The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [187]
p. 180 ‘According to Angus Maddison’s estimates’. Maddison, A. 2006. The World Economy. OECD Publishing.
p. 181 ‘One of the paradoxical features of modern China is the weakness of a central, would-be authoritarian government.’ Fukuyama, F. 2008. Los Angeles Times, 29 April 2008.
p. 181 ‘multi-spindle cotton wheels, hydraulic trip hammers, as well as umbrellas, matches, toothbrushes and playing cards’. Baumol, W. 2002. The Free-market Innovation Machine. Princeton University Press.
p. 181 ‘The Black Death’. Durand, J. 1960. The population statistics of China, A.D. 2–1953. Population Studies 13:209–56.
p. 182 ‘serfdom was effectively restored’. Findlay, R. and O’Rourke, K.H. 2007. Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World Economy. Princeton University Press.
p. 182 ‘as Peter Turchin argues following the lead of the medieval geographer Ibn Khaldun’. Turchin, P. 2003. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press.
p. 182 ‘most clever people still call for government to run more things’. Note that this is also true of the financial crisis of 2008: government mismanagement of housing policy, interest rates and exchange rates bears just as big a responsibility as corporate mismanagement of risk. I wish there was space to expand upon this point, but see the writings of Northcote Parkinson, Mancur Olson, Gordon Tullock and Deepak Lal. It is strange to me that most people assume companies will be imperfect (as they are), but then assume that government agencies will be perfect, which they are not.
p. 182 ‘Not only did the Ming emperors nationalise much of industry and trade, creating state monopolies in salt, iron, tea, alcohol, foreign trade and education’. Landes, D. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Little, Brown.
p. 183 ‘As Etienne Balazs put it’. Balazs, E. quoted in Landes, D. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Little, Brown.
p. 183 ‘The behaviour of Hongwu, the first of the Ming emperors’. Brook, T. 1998. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. University of California Press.
p. 183 ‘a large Spanish galleon stuffed with silver’. Brook, T. 2008. Vermeer’s Hat. Profile Books.
p. 184 ‘said Lactantius’. Quoted in Harper, F.A. 1955. Roots of economic understanding. The Freeman vol. 5, issue 11. http://www.thefreeman online.org/columns/roots-of-economic-understanding. pp. 184–5 ‘The man in question, Johann Friedrich Bottger’. Gleason, J. 1998. The Arcanum. Bantam Press.
p. 185 ‘the Dutch so dominated European international trade that their merchant marine was bigger than that of France, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Portugal – combined’. Blanning, T. 2007. The Pursuit of Glory. Penguin.
p. 186 ‘Both sides of the estuary of the River Plate became a vast slaughterhouse’. Edgerton, D. 2006. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900. Profile Books.
p. 186 ‘Yet in the aftermath of the First World War, one by one countries tried beggaring their neighbours in the twentieth century’. Findlay, R. and O’Rourke, K.H. 2007. Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World Economy. Princeton University Press.
p. 187 ‘China’s Open Door policy, which cut import tariffs from 55 per cent to 10 per cent in twenty years, transformed it from one of the most protected to one of the most open markets in the world.’ Lal, D. 2006. Reviving the Invisible Hand. Princeton University Press.
p. 188 ‘Farm subsidies and import tariffs on cotton, sugar, rice and other products cost Africa $500 billion a year in lost export opportunities’. Moyo, D. 2009. Dead Aid. Allen Lane.
p. 188 ‘Ford Madox Ford celebrated in his Edwardian novel The Soul of London’. Ford, F.M. 1905. The Soul of London. Alston Rivers.
p. 189 ‘says Suketa Mehta’. Mehta, S. Dirty, crowded, rich and wonderful. International Herald Tribune, 16 July 2007. Quoted in Williams, A. 2008. The Enemies of Progress. Societas.
p. 189 ‘writes Stewart Brand’. Brand, S. 2009. Whole Earth Discipline. Penguin.
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