Passage 2
The Ingenuity Gap
A.
Ingenuity, as I define it here, consists not only of ideas for new
technologies like computers or drought-resistant crops but, more
fundamentally, of ideas for better institutions and social arrangements, like
efficient markets and competent governments.
B.
How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society requires depends on a
range of factors, including the society’s goals and the circumstances within
which it must achieve those goals whether it has a young population or an
aging one, an abundance of natural resources or a scarcity of them, an easy
climate or a punishing one, whatever the case may be.
C.
How much and what kinds of ingenuity a society supplies also depends on
many factors, such as the nature of human inventiveness and understanding,
the rewards an economy gives to the producers of useful knowledge, and the
strength of political opposition to social and institutional reforms.
D.
A good supply of the right kind of ingenuity is essential, but it isn’t, of
course, enough by itself. We know that the creation of wealth, for example,
depends not only on an adequate supply of useful ideas but also on the
availability of other, more conventional factors of production, like capital and
labor. Similarly, prosperity, stability and justice usually depend on the
resolution, or at least the containment, of major political struggles over wealth
and power. Yet within our economies ingenuity often supplants labor, and
growth in the stock of physical plant is usually accompanied by growth in the
stock of ingenuity. And in our political systems, we need great ingenuity
to set up institutions that successfully manage struggles over wealth and
power. Clearly, our economic and political processes are intimately entangled
with the production and use of ingenuity.
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