How the Long-Gone Habsburg Empire Is Still Visible in Eastern European Bureaucracies Today
... See moreAlthough the West’s combination of markets plus science/technology does generate learning (companies die, startups replace them etc), our political institutions show little-to-no sign of learning in how they deal with things like state competition and war. Patterns of failure recur reliably hence books like Thucydides and Sun Tzu remain cutting
the absence of trust adds immense costs to transactions. When we do business with people we know and trust, we are willing to extend credit, send orders before we receive payment, and otherwise take steps to speed a transaction. When we lack that trust, we invoke intricate mechanisms to prevent bad behavior.
Ethan Zuckerman • Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them
