Thanks Dan!
Yeah, it is of course desirable to be able to make comparisons which allow us to say only measure the effects of different forms of government.
But that is just insanely hard. The US for instance has had such a massive resources advantage for so long in terms of coal, iron, hydropower and oil.
I did at one point calculate cumulative oil production per capita in the US to see when did cummulative oil production per capita surprass the US. Sometime in the late 80s Norway had produced more oil than the US had through its history.
But even such comparisons are apples to oranges as US oil e.g. has generally been much easier and more profitable to extract. I worked in Norwegian oil sector much of my career and when it began it was really a high tech sectory as the North Sea was the most difficult area anyone had drillied in up to that point. Complex geology, harsh weather conditions, and very far down to drill. Because you cannot drill a grid with lots of wells you had to develop horizontal drilling where you steer the drilling bit. It has compass, gyroscope and all sorts of stuff on it. Signals are sent through pulses in the boring gravel slush you feed from the top to drive the drill bit. Then you need to get all this measurements and calculate position of drillbit, add uncertainty to that, and make sure you don't make a too sharp bend with the drill string until iyou get to where you believe the reservoir is.
It is very far from the simple drilling conditions in Texas. It is a bit of a random example but it just shows how hard it is to compare things. Even a gallon of oil isn't just a gallon of oil. Widely different technology might have been needed to obtain it and then refine it.
Then there are so many world events which a political system cannot do anything about. Finland is trailing behind all the other Nordics economically but it is hard to say that is because their system is bad. They had a bloody revolution. Then they got invaded by the Soviety Union. Next they lost massive amounts of territory and had so many refugees that every house in Helsinki pretty much had to take in a person.
The most industrialized area of Finland got taken from them by the Soviets and then in addition they had to pay massive reparations to the Soviet Union. The Finns pull all of that off. They repaid reparations in time. Reparations were paid in kind so much of Finnish industry got built to manufacture things to Soviet Standard. Hence a very large chunk of the Finnish economy was based on exports to the Soviet Union. Thus when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Finnish economy collapsed with it.
Every country has these kinds of unique experiences which I think often completely overshadow what kind of social and political system you have.
Personally I have come to really believe too much in numbers. I think they are useful to complement a narrative or an analysis, but they can seldom be enough. I think you need to tell the story of every country and and use the human mind to analyze. Use that neural network we already come equipped with ;-)
