Signs of Our Decline Are All Around; A Dire Warning from Niall Ferguson

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” 
—Thich Nhat Hanh

“To live without hope is to cease to live.” 

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yesterday as I listened to a video titled Niall Ferguson Stuns World Leaders at ARC Australia - "Are We The Soviets Now?" some thoughts clicked in my head. Ferguson, a historian from Edinburgh, has much to say about the times we live in. In the past hundred years the massses, who for various reasons have felt abandoned by the Church, how been encouraged to put their faith in the State. Today, this folly has become apparent. His talk is less than 20 minutes long and you can watch it below or follow the URL and listen on YouTube.

What follows here are some excerpts from his talk, with a few of my thoughts added in response.

American politics is geriatric. If you look at the chart on the other side of this slide, the United States is a real outlier because its legislators are also substantially older than those of peer countries. 

Joe Biden was president when this was recorded, but it was apparent Donald Trump would be his successor. Each would end their terms at 82. Nancy Pelosi was well advanced and others as well. A friend of mine told me that a local congressperson confided that the worst part is that these people spend 70% of their time getting re-elected (to hold on to power) and 30% actually focused on legislation. Its very difficult to unseat those in office due to the massive name recognition advantage they have over new faces.

  

The Soviet Union's economy was characterized by the soft budget constraint which meant that state-owned enterprises were under almost no pressure to be economically efficient. That's in fact true of the US federal government too. I spend a lot of my time thinking about US fiscal policy. It's really shocking to observe that this year, for the first time, the United States federal government will spend more on interest payments on the federal debt than on defence. 

Even without the massive amounts of grift and fraud, the government's fiscal irresponsibility is apparent to all. The blame game seems more important than fixing any of it.

One of the striking features of life in 1980s Soviet Russia was that nobody believed in the system anymore.

It was a crock and rampant cynicism spread like like an oil slick across the culture.

Fact, as many Americans have died of suicide or drug overdoses in the last 10 years, has died of COVID-19, 1.2 million. If you include the deaths from alcohol abuse, deaths of despair killed more people in the past 10 years in the United States than COVID did.  

This (above) was the statement that arrested my attention. I've noted it in the past, and have expressed alarm that there have been more overdose deaths each year than all the soldiers who died in Vietnam over the span of ten years. Back then it seemed like we saw in the evening news daily footage of bodybags being loaded onto planes. These news stories produced the pushback against the war that became known as the anti-war movement. Where is the outrage today? What are we doing to end our current tragedy?

Well, Ferguson gives it a context.

What an extraordinary increase there has been in deaths of despair from suicide, alcohol poisoning, or drug overdoses. And if you compare the United States with comparable countries, including Australia, which is in the lower chart, dotted blue line, you see that the United States has a completely unique trend, with an extraordinary upward surge in deaths of despair unlike anywhere else.  

Our suicides, overdose deaths and alcohol poisoning among the you should alert us in the same way as those canaries in the mines. Something serious is amiss.

I come from Scotland. We invented the Rust Belt. We did Hillbilly Elegy before J.D. Vance was even born. I remember the east end of Glasgow, they shut down the steelworks, they shut down the shipyards. Glasgow in the 1970s was already a Rust Belt. By the 1980s, deaths of despair was our major export. Anybody seen the movie Trainspotting? 

"Deaths of despair." Wow. This is not a nice sound byte. It's a painful reality that few upper crusts think about. Life at the bottom is not something cool. 

As I looked at Angus Deaton's work on deaths of despair, and I kept asking myself, why have I seen this before? What does this remind me of? And then I remembered. The only other advanced economy where there has ever been a comparable decline in life expectancy, a comparable increase in particularly male midlife mortality, the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. And you can see the data here. The extraordinary deterioration in male life expectancy at birth in the Soviet Union compared here with France.

Which leads to Ferguson's doppelganger comparison, our nation's ghostly double being the Soviet Union of 1980.

The explanation in the Soviet case was that people had completely lost their belief in the system and regarded the party as a massive scam. The cynicism was bone deep. 

For many, there is still hope. I wish I shared their confidence. Too much of what passes for optimism today is little more than wishful rhetoric. Even here in Duluth, I see few signs that we are willing to confront our deepest problems with the seriousness they deserve. Hope cannot survive indefinitely on slogans. Unless we honestly face the realities before us, we may find ourselves following the same kind of decline and despair that engulfed the Soviet Union in its final years—a society that ignored its accumulating failures until they became impossible to escape.

