Arnold Kling has a nice quote about the relative importance of cultural over institutional factors. If for some reason the US Government stopped working overnight, the American people would not be plunged into chaos. We have a culture which would permit us to voluntarily organize much of what we need to do. As Mr. Kling put it:
[T]he cultural margin is more important than the institutional margin. … [T]here are no societies in which anarchy will work well but government would work poorly, or vice-versa. Instead, on the one hand there are well-developed cultures, which could have good government or good anarchy, while on the other hand there are poorly-developed cultures, which could have only bad government or bad anarchy.
If you are not currently making a daily visit to Arnold Kling’s blog Askblog you must begin doing so.
Note also, Arnold Kling’s review of America 3.0, entitled America’s Past and America’s Future.
He concludes:
The vision that Bennett and Lotus put forth is not the technocratically-run national system that most contemporary politicians and pundits presume is ideal. Nor is it the philosophically-driven rights-based society that libertarians might prefer. However, if the authors are correct in their cultural anthropology, then their idea of America 3.0 is what fits best with our culture.
This is a nice summary of the future we hope to see in America.
which is the second in a trilogy with 
. She announced last night that she just finished the third volume.
as well, though we have our own spin. 
