If you actually study history, you will find that there are a lot more patterns than you seem to be implying.
I have studied history, and continue to do so, and this is not a helpful comment.
It's easy to take the tact of "I know stuff you ought to know and would believe differently if you also knew it" without actually raising those matters in the discussion, but a useful dialogue it does not make.
When I asked you before about what specific prosperity-promoting behaviors from the past we ought to emulate, that was also not a rhetorical question.
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)