This illustrates how the fear of creative destruction froze human. But Queen Elizabeth I and King James I both denied him a patent because they worried that it would put knitters out of business. In Henry VIII’s case, centralization actually backfired: he wanted to increase his own power, but instead, he increased the state’s overall power while decreasing his control over the state. In Trouble with Stockings, Acemoglu and Robinson explain how the English priest William Lee invented a knitting machine in 1589. However, the authors emphasize that centralization is really just the expansion of the state, so it isn’t always associated with absolutism. Readers are likely to associate it with absolutism, probably because dictators often try to expand their power and impose it as widely as they can. Acemoglu and Robinson also return in this section to the crucial concept of centralization. The first step to building inclusive institutions, then, can simply be for multiple competing groups to win a meaningful voice in the government. In fact, precisely because it had to balance power in this way, the English government was already taking crucial first steps toward inclusiveness. However, neither side won outright, so England had to form a kind of hybrid government that balanced power between the Crown and Parliament. The War of the Roses actually began as elite infighting under extractive institutions: the aristocracy and monarchy both wanted more power for themselves.
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