Related Links

Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2022/02/niall-ferguson-on-breakdown-of-rule-of.html

Decline of the West: Historian Niall Ferguson Sounds Wake Up Call

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/12/decline-of-west-historian-niall.html

Niall Ferguson Stuns World Leaders at ARC Australia - "Are We The Soviets Now?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUJMyTJ9gyI&t=

The Pity of War and the Lusitania

Illustration by Norman Wilkinson (public domain)

"The first casualty of war is truth." --Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917

This is a follow-up to my blog post earlier this month on the sinking of the Lusitania.

While The Pity of War is primarily about the larger strategic and political failures that produced World War I, Niall Ferguson does make mention of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania within the broader context of wartime propaganda and Britain’s effort to bring the United States into the conflict. This prompted me to want to add to what I wrote last Thursday.

The Lusitania episode became one of the defining propaganda triumphs of the Allied war effort. The ship was not simply an innocent passenger liner in the purest sense presented to the public at the time. The vessel was carrying war-related materiel, including rifle cartridges and shell components, a fact long minimized or obscured in wartime narratives.

Though Germany was not morally blameless, the event was immediately transformed into a powerful emotional symbol through British and Allied media. Images of drowned civilians, women, and children were used to shape public opinion—especially in America—toward viewing Germany as uniquely barbaric. Ferguson sees this as part of the modern evolution of mass persuasion during industrial warfare.

At the same time, we should all consider these uncomfortable questions:
--Why was ammunition placed aboard a civilian liner traveling through contested waters.
--Why were passengers insufficiently informed of the risks?
--To what degree did governments exploit tragedy to mobilize public sentiment?

Propaganda usually simplifies complex realities into moral absolutes, and WWI was no different. Ferguson is especially skeptical of the idea that Britain entered the war purely for noble reasons or that Allied information campaigns were straightforwardly truthful. 

Importantly, once the sinking occurred, it became highly effective as a political and psychological weapon. The incident helped prepare American opinion for eventual intervention, even though the U.S. did not formally enter the war until 1917, nearly two years later.

One of Ferguson’s recurring themes is that modern states during this war learned how to harness media, atrocity stories, emotional imagery, and selective truths to sustain large-scale conflict. In that sense, the Lusitania became not merely a maritime disaster, but an early case study in twentieth-century information warfare.

The Pity of War: Niall Ferguson Lays Blame at Britain's Doorstep Regarding WWI, the Great War

World War I reminds us how quickly nationalism, alliances, propaganda, and political miscalculation can pull nations into catastrophe. Leaders expected a short war; instead it became industrialized slaughter. The conflict also showed how media narratives and public emotion can overpower caution, creating momentum toward war before societies fully understand the consequences.

Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England’s fault. According to Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.  

* * * 

I can't recall when I first began reading Niall Ferguson, the prominent Glasgow-born historian. One of his books, which I wrote about in 2021, was The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die. His book answered one of the questions I have long pondered: How did Western Europe become such a global powerhouse? What were the foundation stones that contributed to the rise of the West? Here's my take on this book: Why Civilizations Fail: Niall Ferguson Sounds A Wake-Up Call.

You can tell from Ferguson's other titles that he's pessimistic about our future unless things change. His most recent title is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. Another of his books is Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. His aim, however, is not to get us depressed. It's intended to wake us up. We've become complacent.  

* * * * *

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

That the war was horrific and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and others, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, there were more British casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans killed in the Vietnam War over a period of ten years. (That battle alone took between 120,000 and 150,000 lives.) And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War is a pretty good guide through all that foul terrain. 

"The First World War was at once piteous, in the poet's sense, and 'a pity'. It was something worse than a tragedy, which is ultimately something we are taught by the theatre to regard as unavoidable. It was nothing less than the greatest error of modern history."
--Niall Ferguson

The Pity of War is a revisionist examination of the causes and consequences of World War I. Ferguson's contrarian position challenges many accepted assumptions, arguing that Britain’s entry into the war transformed what might have remained a continental conflict into a catastrophic global struggle. He contends that Britain may have been better off remaining neutral—an argument that runs against traditional narratives about moral necessity and national duty.

What makes the book compelling is Ferguson’s willingness to question sacred historical assumptions while backing his claims with extensive research, statistics, economic analysis, and firsthand accounts. Even readers who disagree with his conclusions will find the book intellectually stimulating because it forces a reconsideration of how wars begin, how governments justify intervention, and how myths become embedded in national memory.

