- 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
