WHY DID SOME CULTURES (COUNTRIES) MISS THE WINDOW? The principle difference betw

WHY DID SOME CULTURES (COUNTRIES) MISS THE WINDOW?

The principle difference between civilizations is the degree of trust: meaning the trustworthiness of each individual in personal, private, social, economic, and political life.

Russia is a low trust civilization. China is a lower trust civilization. India is an even lower trust civilization. The middle east (MENA) is a much much lower trust civilization. The subsaharan africa is a trustless civilization. The Japanese, South Koreans, and the Europeans (mostly northern europeans) are the only high trust civilizations. (Small ethnically homogenous nation-states.)

Those civilizations that experimented with communism and socialism ‘blew the window’ of modernizing, where they hade but a century to sieze their share of incentives to create a majority middle class society, before market differences between civlizations eliminated any chance of advantage. Now they have built up consumption, but they have no capital to use to transform, and no market means of transformation.

So most will double down on ideology religion or authority to compensate. Some others will knuckle under (india) and develop quickly. Others more slowly.