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How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations
How 1,000 years of global history show why technological and economic progress is often followed by stagnation and even collapse
In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.
By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.
Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.
In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world’s largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.
By examining key historical moments—from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI—Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past—such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain—ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term—findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.
Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.
552 pages, Hardcover
Published September 16, 2025
About the author
Carl Benedikt Frey
5 books53 followersCarl Benedikt Frey is the Oxford Martin Citi Fellow and codirector of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. He is also a senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford and in the Department of Economic History at Lund University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
November 23, 2025
A single mind may imagine the steam engine or the transistor, but without institutions, capital, and a community of exchange, the idea withers.
I liked the idea of this book more than the execution. The author draws an insightful conclusion from trying to understand how centralisation and decentralisation affect innovation, catching up with innovation, and a country's economy. Yet the book's content fails to build a strong, insightful story around this conclusion. I still liked it overall, but found it a bit disappointing after being overly excited after the first few chapters.
This was the 5th out of six books from the Financial Times book of the year shortlist, and 8th out of the sixteen in the longlist: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2.... I might read one or two more from the list. Chokepoints is so far my favourite.
I liked the idea of this book more than the execution. The author draws an insightful conclusion from trying to understand how centralisation and decentralisation affect innovation, catching up with innovation, and a country's economy. Yet the book's content fails to build a strong, insightful story around this conclusion. I still liked it overall, but found it a bit disappointing after being overly excited after the first few chapters.
This was the 5th out of six books from the Financial Times book of the year shortlist, and 8th out of the sixteen in the longlist: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2.... I might read one or two more from the list. Chokepoints is so far my favourite.
July 12, 2026
I enjoyed this a lot, even if it can basically be boiled down to:
1) You need decentralisation for innovation, centralisation for effective exploitation of successful innovations
2) Too much centralised control (or regulation) stifles innovation and agility, allowing smaller / more innovative / less regulated disruptors to take over
3) Therefore Shumpeter (creative destruction) and Hayek (the knowledge problem) were both right
So it doesn't really say anything new. But it does a good job of illustrating these ideas with examples and opinions, right up to the current wave of GenAI's apparent disruption.
1) You need decentralisation for innovation, centralisation for effective exploitation of successful innovations
2) Too much centralised control (or regulation) stifles innovation and agility, allowing smaller / more innovative / less regulated disruptors to take over
3) Therefore Shumpeter (creative destruction) and Hayek (the knowledge problem) were both right
So it doesn't really say anything new. But it does a good job of illustrating these ideas with examples and opinions, right up to the current wave of GenAI's apparent disruption.
August 9, 2026
I give five stars not because I agree with the main postulates of the book, but because the book itself is very well written and very informative. But still the main question of the last centuries is not answered: why did all these industrial revolutions happen where they happen and not somewhere else... I will keep looking for the answers
November 9, 2025
How Progress Ends sets out to ask one of the grand questions of our time about how a society gets on the path of progress, and more importantly, what may cause derailment for those on it. The author covers a swathe of economic history with range and confidence, moving through centuries of invention, decline, and recovery.
Yet the more one reads, the clearer it becomes that the book’s conclusions, scant as they are and rarely on the big topic, were decided before the evidence was gathered. The result is not a study or a schema of factors that cause progress to end, but a demonstration of how history could be bent to support whatever wishes or conclusions one may have already formed about the current affairs and likely path ahead for various economies for the next few years. In the process, the book not only trivializes the utility of studying history but also distorts the lessons that could have been drawn from some excellent sections on non-US, non-UK episodes that most readers would be less familiar with.
The past is pressed into service of the present; centuries of complex evolution are marshalled to justify passing political preferences. What could have been a meditation on the anatomy of stagnation becomes instead a selective commentary on small asides on topics as specific as artificial intelligence or fiscal policy, which seem oddly trivial after such a sweeping historical journey.
There are, to be fair, moments of erudition and many engaging historical vignettes. The episodes are often well chosen and narrated with skill. But with the lessons drawn being surprisingly narrow and most reserved for the concluding sections, the connective tissue between them is thin. The frustration lies not in the author’s politics but in the loss of intellectual openness. One finishes the book with the sense that history has been quarried rather than explored. There is little attempt to let the evidence unsettle the hypothesis. The bait-and-switch invalidates the serious work that precedes it.
Reading it nevertheless provokes reflection, though perhaps not in the direction intended. If the book itself fails to explain how progress ends, its material suggests several truths about how it begins. The rest of the review is this reviewer’s attempts at some lessons that could have been drawn:
The first is that progress requires intent. The primacy of intent is the most important necessary condition. No amount of talent or circumstance can substitute for a genuine will to advance. And, it is the will of those wielding the power that matters. When those who hold power—whether monarchs, parties, or corporations—cease to desire improvement, decay follows. Intent can arise from rivalry, from pride, from ideology, even from fear, but without it, invention drifts. And if the will is there, many problems around bureaucracy discussed within the book, could be overcome, even if the solutions adopted by one type of economic or political system could differ from those of some other.
The second lesson is that ideas, however luminous, are fragile without the structures that carry them. A single mind may imagine the steam engine or the transistor, but without institutions, capital, and a community of exchange, the idea withers. The story of progress is not only the story of creators but also of connectors, the merchants, teachers, bureaucrats, and engineers who turn sparks into systems. History shows that progress rarely belongs to the pure visionary; it belongs to those who build the scaffolding around vision. The nourishing ecosystem could include institutional structures, communication networks, and hierarchical platforms for groups to come together and build within the straitjacket of permissible norms and rules.
Scale matters too. Small or closed societies can generate brilliance but struggle to sustain it. Innovation now is less an act of solitude than of orchestration: large groups aligning knowledge, capital, and infrastructure. The modern world rewards those who can mobilise collective intelligence. Where that coordination falters, not just through mistrust, dogma, or poor design, but even where there are insufficient resources or scale, progress stalls, no matter how enlightened the leadership’s intent. The scale constraints are more important now than before. Progress in an increasing number of critical fields today demands an immense, pre-existing foundation of knowledge and resources, apart from vast capital. For instance, the nations that never participated in drug discovery have little chance of one of its groups or corporates coming up with an Ozempic-level idea out of nowhere anytime in the next decade.