One of the motivations for the writing of this book (and writing a book is such a massive project that you really do need a large dose of motivation) was that his grandfather was one of the soldiers who fought in that nightmare war, "which remains the worst thing the people of my country have ever had to endure." As a private in the 2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, part of the 26th Brigade in the 9th Divison of the British Expeditionary Force, Ferguson saw his grandfather's survival as "mysteriously fortunate."

At times the book can feel dense--and in my paperback version the font is too small--especially in its economic and diplomatic detail, but Ferguson's prose is easily digestible if  you keep going. He writes with confidence. The result is not merely a history of World War I, but a meditation on power, propaganda, nationalism, and unintended consequences. 

Was it "the greatest error of modern history" as Ferguson suggests. This book makes his case.

Tomorrow I aim to do a follow-up on the sinking of the Lusitania, from Niall Ferguson's perspective.

Related Links

WWI RELATED BLOG POSTS

Poilu.  https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/12/poilu-grisly-wwi-memoir-from-trenches.html

The Great War: So Much Sorrow 

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-great-war-so-much-sorrow-and-for.html

The British Generals 

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-british-generals-heading-into-world.html

Why did this assassination result in total war?

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2014/06/100-years-ago-today-why-did-this.html

A Book That Changed History: Guns of August

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/10/book-that-changed-history.html

Veteran’s Day and My Boy Jack

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2010/11/veterans-day-and-my-boy-jack.html

The Unnecessary War

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2009/06/unnecessary-war.html

The Sinking of the Lusitania Has Lessons for Today

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-sinking-of-lusitania-has-lessons.html

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2010/12/and-band-played-waltzing-matilda.html

The Four Grand Transitions That Created the World We Live In Today

I've always admired people who have the ability to take complex issues and make them simple to understand. This is doubly enjoyable/useful when people with a comprehensive grasp of history do the hard work of identifying events or trends and assembling them in a manner that creates new insights that any average Joe or Josephine can grasp. 

One such thinker who specializes in this sort of thing is Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian scientist, policy analyst and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. I myself became aware of him because of his reputation as one of the world's leading experts on the history of energy.

In 2021 Smil wrote a book titled Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made. In it, he examines the transitions that structure our modern word. What made the modern world work? For Smil, it all boils down to four "grand transitions" of civilizations: (1) population, (2) agriculture, (3) energy and (4) economics. The cumulative effect of these transitions has transformed the way we live. 

When a society goes through all four of the major changes—like improvements in health, farming, energy, and the economy—it ends up in a very different place: people live longer, there's plenty of food (and a lot gets wasted), energy use goes way up, and there are more job and business opportunities. But not everyone in the world has caught up—hundreds of millions of people still live without many of these advances. 

Vaclav Smil looks at how all these big changes connect. He says it's more important than ever to share the good stuff of modern life, especially with the growing gap between rich and poor. But doing that while also trying to protect the planet is a tough balancing act. The next big challenge—what he calls the fifth transition—is dealing with climate change, shrinking resources, and disappearing wildlife. Whether we succeed at this will decide if all the progress we've made actually lasts.

* * * 

When I read the Four Transitions cited by Smil, it brought to mind Niall Ferguson's fire alarm Why Civilizations Fail. Ferguson in his book cites four things that together produced the rise of Western Civilization. They were:
1. Democracy -- the consent of the governed.
2. Capitalism -- and the vibrant society healthy markets produce.
3. Rule of law -- secure property rights, fairness and (in theory) equality.
4. Civil society -- how we treat one another.

The lists differ, but both author express a serious concern about the cracks in our foundations today, and more importantly, the ever widening gap between haves and have nots. 

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the direction things are going.  What do you think?

Related Links

Why Civilizations Fail: Niall Ferguson Sounds A Wake-Up Call
Grand Transitions: How the modern world was made

Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

Our Democracy Is Broken. Can We Fix It?

John Locke*

Despite being over ten years old, Niall Ferguson's The Great Degeneration remains must reading for those who wish to understand our current cultural malaise. For this reason I have devoted a number of blog posts to sharing the insights he offers us in this perceptive book.

