Petromacho, or Mechanisms of de-modernization in a resource state

Abstract

I am an impartial observer of the events of Russia in 2012, and I would define them as a conflict between knowledge and capital. Both sides are continually surprised, each by their own things, while smart people become increasingly poorer, and rich people increasingly stupid. Trying to understand the perplexity of both sides, I would firstly like to say that the situation is unmodern, or anti-modern. Modernization and meritocracy are two sides of the same coin. Without open access to the elite, social lifts, and creative destruction, modernity is unimaginable. This is exactly what the classic institutional economist Douglas North says [together with co-authors John Wallis and Barry Weingast - ed.] in a recent book: modern society is a society of open access to the elite; modernity is the openness of the elite, this is the core of its many definitions.