playing field, and encourage and allow the entry of new
businesses that can bring new technologies to life. It should
therefore be no surprise that it was U.S. society, not Mexico
or Peru, that produced Thomas Edison, and that it was
South Korea, not North Korea, that today produces
technologically innovative companies such as Samsung
and Hyundai.
Intimately linked to technology are the education, skills,
competencies, and know-how of the workforce, acquired in
schools, at home, and on the job. We are so much more
productive than a century ago not just because of better
technology embodied in machines but also because of the
greater know-how that workers possess. All the technology
in the world would be of little use without workers who knew
how to operate it. But there is more to skills and
competencies than just the ability to run machines. It is the
education and skills of the workforce that generate the
scientific knowledge upon which our progress is built and
that enable the adaptation and adoption of these
technologies in diverse lines of business. Though we saw
i n chapter 1 that many of the innovators of the Industrial
Revolution and afterward, like Thomas Edison, were not
highly educated, these innovations were much simpler than
modern technology. Today technological change requires
education both for the innovator and the worker. And here
we see the importance of economic institutions that create
a level playing field. The United States could produce, or
attract from foreign lands, the likes of Bill Gates, Steve
Jobs, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos, and the
hundreds of scientists who made fundamental discoveries
in information technology, nuclear power, biotech, and other
fields upon which these entrepreneurs built their
businesses. The supply of talent was there to be harnessed
because most teenagers in the United States have access
to as much schooling as they wish or are capable of
attaining. Now imagine a different society, for example the
Congo or Haiti, where a large fraction of the population has
no means of attending school, or where, if they manage to
go to school, the quality of teaching is lamentable, where
teachers do not show up for work, and even if they do, there
may not be any books.
The low education level of poor countries is caused by