It also follows that progress depends less on moral virtue than on structural capability. One may prefer certain political systems or find others repugnant, but history is clear that the drive to innovate can coexist with a wide range of regimes. The essential question is not moral approval but whether those in power are willing to permit the circulation of ideas and the reallocation of resources that progress demands. To suggest, as the author does, that some societies are destined to fail because of their present political complexion is to confuse personal distaste with historical law.
Many of these would have been more evident if the author had focused on the 90% of the world that failed to progress over the last hundred years, rather than steering the discussion towards who may win the current race at the top. Colonial masters did not have the intent, for instance. For a host of political systems currently focused on progress, there is not enough of a base to work on. They cannot keep importing the basic high-tech infrastructure and build enough on top to pay for them and advance steadily. Many nations today struggle not from apathy but from the starting point so far back. Their leaders may desire advancement, may read, plan, and exhort, but they lack the lattice of education, capital, and trust to catch up with the progress of leaders racing ahead. The world's most advanced are better supplied and better connected, are accelerating by compounding advantage. To treat this divergence as proof of moral superiority is to misunderstand the mechanics of innovation itself.
One can list a host of other things: from the impact of singular individuals or natural events to the will of society on account of prevalent sociological factors. The author could have remarked on the role played by colonizing leaders, who have perhaps affected far more progress stories than bureaucrats. The role played by geopolitical rivalries is the one that should have elicited far more discussions, given the examples chosen in the book, but the desire to conclude towards a pre-decided set likely did not allow the author to attempt to explain why factors that hampered the USSR, for instance, may not matter to China.
Once again, the book has good raw material. Unfortunately, the grandeur of the subject and potential of useful discussions dissolve into the narrowness of opinion.
Yet the more one reads, the clearer it becomes that the book’s conclusions, scant as they are and rarely on the big topic, were decided before the evidence was gathered. The result is not a study or a schema of factors that cause progress to end, but a demonstration of how history could be bent to support whatever wishes or conclusions one may have already formed about the current affairs and likely path ahead for various economies for the next few years. In the process, the book not only trivializes the utility of studying history but also distorts the lessons that could have been drawn from some excellent sections on non-US, non-UK episodes that most readers would be less familiar with.
The past is pressed into service of the present; centuries of complex evolution are marshalled to justify passing political preferences. What could have been a meditation on the anatomy of stagnation becomes instead a selective commentary on small asides on topics as specific as artificial intelligence or fiscal policy, which seem oddly trivial after such a sweeping historical journey.
There are, to be fair, moments of erudition and many engaging historical vignettes. The episodes are often well chosen and narrated with skill. But with the lessons drawn being surprisingly narrow and most reserved for the concluding sections, the connective tissue between them is thin. The frustration lies not in the author’s politics but in the loss of intellectual openness. One finishes the book with the sense that history has been quarried rather than explored. There is little attempt to let the evidence unsettle the hypothesis. The bait-and-switch invalidates the serious work that precedes it.
Reading it nevertheless provokes reflection, though perhaps not in the direction intended. If the book itself fails to explain how progress ends, its material suggests several truths about how it begins. The rest of the review is this reviewer’s attempts at some lessons that could have been drawn:
The first is that progress requires intent. The primacy of intent is the most important necessary condition. No amount of talent or circumstance can substitute for a genuine will to advance. And, it is the will of those wielding the power that matters. When those who hold power—whether monarchs, parties, or corporations—cease to desire improvement, decay follows. Intent can arise from rivalry, from pride, from ideology, even from fear, but without it, invention drifts. And if the will is there, many problems around bureaucracy discussed within the book, could be overcome, even if the solutions adopted by one type of economic or political system could differ from those of some other.
The second lesson is that ideas, however luminous, are fragile without the structures that carry them. A single mind may imagine the steam engine or the transistor, but without institutions, capital, and a community of exchange, the idea withers. The story of progress is not only the story of creators but also of connectors, the merchants, teachers, bureaucrats, and engineers who turn sparks into systems. History shows that progress rarely belongs to the pure visionary; it belongs to those who build the scaffolding around vision. The nourishing ecosystem could include institutional structures, communication networks, and hierarchical platforms for groups to come together and build within the straitjacket of permissible norms and rules.
Scale matters too. Small or closed societies can generate brilliance but struggle to sustain it. Innovation now is less an act of solitude than of orchestration: large groups aligning knowledge, capital, and infrastructure. The modern world rewards those who can mobilise collective intelligence. Where that coordination falters, not just through mistrust, dogma, or poor design, but even where there are insufficient resources or scale, progress stalls, no matter how enlightened the leadership’s intent. The scale constraints are more important now than before. Progress in an increasing number of critical fields today demands an immense, pre-existing foundation of knowledge and resources, apart from vast capital. For instance, the nations that never participated in drug discovery have little chance of one of its groups or corporates coming up with an Ozempic-level idea out of nowhere anytime in the next decade.
It also follows that progress depends less on moral virtue than on structural capability. One may prefer certain political systems or find others repugnant, but history is clear that the drive to innovate can coexist with a wide range of regimes. The essential question is not moral approval but whether those in power are willing to permit the circulation of ideas and the reallocation of resources that progress demands. To suggest, as the author does, that some societies are destined to fail because of their present political complexion is to confuse personal distaste with historical law.
Many of these would have been more evident if the author had focused on the 90% of the world that failed to progress over the last hundred years, rather than steering the discussion towards who may win the current race at the top. Colonial masters did not have the intent, for instance. For a host of political systems currently focused on progress, there is not enough of a base to work on. They cannot keep importing the basic high-tech infrastructure and build enough on top to pay for them and advance steadily. Many nations today struggle not from apathy but from the starting point so far back. Their leaders may desire advancement, may read, plan, and exhort, but they lack the lattice of education, capital, and trust to catch up with the progress of leaders racing ahead. The world's most advanced are better supplied and better connected, are accelerating by compounding advantage. To treat this divergence as proof of moral superiority is to misunderstand the mechanics of innovation itself.
