Ibland presenteras storslagna teorier. Ekonomipristagaren Douglass North är aktuell med en ny bok, Violence and Social Orders, och med en ny uppsats på samma tema,  ”A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History”. Båda är skrivna tillsammans med John Joseph Wallis och Barry Weingast. Grundtanken uttrycks så här:

We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange. Limited access orders provide order by using the political system to limit economic entry to create rents, and then using the rents to stabilize the political system and limit violence. We call this type of political economy arrangement a natural state. It appears to be the natural way that human societies are organized, even in most of the contemporary world. In contrast, a handful of developed societies have developed open access social orders. In these societies, open access and entry into economic and political organizations sustains economic and political competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than rent-creation. The key to understanding modern social development is understanding the transition from limited to open access social orders, which only a handful of countries have managed since WWII.

Här kan man se North tala om denna nya analys: