Government should never be able to do anything you can't do. If you can't steal from your neighbor, you can't send the government to steal for you.
And more than the quality of its institutions, what distinguishes a developed country from a developing one is the degree of consensus in its politics, and thus its ability to take actions to secure a better future despite short-term pain.
Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
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And more than the quality of its institutions, what distinguishes a developed country from a developing one is the degree of consensus in its politics, and thus its ability to take actions to secure a better future despite short-term pain.
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Growing economies are built by billions of actors behaving according to their own interests, coordinated through institutions that no one in particular created.Realizing this requires humility, a trait that is in short supply among would-be dictators, politicians, and bureaucrats, which is precisely why these groups are the proven enemies of prosperity in all times and places.
There is only a certain amount of wealth in the world, this thinking goes. Economics is a matter of acquiring and allocating, not creating. This was the view of the world__ smartest people, all top philosophers and not stupid people, for many thousands of years before the age of the enlightenment. It still is.