Thinking is hard work, which is why most people won't do it.

It's also the old tug of war between power and talent. In China, Russia and the Muslim world talent always loses. Ask Jack Ma, the Arab Spring rebels, Kasparov and Khodorkovsky.

In The Wealth and Poverty of Nations David Landes explains how Europe benefited from the fragmentation of state power. Why Nations Fail explains how the modern world was invented by the Dutch, copied by the English and then the Americans copied the copy (what Alexander Hamilton called Dutch finance). It's a product of limiting state power and subordinating the rulers to the rules. The Chinese, the Russians and the Arabs have never figured out how to do it.

https://medium.com/illumination/how-the-dutch-invented-the-modern-world-895ae234fd44