Simone Barbera

“Excavations at the ancient Sumerian city of Ur reveal that 85 percent of texts record some sort of an economic transaction. Therefore, writing evolved to meet the demands of a growing economy as well as a growing state tax apparatus.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

“in more and more spheres of American life, well-intentioned people who genuinely believe that they are fighting for righteous causes are doing what they can to make racial identity the all-encompassing dividing line of American life.”
― Yascha Mounk, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

“Whatever the nature of British failure – in providing local-government services, maintaining standards in education in the devolved nations, or raising hospital effectiveness – the fault is attributed to government unwillingness to provide enough money. Sometimes the claim is justified, sometimes not. But there is no need even to think about that question, or engage in self-examination, because blame always lies somewhere else. And the process is self-reinforcing and self-justifying: agencies which are not given financial autonomy do not acquire the capacity to exercise it responsibly.”
― Paul Collier, Greed Is Dead: Politics After Individualism

“Across the broad sweep of human history, societies either were governed autocratically by someone who disposed of a state bureaucracy or had something resembling early democracy where the state was absent, power was decentralized, and their overall size was likely to be small. The idea that one could sustain a democracy in a polity as large as the thirteen American colonies, combined with a central state, was unprecedented”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today