Quotes About Progress

No era propio de ellos.

Probably some of the best things that have ever happened to you in life, happened because you said yes to something. Otherwise things just sort of stay the same.

maybe sometimes it's riskier not to take a risk. Sometimes all you're guaranteeing is that things will stay the same.

The only time you have no opportunities is when you decide to stop taking them.

The fear of creative destruction is the main reason why there was no sustained increase in living standards between the Neolithic and Industrial revolutions.

Economic growth and technological change are accompanied by what the great economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction.

There could be some economic growth without innovation, relying on existing technology, but it was growth without creative destruction. And it did not last.

Economic institutions that create incentives for economic progress may simultaneously redistribute income and power in such a way that a predatory dictator and others with political power may become worse off.

In 1856 the state of Victoria, which had been carved out of New South Wales in 1851, and the state of Tasmania would become the first places in the world to introduce an effective secret ballot in elections, which stopped vote buying and coercion. Today we still call the standard method of achieving secrecy in voting in elections the Australian ballot.

Technological change is only one of the engines of prosperity, but it is perhaps the most critical one.

las economías basadas en la represión del trabajo y los sistemas como la esclavitud y la servidumbre carecen claramente de innovación. Esto es así desde el mundo antiguo hasta la era moderna

La educación y las habilidades de los trabajadores son lo que genera el conocimiento científico sobre el que se construye nuestro progreso y lo que permite la adaptación y adopción de estas tecnologías en varias líneas de negocio.

The English textile industry not only was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution but also revolutionized the world economy.

En una versión algo posmoderna de la teoría de la modernización, el columnista de The New York Times Thomas Friedman llegó a sugerir que, cuando un país tiene suficientes McDonald's, aparecen sin duda la democracia y las instituciones.

la ayuda exterior no es un medio muy efectivo de abordar el fracaso de los países del mundo hoy en día. Todo lo contrario. Los países necesitan instituciones políticas y económicas inclusivas para romper el ciclo de la pobreza.

English exports, led by cotton textiles, doubled between 1780 and 1800. It was the growth in this sector that pulled ahead the whole economy. The combination of technological and organizational innovation provides the model for economic progress that transformed the economies of the world that became rich.

Under the Song dynasty, between 960 and 1279, China led the world in many technological innovatons. The Chinese invented clocks, the compass, gunpowder, paper and paper money, porcelein and the blast furnaces to make cast iron before Europe did. They independently developed spinning wheels and waterpower at more or less the same time that these merged at the other end of Eurosia.

sólo los burócratas pueden pensar que el trabajo de planificación acaba con la creación del plan. La elaboración del plan es solamente el principio. El rumbo verdadero del plan se desarrolla solamente después de haberlo elaborado».

We will conclude by illustrating, with the example of the Maya city-states, how growth under extractive institutions is limited not only because of lack of technological progress but also because it will encourage infighting from rival groups wishing to take control of the state and the extraction it generates.

Japan and Singapore never had more than a sprinkling of inhabitants of European descent, yet they are as prosperous as many parts of Western Europe.

El temor a la destrucción creativa es la razón principal por la que no hubo un aumento sostenido del nivel de vida entre la revolución neolítica y la revolución industrial

La desigualdad mundial existe actualmente porque, durante los siglos XIX y XX, algunos países fueron capaces de aprovechar la revolución industrial y las tecnologías y los métodos de organización que aportaba mientras que otros no.

As we will see many times in this book, economies based on the repression of labor and systems such as slavery and serfdom are notoriously noninnovative. This is true from the ancient world to the modern era.

Most economists and policymakers have focused on "getting it right," while what is really needed is an explanation for why poor nations "get it wrong.