The Secret of Western Success: Cheap Paper and the Freedom to Use It

Over the past several centuries, the West has emerged as a global leader economically, militarily, scientifically and technologically. This article explores why it has been so successful in the past in order to determine where its strengths lie at a time when the West's advantage is melting away. This article will argue that the West was the only civilisation that took advantage of the communications revolution involving cheap paper and the printing press in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and could do so because of its values and ethics. Compared to other parts of the world, the West offered more freedom to its peoples, and its societies were the most vertically mobile. This is an important lesson for today when we are in the midst of the digital and Internet communications revolution and another wave of globalisation, and when the whole world seems to be adopting Western values. It is important not to forget where these values originated.