What makes the west special is competition: the balance of power, and every indi

What makes the west special is competition: the balance of power, and every individual’s commitment to preserving the balance of power, and respecting the consequences of that conflict as beneficial. It is a social system that is antithetical to everyone else on earth.

While the self congratulatory set would love to say we achieved this feat on purpose, through debate and wisdom, that’s entirely false. It is a remnant of tribal heroism. Something else much of the world criticizes us for. (See John Keegan)

While the self congratulatory set would love to say that our success comes from democracy, that’s false. It comes from aristocracy. From a balance of power between small states, who treated the church as a sort of supreme court system. Democracy is a luxury good. It’s something the very wealthy can afford for very short times – it’s a means of spending your trust fund. But it doesn’t make that trust fund.

The west’s “Killer Apps” as Nial Ferguson calls them are, 1) competition, 2) science, 3) property rights, 5) the consumer society 6) the work ethic. It’s these killer apps that created the great divergence between “the west and the rest”.

But those six apps are CAUSED by every individual’s commitment to preserving the balance of power, and competition as a means of determining outcomes.

Under the competitive model, we do not develop consensus.

We develop experiments.