One can list a host of other things: from the impact of singular individuals or natural events to the will of society on account of prevalent sociological factors. The author could have remarked on the role played by colonizing leaders, who have perhaps affected far more progress stories than bureaucrats. The role played by geopolitical rivalries is the one that should have elicited far more discussions, given the examples chosen in the book, but the desire to conclude towards a pre-decided set likely did not allow the author to attempt to explain why factors that hampered the USSR, for instance, may not matter to China.
Once again, the book has good raw material. Unfortunately, the grandeur of the subject and potential of useful discussions dissolve into the narrowness of opinion.
December 30, 2025
How Progress Ends is a thoughtful and idea dense book that raises important questions about technology, power, and the political economy of innovation. Frey is at his best when he zooms out, drawing long historical arcs and highlighting how progress is neither inevitable nor evenly distributed. Many of the individual insights are sharp and worth engaging with, especially for readers interested in institutional dynamics and technological stagnation.
That said, the book struggles to cohere into a single, well specified thesis. The arguments often feel adjacent rather than cumulative, and it is not always clear how the historical examples, modern policy critiques, and speculative concerns are meant to reinforce one another. I frequently found myself agreeing with the premises while being uncertain about the overall model of the world the book was trying to defend.
Overall, this is a book with a high idea to narrative ratio. There is a lot here to think about, but the reader is left to do much of the work of stitching the ideas into a coherent framework. Worth reading for the concepts, but uneven in execution.
That said, the book struggles to cohere into a single, well specified thesis. The arguments often feel adjacent rather than cumulative, and it is not always clear how the historical examples, modern policy critiques, and speculative concerns are meant to reinforce one another. I frequently found myself agreeing with the premises while being uncertain about the overall model of the world the book was trying to defend.
Overall, this is a book with a high idea to narrative ratio. There is a lot here to think about, but the reader is left to do much of the work of stitching the ideas into a coherent framework. Worth reading for the concepts, but uneven in execution.
August 2, 2026
This is a transcription of my Substack book review post (https://www.novastel.la/p/the-role-of... progress is not an inevitable “natural” phenomenon. We have seen it accelerate, stagnate and diverge in many different forms in different moments of history. Why? In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation and the Fate of Nations, Carl Benedikt Frey, an economic historian and Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute, tries to answer this question by studying the impact that political institutions have in the development and diffusion of technology.
Frey classifies political systems into two broad categories based on how decisions about resources are made. In centralized systems, such as those we see in China and Russia today, a unified bureaucratic hierarchy determines how a nation’s main resources are distributed. In decentralized systems, by contrast, these decisions are dispersed among multiple stakeholders, chiefly the private sector. Using this framework, Frey advances the central thesis of the book: neither system is perfectly suited for every nation, nor for every stage of maturity of a particular technology. Each has its own “ecological niche”.
These systems differ in their capacity to generate distinct types of efficiency. Centralized systems are more apt for increasing static efficiency through incremental innovations. Static efficiency refers to the optimal use of labor and capital to maximize social welfare under a system’s present conditions. Because mature technologies have proven economic benefits, a single decision-making point can more easily direct resources to maximizing those benefits by developing incremental improvements. Decentralized systems, on the other hand, are better suited for achieving dynamic efficiency, that is, adapting to changes over time. Distributed decision-making fosters diversity of thought, which in turn encourages experimentation and the exploration of new technologies. Innovation is achieved over time.
Frey doesn’t treat these categories as binary. The characterization of a system as centralized or decentralized seems a matter of degree, and nations move between periods of centralization and decentralization.
The bulk of the book applies this framework to the history of China, England, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and the United States, spanning several centuries. We learn why, for example, institutional descentralization enabled the Industrial Revolution to occur in England, where innovators to resist the guilds, and the digital revolution in the United States, where the private sector was able to leverage government investments and partnerships to drive advances in computing and digital technologies. In Europe, by contrast, centralized bureaucratic governments achieved the “Western European economic miracle” between 1950 and 1973, when productivity soared by absorbing technologies developed in the United States, but they failed to produce leading technologies or globally dominant technology firms in the 21st century.
In the last part of the book Frey reflects on the current state of affairs and warns of signs of stagnation in both China and the United States. In the last 50 years, China has effectively leveraged its bureaucracy to develop technology clusters, such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and the Rust Belt, and has allowed for privatization of certain sectors of the economy. The highly centralized, patronage-based economy under Xi Jinping has also enabled the country to excel in incremental innovations in machine learning (think of DeepSeek, or the Chinese government’s power to collect citizen data for AI). However, this same centralization may also make China to focus its resources exessively in the current data-thristy AI models, creating a technological technological lock-in that would constrain exploring alternative approaches to the development of AI.
In the United States, large firms are using AI to optimize and scale existing operations, emphasizing efficiency and expansion. But startups, which more likely to experiment with new products and business models and push innovation in new directions, are facing increasing barriers to entry. For example, Frey explains that 75% of US industries are more concentrated now than in the 1990s, and large companies entrench their position through regulatory capture. On a side note, the EU is not doing much better; the IMF calculates that the EU’s internal barriers act as a 45% tariff on manufactured goods and a 110% tariff on services, making it difficult for startups to enter the market.
A few caveats are worth noting. First, this is a dense book. At around 400 pages, although it avoids technical language, it goes deep into the history of each country You may find yourself unexpected reading about agricultural institutions in the 19th-century Tsarist Russia. Second, the analysis is tightly focused on the central thesis, so there’s not much exploration of how other factors, including instuttions like civil liberties and fundamental rights, might also play a role in the technological progress of a nation. Third, the book seems to overgeneralize the binary categorization. The book does not really explore how some countries may defy this categorization and may be better explained as hybrids that employ different approaches across sectors or technologies or even regions. Finally, I missed at least some references to the history of other regions like Latin America and Africa.
How Progress Ends is a very interesting and timely book. It offers a compelling framework for understanding current economic phenomena, from the global AI race to the new “Gilded Age” in the United States. I strongly recommend it.
Frey classifies political systems into two broad categories based on how decisions about resources are made. In centralized systems, such as those we see in China and Russia today, a unified bureaucratic hierarchy determines how a nation’s main resources are distributed. In decentralized systems, by contrast, these decisions are dispersed among multiple stakeholders, chiefly the private sector. Using this framework, Frey advances the central thesis of the book: neither system is perfectly suited for every nation, nor for every stage of maturity of a particular technology. Each has its own “ecological niche”.
