Deep Causality

I am interested in ideas of deep causes that underlie day to day history. I just posted on The Long Summer: How Climate Changed History which suggests that climate and geographical changes were important driving functions in history. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies had similar analysis which implicated environmental factors in partial causality historical models.

I know that people have used single-factor, deterministic models of history with poor effects, but still I think it useful to look at deeper factors, recognizing that they interact in a complex causality.

Two such factors were brought to my attention this week. Both elicited the "why didn't I think of that response".

* An article in the Economist pointed out that globalization underlies a force that makes returns on capital greater in developed nations as compared to returns on labor. As investment can move more freely from rich countries where it has been relatively abundant to poor countries where it has been relatively scarce, the return on capital in rich countries tends to increase. As it moves toward the higher rates of return in poor nations, the balance between labor and capital changes in the rich countries, and returns tend to increase.

* A new book, The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall, suggests that democracy and openness in a society enhance stability only in the later stages of their development. Coercive governments can be quite stable, and often become less stable as they open up.

I knew lots of instances where these rules seem to hold, but had not inferred the rules themselves. They may not be laws, but they are worth thinking about.