As I've noted previously, the four cornerstones of Western Civilization's achievements are Democracy (representative government), Capitalism, Rule of Law and Civil Society. Here are some of my gleanings from his discussion of representative government. The basic tenet here is that "it is generally better for government to be somewhat representative of the governed than not." The reason this is so, he says, is because a representative government is more likely to be responsive to shifting popular preferences. 

Ferguson is emphatic in his defense of representative government, despite the increasing cacophony of voices complaining that Democracy is broken. Yearning for a Beijing model of a one-party state is not going to bring us the satisfaction we long for.  (Look no further than the Chinese system of technocrats instituting five-year plans.) Some decisions--such as their economic zones--may have good results, but population planning like the one-child policy has been a disaster.

Critics are correct, though, in noting how unhealthy our economic state is today. Look no further than the massive debt we have accumulated. We just recently surpassed the 30 trillion dollar mark, or 7 trillion dollars more than our GDP. Don't know where it's goin' but that debt pile just keeps growin'.

The problem with public debt is that it allows our current generation of voters to live the lives they want at the expense of those too young to vote or as yet are unborn. Even now, we have leaders offering universal health care, free college tuition and a host of other benefits in exchange for votes. But who will pick up the tab? Just as our Founding Father passed the slavery issue on to the next generation, so we're passing the consequences of our fiscal irresponsibility to future generations. 

There are only two reasonable future scenarios, states Ferguson--either increased taxation or drastic cuts in public expenditures. Neither course is likely to be popular.

This is precisely what Madison was privately concerned about when the Constitution was being hammered out. Once the public figures out that they can elect leaders who will give them whatever they want, the two party system will become a competition between whoever can offer the most toys and candy. 

To eliminate the current fiscal gap--which has grown since Ferguson wrote these words--would require a 64% increase in Federal taxes or "an immediate 40% cut in all Federal expenditures." Now how many voters have the stomach for that? 

At this point the author cites Edmund Burke who wrote that we have a social contract that is greater than ourselves, a responsibility to our forebears who sacrificed to provide us a better world as well as a responsibility to our offspring that they might be unimpeded in the pursuit of their own destinies and dreams. In other words, there is a Social Contract between the generations, from our forebears to our offspring. 

Ferguson makes the case that this Social Contract is broken, and if we are to survive it must be restored. Can it be? How? "I recognize that the obstacles to doing so are daunting," he writes.

The hurdles ahead of us are many, not the least of which is having confidence that we can pull it off. Why make sacrifices and put in all the work necessary to restore things if you don't have faith that it will pay off? And how can the State be our partner when we, the people, constantly see decisions made that make us feel it's our adversary?

For Ferguson there are only two scenarios that will get us out of this mess. The first involves getting the young--and their parents and grandparents--to elect leaders who will commit to a more responsible fiscal policy. (The hard part here is that such a move by leaders will inflict short term pain for the sake of long term gains, and few people want short term pain. We've been trained to "want the world and we want it now.")

The way to do this, the author believes, involves altering the manner in which governments account for their finances. The current method is fraudulent. They bury the facts and the truth. Says he, there are no regularly published factual balance sheets. Future liabilities are hidden from view. This is why one of the chief criticisms of government is its lack of transparency. 

A better way would be to have a government's liabilities (including future commitments) arranged so they can be compared with their assets. Governments should adopt the generally accepted accounting principles of legitimate businesses. Finally, our government should make absolutely clear the intergenerational implications of our fiscal policies.

The alternative, he writes, goes like this: "If we do not embark on a whole new reform of government finance, then I'm afraid we are going to end up with a bad but more likely second scenario. Western democracies are going to carry on in their current feckless fashion until one after another they follow Greece and other Mediterranean economies into the fiscal death spiral that begins with a loss of credibility, continues with rising borrowing costs and ends as governments are forced to impose spending cuts and higher taxes at the worst possible moment."

* * *

While reading these things several thoughts come to mind. First, I get an image of creepy crawly things slithering in the muck beneath rocks that everyone is afraid to overturn because of what they might find there. 

Second, because our flabby, inefficient, bloated government bureaucracy is dependent on keeping existing systems alive, because the gravy train is so nourishing, there's no incentive to change anything.  

* * * 

Maybe there's another solution. Instead of griping about the Federal mess that seems so out of our control, maybe we can roll up our sleeves locally and do the work of getting better informed here in our home communities. It won't solve everything, but it's a start.

* * * 

* John Locke expanded on Thomas Hobbes's social contract theory and developed the concept of natural rights, the right to private property and the principle of the consent of the governed.

Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

Lady Justice: Blindfold, Scales
and Sword*

The other day I shared the values and principles that transformed Western Civilization from a network of regional peoples to a global force. These four forces that came together in Europe (and were exported to North America) were Democracy, Capitalism, the Rule of Law, and Civil Society. 

In my second reading it became apparent that the historian Niall Ferguson's aim here was to draw attention not only to what made Western Civilization strong but to the dangers facing us as these very qualities deteriorate. 

Here are some of my notes and quotes from a section in which historian Niall Ferguson discusses the breakdown of the Rule of Law, opening with this question:

"How effective is the rule of law in the West in general and specifically in the English speaking world today?"

The Rule of Law's Enemies

Ferguson sees four threats to the Rule of Law.

1. How far have our civil liberties been eroded by the National Security state? At the outbreak of WWI Britain enacted the Defense of the Realm Act. The post-9/11 protracted detention of terrorist suspects veiled a similar overreach. And then there's the issue of surveillance on citizens in the name of National Security.

2. The intrusion of European Law with its Civil Law character is a second threat. Specifically, the 1953 European Convention on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. Ferguson calls it Napoleon's Revenge, a creeping Frenchification of the Common Law. 

3. The third threat is the growing complexity and sloppiness of Statute Law which has become a "mania for elaborate regulations." We need a legal "spring cleaning" of obsolete legislation and the addition of sunset dates for new laws. 

4. The mounting cost of the law. He's not referring to the $95 billion a year the U.S. spends on law making, law interpretation and law enforcement. Nor does he mean the spiraling cost of lobbyists seeking to protect themselves or hurt their competitors by skewing legislation in their favor.  Though companies and cities spend only 3.3 billion dollars on lobbying, the real cost is found in the consequences of their work. How much? According to the U.S. Small Business Association this amounts to 1.75 trillion dollars a year.  And this doesn't include the costs extracted via tort law. Bottom line: It costs way more money to set up a business in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world due to all the legal red tape and the cost of lawyers.

Ferguson points us to a book by Joseph Steiglitz and David Kennedy who cite three egregious failings of the rule of law in the U.S. today. 

First: New bankruptcy laws and predatory lending by banking firms have created a new class of partially indentured servants. There are people so in debt that they have to give as much as 25% of their earnings to the banks for the rest of their lives.

Second: Intellectual property law has become absurdly and excessively restrictive. 

Third: With regard to laws concerning toxic waste, litigation costs represent more than a quarter of the amount spent on cleanup. 

Bottom line is that the game is rigged. The unnecessary costs and inefficiency of our legal system are apparent to all, but what is being done about it? 

"Experts on economic competitiveness (interviewed by) Michael Porter of Harvard Business School (HBS) define the term to include the ability of the government to pass effective laws, the protection of physical and intellectual property rights and lack of corruption, the efficiency of the legal framework including modest costs and swift adjudication, the ease of setting up new businesses, and effective and predictable regulations. It is startling how poorly the United States fares when judged by these criteria." 

When 600+ HBS alumni were queried by Porter as to whether or not to off-shore their operations, only 16% said they would choose the U.S. as a place to set up their business. Here are the Top Five reasons the other 84% would NOT. 

1. The effectiveness of the political system (lack of)

2. The complexity of the tax code

3. Regulation (Red Tape)

4. The efficiency of the legal framework (extremely inefficient)

5. Flexibility in hiring and firing (lack of)

By nearly every measure, our reputation "is shockingly bad," says Ferguson.

According to the Heritage Foundation's "Freedom Index" the U.S. ranks 21st in the world in terms of freedom from corruption, way behind Hong Kong and Singapore.

Ferguson goes on to list a dozen more ways that the U.S. has fallen behind when it comes to the Rule of Law, not just in the business realm but in both the personal and political spheres.

* * * 

My Two Cents

In many ways I believe people fail to observe what is happening today because they have a mental image of what it used to be. For example, it has been nearly 100 years since the Pittsburgh skyline was an abundance of steel factories belching black smoke. There has been immense progress in this realm of business pollution. They no longer need a fire department to put out fires on the Cuyahoga River that flow through Cleveland.

In the same way, many of us have a false image of our superiority as a nation compared to other countries when it comes to justice and freedom. Some make a case that there's never been a level playing field in this country, and that's certainly been true for many. Today, however, the cracks are increasingly visible, and an honest observer has to ask how or when--if ever--these things will be fixed. 