These systems differ in their capacity to generate distinct types of efficiency. Centralized systems are more apt for increasing static efficiency through incremental innovations. Static efficiency refers to the optimal use of labor and capital to maximize social welfare under a system’s present conditions. Because mature technologies have proven economic benefits, a single decision-making point can more easily direct resources to maximizing those benefits by developing incremental improvements. Decentralized systems, on the other hand, are better suited for achieving dynamic efficiency, that is, adapting to changes over time. Distributed decision-making fosters diversity of thought, which in turn encourages experimentation and the exploration of new technologies. Innovation is achieved over time.
Frey doesn’t treat these categories as binary. The characterization of a system as centralized or decentralized seems a matter of degree, and nations move between periods of centralization and decentralization.
The bulk of the book applies this framework to the history of China, England, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and the United States, spanning several centuries. We learn why, for example, institutional descentralization enabled the Industrial Revolution to occur in England, where innovators to resist the guilds, and the digital revolution in the United States, where the private sector was able to leverage government investments and partnerships to drive advances in computing and digital technologies. In Europe, by contrast, centralized bureaucratic governments achieved the “Western European economic miracle” between 1950 and 1973, when productivity soared by absorbing technologies developed in the United States, but they failed to produce leading technologies or globally dominant technology firms in the 21st century.
In the last part of the book Frey reflects on the current state of affairs and warns of signs of stagnation in both China and the United States. In the last 50 years, China has effectively leveraged its bureaucracy to develop technology clusters, such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and the Rust Belt, and has allowed for privatization of certain sectors of the economy. The highly centralized, patronage-based economy under Xi Jinping has also enabled the country to excel in incremental innovations in machine learning (think of DeepSeek, or the Chinese government’s power to collect citizen data for AI). However, this same centralization may also make China to focus its resources exessively in the current data-thristy AI models, creating a technological technological lock-in that would constrain exploring alternative approaches to the development of AI.
In the United States, large firms are using AI to optimize and scale existing operations, emphasizing efficiency and expansion. But startups, which more likely to experiment with new products and business models and push innovation in new directions, are facing increasing barriers to entry. For example, Frey explains that 75% of US industries are more concentrated now than in the 1990s, and large companies entrench their position through regulatory capture. On a side note, the EU is not doing much better; the IMF calculates that the EU’s internal barriers act as a 45% tariff on manufactured goods and a 110% tariff on services, making it difficult for startups to enter the market.
A few caveats are worth noting. First, this is a dense book. At around 400 pages, although it avoids technical language, it goes deep into the history of each country You may find yourself unexpected reading about agricultural institutions in the 19th-century Tsarist Russia. Second, the analysis is tightly focused on the central thesis, so there’s not much exploration of how other factors, including instuttions like civil liberties and fundamental rights, might also play a role in the technological progress of a nation. Third, the book seems to overgeneralize the binary categorization. The book does not really explore how some countries may defy this categorization and may be better explained as hybrids that employ different approaches across sectors or technologies or even regions. Finally, I missed at least some references to the history of other regions like Latin America and Africa.
How Progress Ends is a very interesting and timely book. It offers a compelling framework for understanding current economic phenomena, from the global AI race to the new “Gilded Age” in the United States. I strongly recommend it.
December 15, 2025
It is a good compilation of facts, but (1) arguably there is a simpler way to convey the message (at least last chapter provides some type of a summary), (2) it looks a bit simplistic as the author defines 2-3 metrics and justify everything that happens in the country based on that, which might be true, but likely loses important nuances, (3) does not address the question that is raised in the name of the book
January 3, 2026
This is one of those books that could really just be an article. The author makes his point in the introduction and then spends a few hundred pages belaboring it. Just read until you get to the overview, where there is an outline of what each chapter will discuss, and then stop. The overview is sufficient. You are done.
November 6, 2025
How Progress Ends starts out with a counter-intuitive and provocative hypothesis: Technological progress is not inevitable.
Actually, Carl Benedikt Frey argues, stagnation was the norm for most of human history. To appreciate why we cannot automatically assume any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. From the rise of the steam engine to the recent AI-boom, the book illustrates why technological shifts have shaped entire civilizations. Frey also makes the point that leading technological powers, no matter how dominant they might seem, can quickly lose their position. Song China, the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, the Soviet Union, as well as modern Japan - the list of examples is long. And they are all from different epochs and backgrounds. They reange from monarchies and planned economies, to free capitalistic states. Amercia has so far been an enduring outlier, but will it stay on top after the AI race?
So why does progress end? Frey argues that while exploration needs freedom, scaling needs structure. “Innovation demands breaking rules, but efficient execution relies on following them,” Frey writes. Balance is essential for long-term progress, meaning that economies and civilizations efficiently switch from decentralization to centralization. This is a core tension throughout history, from Song China to 21st century America. The fundamental barrier is always institutional inertia: When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation (or even collapse) inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term. One powerful example that Frey describes is the internet. The Cambrian explosion of innovation would have been unthinkable if the AT&T monopoly hadn’t been shattered and replaced by an open and highly competitive market a couple of years earlier.
Readers interested in the consequences of resisting technological change should definitively also have a look at Frey’s previous book The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, in which he makes the argument that it is incumbent that citiziens of democracies believe in their benefit through technological progress. Otherwise, politicians will exploit that skepticism to push through protectionist measures, build national champions, and forcefully keep jobs at home that are more efficiently done somewhere else. The tech edge is endangered.
How Progress Ends was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year Award 2025, always a prime source for great business books. That nomination is well deserved, as the book is written with the clarity and rigor we have come to expect from the economic historian Frey. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a luminary when it comes to technological revolutions. In How Progress Ends Frey’s central thesis is explored with refreshing intellectual honesty. The book excels in dissecting the institutional and political failures that have brought progress to a halt. This is where the book shines brightest: It is not just a history lesson, but a sharp-eyed, contemporary analysis of why we struggle to build and scale the future we imagine.
