28. Losers
S
trung out behind the leaders and followers—in the sense of those
who are keeping pace or catching up—are most of the world's
peoples.
By comparison with East Asia, the rest of the world looks like a
study in slow motion, or even one step forward, two steps back. The
Middle East has much going for it, in particular, huge oil revenues
(some $2 trillion [10^12 ] in the twenty years after 1973), but its politi
cal, social, and cultural institutions do not ensure security of enterprise
or promote autonomous technological development. Also, cultural at
titudes, and above all, gender biases, inhibit industrial undertakings.
One result is high rates of unemployment and underemployment,
made worse and angrier by education: people who have been to school
expect more.^1
To be sure, well-meaning governments in the region have tried to
substitute for private initiative. Thus Egypt, recalling the industrial
projects of Muhammad Ali one hundred years earlier, decided after
World War II to invest in cotton-spinning mills. The idea seemed fool
proof. Egypt grew the finest long-fiber cotton in the world; why not
work it up and gain the value added? The trouble was, the yarn turned
out by these callow mills was not of international quality, while foreign