----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> If I recall Mancur Olson suggests that one of the reasons that post WWII > West Germany did so well is that all of Germany's special interest > groups were destroyed. > > I'm inclined to agree although I know that Germany had tremendous > manufacturing ability even at the end of the war. However, why did the > South fare so poorly after the US Civil War? > Olson's "distributional coalitions" remained intact in the US, and the South was part of the US. Within a country, why do most major industries and financiers locate in one region of a country and not in another? Why did industrialists so rarely set up shop in Southern states? Why were meatpacking, steel, and auto industries, among others, all originally concentrated in the old Union states? While most of America's cotton was grown in the South, why was most textile manufacturing done in the north? If anyone has the answer to these questions, we might understand why the post-War South was for so long impoverished. ~Alypius Skinner
