There’s a fascinating article in The Economist this week on how golden ages start and end. It’s inspired by a new book called Peak Human by Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian. The author argues that there is one thing the most successful societies had in common:
…the polities that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. When they closed up again, they lost their shine.
The book was written before Donald Trump’s election and the current tariff and trade wars. Even so, the book’s point holds without needing to mention him explicitly.