This review is originally published within the Money Book Cirlcle in my newsletter. Sign up here for regular reviews of the hottest books on money and technology: https://igorpejic.substack.com/
Actually, Carl Benedikt Frey argues, stagnation was the norm for most of human history. To appreciate why we cannot automatically assume any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change. From the rise of the steam engine to the recent AI-boom, the book illustrates why technological shifts have shaped entire civilizations. Frey also makes the point that leading technological powers, no matter how dominant they might seem, can quickly lose their position. Song China, the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, the Soviet Union, as well as modern Japan - the list of examples is long. And they are all from different epochs and backgrounds. They reange from monarchies and planned economies, to free capitalistic states. Amercia has so far been an enduring outlier, but will it stay on top after the AI race?
So why does progress end? Frey argues that while exploration needs freedom, scaling needs structure. “Innovation demands breaking rules, but efficient execution relies on following them,” Frey writes. Balance is essential for long-term progress, meaning that economies and civilizations efficiently switch from decentralization to centralization. This is a core tension throughout history, from Song China to 21st century America. The fundamental barrier is always institutional inertia: When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation (or even collapse) inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term. One powerful example that Frey describes is the internet. The Cambrian explosion of innovation would have been unthinkable if the AT&T monopoly hadn’t been shattered and replaced by an open and highly competitive market a couple of years earlier.
Readers interested in the consequences of resisting technological change should definitively also have a look at Frey’s previous book The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation, in which he makes the argument that it is incumbent that citiziens of democracies believe in their benefit through technological progress. Otherwise, politicians will exploit that skepticism to push through protectionist measures, build national champions, and forcefully keep jobs at home that are more efficiently done somewhere else. The tech edge is endangered.
How Progress Ends was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Book of the Year Award 2025, always a prime source for great business books. That nomination is well deserved, as the book is written with the clarity and rigor we have come to expect from the economic historian Frey. He is a professor at the University of Oxford and a luminary when it comes to technological revolutions. In How Progress Ends Frey’s central thesis is explored with refreshing intellectual honesty. The book excels in dissecting the institutional and political failures that have brought progress to a halt. This is where the book shines brightest: It is not just a history lesson, but a sharp-eyed, contemporary analysis of why we struggle to build and scale the future we imagine.
This review is originally published within the Money Book Cirlcle in my newsletter. Sign up here for regular reviews of the hottest books on money and technology: https://igorpejic.substack.com/
April 17, 2026
This book is very good and worth a read. It is built on a vast amount of research from various sources. Frey is good at condensing the essential points from this research and incorporating it into his synthesis, which is very interesting. It also deals with very recent developments with several chapters on the twentieth century. An interesting and central theme is the tension between a grass roots conception of true innovation and the boost industrial policies and centralized organizations can give to technological catch up.
One main thesis is that true innovation happens in a bottom up manner and in a non hierarchical way. This is something that cannot be centrally planned, and is best left to tinkerers and other independent inventors. I found the argument only half convincing, as the book seems to conflate many different types of innovation. Frey seems to consider the managerial practices such as Taylorism or Henry Fords mass production methods as examples of American innovation, but it seems that these are the products of hierarchical top down organizations. Furthermore the line that Frey wants to draw between true innovation, and for example technological developments done at large scale organizations such as Bell Labs or the European industrial giants seems somewhat arbitrary.
It seems that in Freys somewhat muddled conception of an inventor, someone like Mr. Musk would be a great inventor, even though Mr. Musk is not directly responsible for any technological inventions, and should be perhaps be characterized as a great manager or great managerial inventor instead?
The book contains little direct analysis of any technology, and the book focuses mostly on organizational factors. And the word innovation seems to be used in a very wide meaning, and can refer to both technological, societal, legal, etc developments. AI is the only technology that gets a more thorough discussion, and this discussion seems to the point, as many other parts of the book.
The book is nonetheless a very impressive work, from which most people will learn a great deal.
One main thesis is that true innovation happens in a bottom up manner and in a non hierarchical way. This is something that cannot be centrally planned, and is best left to tinkerers and other independent inventors. I found the argument only half convincing, as the book seems to conflate many different types of innovation. Frey seems to consider the managerial practices such as Taylorism or Henry Fords mass production methods as examples of American innovation, but it seems that these are the products of hierarchical top down organizations. Furthermore the line that Frey wants to draw between true innovation, and for example technological developments done at large scale organizations such as Bell Labs or the European industrial giants seems somewhat arbitrary.
It seems that in Freys somewhat muddled conception of an inventor, someone like Mr. Musk would be a great inventor, even though Mr. Musk is not directly responsible for any technological inventions, and should be perhaps be characterized as a great manager or great managerial inventor instead?
The book contains little direct analysis of any technology, and the book focuses mostly on organizational factors. And the word innovation seems to be used in a very wide meaning, and can refer to both technological, societal, legal, etc developments. AI is the only technology that gets a more thorough discussion, and this discussion seems to the point, as many other parts of the book.
The book is nonetheless a very impressive work, from which most people will learn a great deal.
July 10, 2026
Very Good Primer on the Subject across Nations and Time
This book examines innovation from a three sided perspective, one from the intensive (innovating primarily from an already high level of economic development, like today’s US or Japan) versus extensive (innovating from a low level of innovation, such as Japan around the time of the Meiji restoration or the Soviet Union in the 1920s), highly hierarchical (command and control or, at the very least, strong control of the state in the economy) versus decentralized (market based economies), and competitive (nations with plenty of real competition) versus non-competitive economies (those with little competition). Dr. Frey argues that economies starting out from a low level of innovation or development (i.e., early Soviet Union or Meiji Japan) can do very well in the technological catch-up game (assuming that some very important prerequisites such as governance, little corruption, etc. are met) but, eventually, this method starts to reach a point of diminishing returns once nations reach a middle-income level of development. He also argues, very well, that developed economies can best achieve a high degree of innovation assuming a high degree of decentralization and the existence of competition.
He illustrates his points by providing a narrative, from the late 1700s to today and across a cross-spectrum of nations having different levels of economic development and levels of state control. He argues, in the end, that both the US and China will face a decreasing level of innovation. He posits this in the case of China due to its overly centralized economy (and relatively low degree of competition among state enterprises) and in the case of the US due to a decreasing level of competition stemming from anti-competitive behavior in its economy (especially the giants in the technology industry).
All and all a very good book that, even though being geared to laymen, even those with a decent background in economics will appreciate.
Four out of five stars.