The Radical solution is to bulldoze the entirety into the sea. Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals, states that Machiavelli wrote his opus as a guide for the Haves to preserve power and what they have. Alinsky claims his book is a guide for the Have Nots. The path he outlines makes me cringe, but so does the path we're on. 

Is there a third way? Ultimately I find comfort in the notion that "this world is not my home." And yet....

*Photo courtesy ChvhLR10, Creative Commons.

Why Civilizations Fail: Niall Ferguson Sounds A Wake-Up Call

I just finished reading, for the second time, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, by Niall Ferguson. Ferguson, who hails from Scotland, is one of the world's foremost historians. He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, and a faculty fellow at Harvard. 

The titles aren't what make his writing interesting. Rather, it is the clarity of thought and the scope of his ideas. To best understand what is happening in the world today, historians help bring perspective that most everyone has lost sight of because they are so focused on being "up to the minute," making sure we're in the loop with the latest statements or faux pas of the politicians we love or hate. 

One of the matters that this book addresses has to do with Western Civilization. Since there have been all kinds of civilizations over the ages, why do some rise up above the rest at various times? And how did Western Europe grow in strength and influence so that it came to dominate the world? 

There has been a lot of well-deserved criticism of the evils committed by the nations of Western Europe, not the least of which was the slave trade and exploitation of others' natural resources. Ferguson's book provides insights on how Western Civilization achieved the power that it did, and why this occurred in Europe and not elsewhere. 

Explaining the Great Divergence

People suggest a variety of explanations for the divergence in outcomes in quality of life for various people groups. For Ferguson, "Institutions, more than geography, natural resources, climate or even the incidence of disease, have a greater impact on societal outcomes."

Why did Western Civilization fair so much better than other civilizations? Ferguson writes that from the 1500s to the late 1970's there was an astonishing diverging in global living standards.

"As of 300 years ago the average Asian achieved the same as the average Westerner. As of 1978, the average American was 22 times richer. Why?"

Not only in wealth but also in health did we see this. In 1960, life expectancy in China was in the late 40s, whereas in the U.S. it had reached 70.

"A minority of mankind had both a material and political dominance over the rest. Why?" 

It had nothing to do with racial superiority, he notes. Nor did it have to do with natural resources, geography, climate or topography.  In other words, there were no outward signs to indicate Europe would outshine the great Oriental empires. 

Nor can the achievements of Western Europe be explained in terms of imperialism. Other empires did plenty of that as well. 

In point of fact, from 500 to 1500, which we now refer to as the Dark Ages, there was really nothing to suggest that this corner of the world would break out and expand its rule over a majority of the known world.

Ferguson believes that the reason for disparity in the great divergence between the Western end of Eurasia and the Eastern end has to do with the institutions that developed.

England was the first nation to embrace pluralistic rather than extracted political institutions. Spain was not and as a result, the political systems exported to the New World (North and South America) produced different outcomes. Protestantism was also a part of this influence.

Institutions are what matter. 

Here are a few points he makes early in the book:

--Dysfunctional institutions are what force the poor to live outside the law.

--The "rule of law" has no analogue in the non-human world.

--Good institutions are hard to achieve. Bad institutions are easy to get stuck in.

And then there's the big question that seems to be the overarching theme of this book: WHY DO INSTITUTIONS FAIL? 

* * * 

Niall Ferguson concluded that the rise of the West was due to four things, which he calls the Four Black Boxes. The bulk of this book is comprised of a deep dive into the meaning of these four elements.

1. Democracy -- the consent of the governed.

2. Capitalism -- and the vibrant society healthy markets produce.

3. Rule of law -- secure property rights, fairness and (in theory) equality.

4. Civil society -- how we treat one another.

The book was published ten years ago, and much of what we're seeing today is the crumbling of our culture. A very real degeneration is occurring right before our eyes. For the past half century we have been in decline and the evidence is all around us. 

Here are four areas where we have been failing.

--Failure to enforce property rights.

--Failure to uphold the rule of law

--Failure to understand economics, and defend the wealth creation capabilities of Capitalism.

--Failure to support the foundations of civil society.

As time permits I hope to share a more details regarding the Four Black Boxes of Civilization and why we need to wake up. To defend what really matters we need to understand what's really happening.   

* * * 

Related Link
Decline of the West: Historian Niall Ferguson Sounds Wake Up Call