The foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.
Ha-Joon ChangCountries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.
Ha-Joon ChangA well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.
Ha-Joon ChangSelf-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives - honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on - that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.
Ha-Joon ChangThe days are over when technology can be advanced in laboratories by individual scientists alone. Now you need an army of lawyers to negotiate the hazardous terrain of interlocking patents. Unless we find a solution to the problem of interlocking patents, the patent system may actually impede the very innovation it was designed to encourage.
Ha-Joon Chang