This book examines innovation from a three sided perspective, one from the intensive (innovating primarily from an already high level of economic development, like today’s US or Japan) versus extensive (innovating from a low level of innovation, such as Japan around the time of the Meiji restoration or the Soviet Union in the 1920s), highly hierarchical (command and control or, at the very least, strong control of the state in the economy) versus decentralized (market based economies), and competitive (nations with plenty of real competition) versus non-competitive economies (those with little competition). Dr. Frey argues that economies starting out from a low level of innovation or development (i.e., early Soviet Union or Meiji Japan) can do very well in the technological catch-up game (assuming that some very important prerequisites such as governance, little corruption, etc. are met) but, eventually, this method starts to reach a point of diminishing returns once nations reach a middle-income level of development. He also argues, very well, that developed economies can best achieve a high degree of innovation assuming a high degree of decentralization and the existence of competition.
He illustrates his points by providing a narrative, from the late 1700s to today and across a cross-spectrum of nations having different levels of economic development and levels of state control. He argues, in the end, that both the US and China will face a decreasing level of innovation. He posits this in the case of China due to its overly centralized economy (and relatively low degree of competition among state enterprises) and in the case of the US due to a decreasing level of competition stemming from anti-competitive behavior in its economy (especially the giants in the technology industry).
All and all a very good book that, even though being geared to laymen, even those with a decent background in economics will appreciate.
Four out of five stars.
July 25, 2026
How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations by Carl Benedikt Frey is a fascinating and deeply researched exploration of why technological advancement does not always guarantee lasting prosperity, innovation, or economic success.
Drawing from more than a thousand years of global history, Frey challenges the assumption that progress naturally continues upward. Through detailed historical analysis, he examines how some of the world’s most innovative societies eventually experienced stagnation after periods of extraordinary growth, offering readers a powerful perspective on the complex relationship between technology, institutions, and economic development.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its sweeping historical scope. From the steam engine and industrial revolutions to modern artificial intelligence, Frey demonstrates how technological breakthroughs can reshape societies while also creating new challenges. His analysis of civilizations and economies including Song China, the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, Japan, and the Soviet Union reveals recurring patterns in how nations respond to innovation.
The book also provides valuable insight into the balance between creativity and organization. Frey explores how decentralization can encourage experimentation and invention, while effective institutions are necessary to scale and sustain technological achievements. This framework offers important lessons for policymakers, business leaders, and anyone interested in the future of innovation.
For readers interested in economics, technology, history, business strategy, public policy, and the future of global development, How Progress Ends offers a thoughtful and timely examination of how nations can navigate technological change while avoiding the pitfalls of stagnation.
Drawing from more than a thousand years of global history, Frey challenges the assumption that progress naturally continues upward. Through detailed historical analysis, he examines how some of the world’s most innovative societies eventually experienced stagnation after periods of extraordinary growth, offering readers a powerful perspective on the complex relationship between technology, institutions, and economic development.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its sweeping historical scope. From the steam engine and industrial revolutions to modern artificial intelligence, Frey demonstrates how technological breakthroughs can reshape societies while also creating new challenges. His analysis of civilizations and economies including Song China, the Dutch Republic, Victorian Britain, Japan, and the Soviet Union reveals recurring patterns in how nations respond to innovation.
The book also provides valuable insight into the balance between creativity and organization. Frey explores how decentralization can encourage experimentation and invention, while effective institutions are necessary to scale and sustain technological achievements. This framework offers important lessons for policymakers, business leaders, and anyone interested in the future of innovation.
For readers interested in economics, technology, history, business strategy, public policy, and the future of global development, How Progress Ends offers a thoughtful and timely examination of how nations can navigate technological change while avoiding the pitfalls of stagnation.
April 3, 2026
Planned economies produce short bursts, not sustained progress - the Soviet Unions brief technological surge followed by collapse illustrates that centralised control cannot sustain the diversity of thought needed for LT innovation.
Vested interests are progress’s most durable enemy.
Corporate concentration, lobbying power, and oligarchic rent-seeking are increasingly suppressing competition and R&D investment, undermining the decentralised foundations that made the US a global innovation leader.
Chinas drift forward centralisation puts its future Groth at risk.
Nations that caught up rapidly did so by deploying technologies pioneered elsewhere through strong state coordination, revealing that the path to progress differs do followers versus front runners.
Structural barriers - political, regulatory and incumbent- driven determine whether technology actually diffuses through an economy.
In China due to the incentives ri be in public office. Geniuses became bureaucrats not scientists.
The rise of the mechanised factory system and the replacement of artisan shops lay at the core of the industrial revolution.
Guilds (unions) got in the way of technological progress in Europe, but were weak in UK.
Prussia’s strong education system played a key role in helping the country catch up technologically.
Interstate highways were responsible for 25% of the upsurge in American productivity in the 1950s and 1960s.
Unions should the focused on minimising the costs of creative destruction - easing the adjustment process rather than retarding the process of change .
The key obstacle to Soviet innovation was not its pool of talent but a system that held back inventors who needed to seek permission for everything.
Vested interests are progress’s most durable enemy.
Corporate concentration, lobbying power, and oligarchic rent-seeking are increasingly suppressing competition and R&D investment, undermining the decentralised foundations that made the US a global innovation leader.
Chinas drift forward centralisation puts its future Groth at risk.
Nations that caught up rapidly did so by deploying technologies pioneered elsewhere through strong state coordination, revealing that the path to progress differs do followers versus front runners.
Structural barriers - political, regulatory and incumbent- driven determine whether technology actually diffuses through an economy.
In China due to the incentives ri be in public office. Geniuses became bureaucrats not scientists.
The rise of the mechanised factory system and the replacement of artisan shops lay at the core of the industrial revolution.
Guilds (unions) got in the way of technological progress in Europe, but were weak in UK.
Prussia’s strong education system played a key role in helping the country catch up technologically.
Interstate highways were responsible for 25% of the upsurge in American productivity in the 1950s and 1960s.
Unions should the focused on minimising the costs of creative destruction - easing the adjustment process rather than retarding the process of change .
The key obstacle to Soviet innovation was not its pool of talent but a system that held back inventors who needed to seek permission for everything.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 2, 2025
This is truly a very good book, and it is a surprise to me. I was skeptical because I'm very tired of this kind of 'popular science economics and institutions trip through centuries showing what's good and bad for wealth and why truth lies in the middle' books. (And somehow I still reach for them - why? - it's a different story). I have a sentiment for 2012 'Why Nations Fail' by Acemoglu and Robinson (check my paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...), or a more classic study by David Landes ('The Wealth and Poverty of Nations'), but it seems like many have tried to repeat their success and have written way too many books like that since then. Ok, they might add some new insight or enrich the list of examples, but the value added by reading each subsequent book of this kind decreases exponentially. They seem to target only first-time economic & institutional history readers.
'How Progress Ends' is different. Frey has an idea and is not afraid to write a book on a scale that enables him to develop it ambitiously. The text is tense and informative, full of references to acclaimed literature and well-placed quotes. While reading this work, you feel the long-term effort behind it. This is not only a book for aspiring readers but also a source of inspiration for scholars. I learned about it myself. As a researcher in competition law, I was pleased to discover that Frey uses the word 'antitrust' 145 times in this single work.
It might be slightly below my default 5-star benchmark, but given the above, I'm eager to rate it that highly.
'How Progress Ends' is different. Frey has an idea and is not afraid to write a book on a scale that enables him to develop it ambitiously. The text is tense and informative, full of references to acclaimed literature and well-placed quotes. While reading this work, you feel the long-term effort behind it. This is not only a book for aspiring readers but also a source of inspiration for scholars. I learned about it myself. As a researcher in competition law, I was pleased to discover that Frey uses the word 'antitrust' 145 times in this single work.
It might be slightly below my default 5-star benchmark, but given the above, I'm eager to rate it that highly.
October 1, 2025
I enjoyed the author's previous book about technology The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation. That was about the consequences of resisting technology changes. This book takes a broader look at the part governments play in nurturing or holding back on progress in technology. The author's central point is that the same dilemmas have been posed for centuries, and more open governments are better for innovation, while central governments are better for "catching up" and then reaping the technology produced by others. He looks back to different eras where China, the UK and the Soviet Union were on the cutting edge, only to be overtaken. He then turns to recent decades and looks at Japan, China and the USA. China has avoided the mistakes made in the Soviet Union, and has allowed some innovation, but most of the world (including Europe and China) has benefited from "catching up" on American technology for the last 100 years. Which of the two systems (assuming USA v China) is likely to win the race to be the next superpower? There's no clear answer.
February 23, 2026
First, “progress” here means something like new technologies that are successfully turned into products and services that masses of people benefit from. The best part of this book is looking back - way back - at how such progress started, was sustained, and eventually killed by different factors - but mainly by governments and their actions. Such edifying examples in this book are those of the thousand-year old Chinese, modern UK, Germany, America, Russia, Italy, Japan, Korea, and present day China again. Another interesting thing is to see how strong, efficient, and highly educated bureaucracies (like those in China, Germany, and Japan) helped and eventually turned against such progress. It is also nice reading someone not buying into stuff like “inevitable and endless progress” - especially in connection with the current AI hype and all kinds of messianic discourses about the “end of human history and the emergence of AGI that will take over”. The main question at the end of this book is: “is China going to end its current progress?”; and the answer seems to be “Yes”. However, according to this book it is likely that America will end its progress - and with America the progress will end also for the rest of the world.
February 27, 2026
So progress is possible because of innovation. It thrives in decentralised systems, but gets stifled in an authoritarian state. Catch up growth, however, is easier in an authoritarian system.
Many examples were given from history. America triumphs in frontier innovation, enabling others like Japan and Europe to catch up, then the Asian Tigers, and then China. However, China will find it more and more difficult to grow as all the catch up growths had been achieved.
However, China was better than the Soviet Union because it has traditionally had a strong central state but provinces were allowed to compete. The Soviets had a weak central state.
Who will win? America if it can prevent the incumbent whales from stifling growth (preventing workers to move, buying startups to close them down, chasing away immigrants). China won’t win because the state favours State owned enterprises, and entrepreneurs are always fearful of their wealth being taken away.
The book did not explain too well why mainland Europe cannot innovate now (it did explain why it lost to England previously because of the restrictive guild system), or why India cannot innovate (but Indians can, and become CEOs). But it was a great book.
Many examples were given from history. America triumphs in frontier innovation, enabling others like Japan and Europe to catch up, then the Asian Tigers, and then China. However, China will find it more and more difficult to grow as all the catch up growths had been achieved.
However, China was better than the Soviet Union because it has traditionally had a strong central state but provinces were allowed to compete. The Soviets had a weak central state.
Who will win? America if it can prevent the incumbent whales from stifling growth (preventing workers to move, buying startups to close them down, chasing away immigrants). China won’t win because the state favours State owned enterprises, and entrepreneurs are always fearful of their wealth being taken away.
The book did not explain too well why mainland Europe cannot innovate now (it did explain why it lost to England previously because of the restrictive guild system), or why India cannot innovate (but Indians can, and become CEOs). But it was a great book.
January 26, 2026
Buku ini mengeksplorasi dikotomi antara lingkungan dan mesin pendukung penemuan (invention) yang cenderung chaotic dan sebaliknya lingkungan dan mesin produksi yang disiplin sebagai penggerak dan katalisator peradaban. Penulis berargumen bahwa stabilitas sebuah bangsa bergantung pada kemampuannya menyeimbangkan inovasi disruptif dengan ketahanan institusional. Tanpa keseimbangan ini, masyarakat cenderung terjebak dalam stagnasi di mana kekuatan-kekuatan mapan/existing (incumbents) justru menghambat kemajuan demi mempertahankan status quo, yang pada akhirnya memicu degradasi sosial dan ekonomi.
Secara makro, narasi ini memberikan dekonstruksi terhadap optimisme teknologi yang buta. Dengan membedah persaingan antara kekuatan global seperti AS dan Tiongkok, Frey menunjukkan bahwa nasib suatu bangsa tidak hanya ditentukan oleh kecanggihan AI atau otomatisasi, tetapi oleh bagaimana inovasi tersebut didistribusikan secara inklusif. Kegagalan dalam mengelola dampak sosial dari transisi teknologi ini dipandang sebagai "titik akhir" dari kemajuan, yang sering kali berujung pada polarisasi ekstrem dan keruntuhan tatanan demokrasi.
