Jeffrey D. Sachs

I believe that the single most important reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them. Even more important than having specific resources in the ground, such as coal, was the ability to use modern, science-based ideas to organize production. The beauty of the ideas is that they can be used over and over again. Economists call ideas nonrival in the sense that one person's use of an idea does not diminish the ability of others to use it as well. This is why we can evnvision a world in which everybody achieves prosperity. The essence of the first Industrial Revolution was not the coal; it was how to use the coal.