> > That's the thing about empires. They squeeze out competitive forces and > it's those competitive forces that keep innovation and progress alive. > For example there was one point when china was all set to conquer Europe, > they had a massive fleet the likes never seen up to that time, and their > ships were decidedly better than the ones of European nations at the > time. The fleet was on it's way, rounding the horn of Africa, ready to > descend upon Europe like locusts. But then the emperor died. The new > emperor thought that having a big fleet was not such a good idea. The > fleet was eventually scuttled and china is a third world country today. > Likewise once upon a time the Japanese made the best guns, but by the mid > eighteen hundreds there were no guns in Japan. Japan lost it's guns > because the rulers ever so slowly restricted the making of / repair of > guns. First they restricted how many guns could be made per year. > Slowly they reduced this number eventually to zero. Then they restricted > the repair of guns per year. So by the mid 1800's Japan no longer had > any guns. > > The Idea is very simple and very sound. When you have large empires, > popes, etc. they are able to restrict 'taboo' ideas / technology, etc. > The other part is that usually no two emperors or popes have the same > definition of what is 'taboo', so you get a whittling effect, one > whittling this away, another whittling that away. It's not a quick > process. > > But this effect ends when you add in the right amount of competitive > forces.
Jared Diamond in "Guns Germs and Steel" goes into this arguement in some depth. He points out that the geography of china and europe were important in the differences between the two cultures. China was and is essentially a single plain betweeen two great rivers with free movement across most of the land. This promoted the developement of a large complex civilization. Technology flourished in this environment but the same features that promoted early civilization and technology also made it prone to stagnation and loss of technology that occurred when the Ming Dynasty turned inward. They controlled the entire country and had no rivals. There was no initial negative effects of this decision but other civilizations were not turning away from technology. In Europe the geography was not conducive to this sort of consolidation. Mountain ranges broke the continent up into small pockets of civilization which competed with each other. A society that gave up technology would be defeated by a society that used and advanced technology. We are of course in danger of making the Ming mistake, the soviet union mistake. When we impede research in things like stem cell research this research is done elsewhere and the the elsewheres reap the benefit.
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