Matt Ridley—author of The Red Queen, among others—discusses the causes of poverty and pros­per­ity, offer­ing new (to me) insights on inno­va­tion, tech­nol­ogy and markets.

It’s very clear from his­tory that mar­kets bring forth inno­va­tion. If you’ve got free and fair exchange with decent prop­erty rights and a suf­fi­ciently dense pop­u­la­tion, then you get innovation. […]

The only insti­tu­tion that really counts is trust, if you like. And something’s got to allow that to build. […]

But human beings are spec­tac­u­larly good at destroy­ing trust-generating insti­tu­tions. They do this through three crea­tures: chiefs, thieves, and priests.

via Arts and Let­ters Daily