Secara makro, narasi ini memberikan dekonstruksi terhadap optimisme teknologi yang buta. Dengan membedah persaingan antara kekuatan global seperti AS dan Tiongkok, Frey menunjukkan bahwa nasib suatu bangsa tidak hanya ditentukan oleh kecanggihan AI atau otomatisasi, tetapi oleh bagaimana inovasi tersebut didistribusikan secara inklusif. Kegagalan dalam mengelola dampak sosial dari transisi teknologi ini dipandang sebagai "titik akhir" dari kemajuan, yang sering kali berujung pada polarisasi ekstrem dan keruntuhan tatanan demokrasi.
August 3, 2026
I liked the historical portions of this book more than the last 15-20%. The story of the English Industrial Revolution has been told a million times, but I thought the parts on Prussia, Tsarist Russia, and Japan were especially good and novel (to me).
I think the last chapters unfortunately have aged like milk, but that's hard to avoid when you're writing about a very fast-moving set of political and technological configurations (China, the US, AI).
From my Canadian perspective, where we're very good at inventing but quite bad at diffusing and adopting, it does seem like we would benefit from a period of more centralizing institutions. It's a pity we're probably not equipped to create them.
A lot of typos, which is of minor but persistent annoyance.
I think the last chapters unfortunately have aged like milk, but that's hard to avoid when you're writing about a very fast-moving set of political and technological configurations (China, the US, AI).
From my Canadian perspective, where we're very good at inventing but quite bad at diffusing and adopting, it does seem like we would benefit from a period of more centralizing institutions. It's a pity we're probably not equipped to create them.
A lot of typos, which is of minor but persistent annoyance.
November 28, 2025
Great overview of a few thousands of years of history of progress; why specific locations in the world were technologically and economically dominant at various times, and what that means for our current-day existence. It is one of these great history books that imparts so many facts upon you per page about what happened in history that you feel embedded into the concept space of the subject. Additionally, it has good points that you wouldn't expect to be true, such as war not being an instigator of progress. I also enjoyed his holistic take on bureaucracy vs. decentralization, not taking one or the other position.
December 11, 2025
I am a sucker for these kinds of big-idea books. Frey’s big idea is that distribution of power results in more innovation, while centralized power is better in harnessing the results of that innovation. The book is mostly a collection of historical anecdotes supporting that thesis, and whike it felt like fewer would have been enough, the stories were sufficiently interesting in their own right. What struck me most was the book’s analysis of AI and its limits, and especially the point that even in the age of AI you still need a distributed network of research and business to have real progress. That is something to really think about.
August 6, 2026
This is one of those books which takes a grand sweep of the world history and a macro view across centuries and continents.
Very deeply researched and written in a balanced manner and discarding ideological positions and judgement, this is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of technological progress. It is a joy to read and one can only thank for the author's tireless efforts and intellectual curiosity to gift us with this book.
My only complaint would be that it misses some critical aspects of history such as the French model. His description of Japan is a little shallow and coverage of China is too simplistic.
Very deeply researched and written in a balanced manner and discarding ideological positions and judgement, this is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of technological progress. It is a joy to read and one can only thank for the author's tireless efforts and intellectual curiosity to gift us with this book.
My only complaint would be that it misses some critical aspects of history such as the French model. His description of Japan is a little shallow and coverage of China is too simplistic.
August 3, 2026
Someone needs to develop a basic test to apply to writers before they are allowed to publish books covering a thousand years of history. It should involve a knowledge of chronology, and require a clear statement of how the author intends to navigate the time-tunnel intellectually while using the journey to establish their thesis. It might be called the 'rigor test'. This wouldn't have a hope of passing.
Montaigne famously suggested he had made a bouquet of other men's ideas and provided nothing himself but the string with which to bind them. Harsh. In this, we're missing the string.
Montaigne famously suggested he had made a bouquet of other men's ideas and provided nothing himself but the string with which to bind them. Harsh. In this, we're missing the string.
December 13, 2025
Very interesting book showing the relationship between innovation, technology and state institutions throughout history.The book is broad in his scope discussing these topics contrasting the United States, European nations, Russia, China, etc… An interesting takeaway of the book is that decentralised institutions (e.g US, Europe) help innovation but centralised institutions in autocracies such as Russia and China are helpful in exploiting new technologies and scaling them up.
January 12, 2026
The Land Trap argues that modern economies are increasingly driven by land price inflation and rent extraction rather than productive investment, undermining productivity and growth.
Rising urban land values crowd out enterprise, worsen inequality, and distort capital allocation—especially in rapidly urbanizing emerging markets. Without institutional reform in taxation, planning, and land governance, economies risk locking themselves into a low-productivity, rentier development path.
Rising urban land values crowd out enterprise, worsen inequality, and distort capital allocation—especially in rapidly urbanizing emerging markets. Without institutional reform in taxation, planning, and land governance, economies risk locking themselves into a low-productivity, rentier development path.
December 13, 2025
Excellent parallels drawn across different times, regions and forms of government, which then exposes principles that lead to success economically/technologically.
Excellent new framing that based on the place in the technological cycle, different forms of governance (or management, or working style) are needed.
Excellent new framing that based on the place in the technological cycle, different forms of governance (or management, or working style) are needed.
May 17, 2026
Synthesises and creates theories on why innovation in societies came and went. Why societies leapfrogged each other in progress, and why some stayed stagnant. It's a useful look at some aspects of what they cover although I have a feeling that many times the analysis is a bit shallow to be meaningful.
January 16, 2026
This is an exceptional work. I was fortunate to read it right after Daren Acemoglu’s books as it picks up on the same theme of innovation, economic progress and institutions. As one of the book’s commentators put it this is a real “tour de force”. I wish I could give it more rating stars.
January 26, 2026
The writing could have been a bit more approachable but altogether a good synthesis for 1000 years of progress. People who have read Daron Acemoglu's "Power and Progress" would find many similarities.
April 29, 2026
It's more like a historical overview than a source of any bold conclusions. If anything it just reinforced my view that the conditions under which progress is born and ends are way more complex than the author makes them out to be. Still a solid read though.
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