ABSTRACT
“Industrialization” as the means to wealth is compared to a cargo cult, which created the trappings of airports to lure cargo planes, with their supplies of valuable commodities, from the skies. Factories are not the only source of wealth, and forced industrialization has created enormous harm, starting in the USSR, but elsewhere that cargo cult thinking spread, as well. “Import substitution” and other policies failed to deliver prosperity. Value-creating innovations depend on the right institutional and social frameworks that are conducive to entrepreneurship; many attempts at creating institutions reflect the same cargo cult mentality. Productive entrepreneurship requires permissionless innovation.
