Why Does America Work?

I just came across this article by Mark Steyn, in which he discusses the hoariness of the American Constitution. The British writer Jonathan Freedland wrote a book praising the American Constitution, but after Gore's defeat he was so horrified at its actual workings that he ended up "trashing the very system he spent hundreds of pages rhapsodising". In all fairness to Freedland, he was writing for The Guardian.

Steyn's rejoinder is another classic.

Americans' misguided attachment to this yellowing parchment may explain why, for the past century, they've lagged so far behind in technological innovation, economic performance, military prowess, cultural influence, etc. Maybe if America's governors all went on a retreat somewhere - Nice, say - and held private sessions behind closed doors and then informed their respective electorates what they'd decided to inflict on them, things would work out a lot better.

But that begs the question: why do we do so well?

When I was young, All The Kids knew the answer. It was because we were blessed (unfairly of course) by natural resouces. Natural resources were the source of wealth, we had more than our share, the only reasonable path forward was for us to be forced to share our wealth with all the poor people around the globe. Plus we had stolen our resources from the Indians anyway so we had no real right to them.

That theory kinda went into the toilet during the Japanese Eighties. It became rather apparent that a country having no natural resources could become enormously wealthy in a very short time. It became apparent that there is something about the social structure of a country which makes it wealthy. Or not.

What is that something? What is the elusive "quantity x" which makes America, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, etc. rich, while Mexico, most African countries, and the arab countries sans oil wealth are dirt poor?