ‘progress’ being done in some way to benefit Russia.