Hunter Maats

“This figuring-out step is crucial, since overly optimistic economic models have often assumed that demand and incentives are enough to stimulate the production of any product. Incentives work to motivate intermediaries and traders, but makers, who are the ones that provide the substance of what is traded, need more than an incentive to make something. They need to know how to do it.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“A society built entirely out of rational individuals who come together on the basis of a social contract for the sake of the satisfaction of their wants cannot form a society that would be viable over any length of time. —FRANCIS FUKUYAMA”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“In his 1995 book Trust, he argues that the ability of a society to form large networks is largely a reflection of that society’s level of trust. Fukuyama makes a strong distinction between what he calls “familial” societies, like those of southern Europe and Latin America, and “high-trust” societies, like those of Germany, the United States, and Japan. Familial societies are societies where people don’t trust strangers but do trust deeply the individuals in their own families (the Italian Mafia being a cartoon example of a familial society). In familial societies family networks are the dominant form of social organization where economic activity is embedded, and are therefore societies where businesses are more likely to be ventures among relatives. By contrast, in high-trust societies people don’t have a strong preference for trusting their kin and are more likely to develop firms that are professionally run.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

“Schooling is certainly not a great proxy for knowhow and knowledge, since it is by definition a measure of the time spent in an establishment, not of the knowledge embodied in a person’s brain.”
― César Hidalgo, Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies