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as the coalition continues to expand, a wedge is eventually driven between what a king wants and what his court needs. When that wedge gets big enough we have an explanation for the emergence of a mature democracy that is so stable it will almost certainly remain democratic and not backslide into autocratic rule.
The Dictator's Handbook
de Mesquita Bueno
Recall here the language of the economics textbooks: “Imagine a society without money.” “Imagine a barter economy.” One thing these examples make abundantly clear is just how limited the imaginative powers of most economists turn out to be.
Once the old public wealth has been denied and integrated into market production, those who benefit from it have no interest – quite the opposite – in returning to states of abundance outside the market. A firm that sells bottled water would have more of an objective interest in seeing public water fountains disappear. It is therefore necessary that the state of scarcity be perpetuated, even accentuated – and this is quite antithetical to a policy of rehabilitation and extension of environmental public goods.
The Ungovernable Society
Grégoire Chamayou
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