Kyle Harrison
to-read
The Rise and Decline of Nations
The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities
- Author
- Mancur Olson
- Published
- 1982
- Pages
- 276
- Recommended
- Once
Why it’s on the list: Olson’s account of institutional sclerosis: stable, successful societies accumulate distributional coalitions that slowly make it impossible to get anything done — the argument the current abundance literature is re-deriving.
Where I saw it: Posted by @BevansAdvocate on X (October 9, 2025) as “My abundance take” — a two-panel meme casting Klein and Thompson’s Abundance as the anime and Olson as the manga it was adapted from.
Connections
- Economic Growth — Olson’s subject: why growth stalls in mature democracies.
- Regulation — the accumulated rigidity his distributional coalitions produce.
- Abundance (Klein and Thompson) — the 2025 book the meme cast as the anime to this manga.
- Abundance — the concept page.