...here:
A potential lesson for the World Bank may be that building roads, dams and factories in the Third World is a fool's errand until those nations have the intangible capital required to maintain such things. The Marshall Plan's success in rebuilding Europe after World War II stemmed not from the U.S. footing the bill for concrete and bulldozers but from the intangible capital locked in the hearts and minds of everyday Europeans.Reminds me of (the liberal) Paul Theroux's thoughts about the answer to Africa being not more aid or industrialization but a return to subsidence farming.
In an odd way, I think this complements Weisman's depiction of a post-human future. The greatest symbols of our civilization - from skyscrapers to libraries - not only count for a mere fraction of our wealth, they would turn to dust and rubble if we disappeared. The hardware is nothing; the software, everything. All that civilization is and can become exists within us. If we forget that, we forget literally everything.
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