Why has commerce thrived in the U.S. for 170 years and why did it thrive in England and Northern Europe for the 80 years prior to WWI?
Modern commerce requires four elements to thrive. Meritocracy, diversity, openness and markets.
‘Markets’ is not in my blog title because it is assumed in the meaning of commerce. But most people don’t understand that centrally planned societies like the USSR, Mao’s China, Cuba, and North Korea can not exist in a world without the open markets in the outside world around them. Central planners can not allocate resources without knowing the relative demand for goods and services. They know this from looking at world prices. These prices include the cost of production and a measure of the demand. Which can not be figured out, guessed or known outside of a market price system.
Meritocracy doesn’t work in a tribal world or a strictly hierarchical world. In both a member of the family is given the job of bookkeeper and director of logistics, in preference to a non-family member. When that is widespread it stifles meritocracy.
England and Northern Europe had the U.S. and the global colonies as refuge for the meritocratic members of their society before WWI. The U.S. had the great West. A talented but stifled young person in Boston could go to San Francisco. A stifled youth in Edinburgh could go to Bombay or Sydney.
The same was true for diversity. All of America was an open society with immigrants of every talent and skill arriving. The same for the global colonies. A retail shop in San Francisco or Bombay was staffed with people from everywhere in the world with an infinite array of talents. Jews worked next to Muslims, next to Scots, next to a Chilean monk, next to a Jain, next to an old Samoan sailor. Diversity has to do with diverse talents, skills, worldviews and experience. It is not based on gender, sexual tastes, ethnicity or age.
Openness is the bi-product of non-tribal people having to work together. Dishonesty, misdirection, obfuscation and sophistry don’t work in these circumstances.
The great American West and global colonialism were the fertile ground for the growth of modern commerce.