Why Nations Fail? The Origins of Power Prosperity and Poverty - Daron Acemoğlu & James A. Robinson

The theory of « Why Nations fail? The origins of power, prosperity and poverty » stipulates that the interaction of political and economic institutions is causing poverty when they are extractive and prosperity when they are inclusive. This book was written by the economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson and was first published in 2012.

Chapters :

0:00 Introduction
0:28 The theory of "Why Nations Fail"
01:16 Spanish conquistadors’ exploitation of Latin Americans
01:59 Prosperity is not linked to culture
02:47 Extractive institutions
04:00 Inclusive institutions
05:39 The rise of inclusive institutions around the world
06:50 The rise of exclusive institutions around the world
07:54 European commercial and colonial expansion
08:35 Inclusive institutions are pluralistic
09:07 Why nations fail today?
09:56 Break the vicious cycle of exclusive institutions
10:36 The book's limits

Narration & production: Dr. Salma El Bourkadi
Twitter: @salma_bourkadi

[timothyrockwell]

The problem with private property is that under the free-market capitalist system private property results in consolidation by an increasingly small number of owners because the free-market is inherently an extractive system. So in order to make private property a truly inclusive system, private property and wealth should be democratized as advocated by Benjamin Franklin:

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law."

"All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."