

Steve Ballmer, Meet Ibn Khaldun - panarky
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/steve-ballmer-meet-ibn-khaldun/

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ferdo
I'm not normally a fan of Krugman but I give him props for pulling Khaldun
out.

The entire passage beginning with:

> "This implies that the new rulers are at first considered “barbarians” by
> comparison to the old ones..."

was also expounded upon at length by Toynbee in "A Study of History". The
'creative minority' that is the heart and soul of most economic/political
efforts (such as building out of the American industrial base in the 19th-20th
centuries) later becomes the 'dominant minority' that is more interested in
holding the power given to them by previous generations rather than building
out the company/corporation/empire. As the dominant minority lose their grip
and their power, a new generation of 'barbarians' or outsiders (as viewed by
the decaying powerbase) fills the vacuum left by the old elites.

It's a dynamic we see time and again in smaller and larger spheres of human
activity.

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balsam
Once upon a time I had the notion that "founding armies" always had an edge
over the rest. Alexander -> First army of unified greece. Early Rome. Napoleon
-> first unified French army. Bismarck -> first unified German army. Union.
Japan in 1905. Red army in russian civil war. US in WWII was still somewhat
army of immigrants. Thanks to this article, I can put a name to this effect.

