c# - ODP.NET Oracle.ManagedDataAccess causes ORA-12537 network session end of file -

Contrary to what many believe the economic lives of our ancestors is a story of almost unrelieved wretchedness. Everywhere a small number lived humanely while the great majority lived in abysmal squalor. We forget their misery, in part, by the grace of literature, poetry, and legend, which celebrate those who lived well and forget those who lived in the silence of poverty. The eras of misery have been mythologised and are remembered as golden ages of pastoral simplicity. They were not. In truth, survival was the only order of business. Only recently have progress and prosperity touched the lives of somewhat more than the upper tenth of the population. In the last 200 years the West (and recently the Far East) grew fabulously rich. This miracle was based on harnessing technology and organisation to the satisfaction of human wants, while keeping their economies free from political control, ensuring that private individuals made decisions rather than bureaucrats. The striking character of the West's miracle was its gradualism. There was no sudden change--just gradual year-to-year growth at a rate that somewhat exceeded population growth. The gains at first were not noticeable and it was widely believed that only the rich experienced them. As growth continued through the 20th century, it became obvious that working classes were increasingly turning into middle classes. Poverty also declined from 90 per cent of the population to 20 per cent, or less, depending on the country. The West's prosperity originated in innovations in technology and organisation. As economies expanded, so did their stocks of capital, their expenditures on education and public health, and the accumulation of skills by their work forces. Virtually without thought or discussion, the West delegated to enterprising individuals decision making in the innovation process. But innovations needed to be tested in the marketplace. This required money and competence in engineering, manufacturing, and marketing, especially if the innovator was to capture the rewards of the innovation. These resources came to exist in the ordinary firm. Comparatively free of political and religious controls, markets determined who won the rewards of innovation. The response of the market was the test of success or failure of an innovation. And competition became central to innovation. The market rewarded innovators with a high price for a unique product or service until such time as it was imitated or superseded by others. In the seventeenth century, the West developed a scientific procedure, associated with the names of Galileo and Bacon, based upon observation, reason and experiment. Although artisan inventors invented their own technology in the beginning, the contributions of science to industrial technology became more numerous with time. Did the West grow rich through colonialism? Karl Marx thought so, and he attributed part of the new wealth of the West to its imperialist acquisition of raw materials and markets from overseas. I tend to doubt this because poor, colonised countries did not provide large enough markets. Moreover, imperialist Spain and Portugal did not achieve long-term growth; Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries were not imperialist countries; Germany and United States, which achieved long-term growth, were latecomers to imperialism. And Japan's growth after 1868 totally undermines the case. In India, we have not so far experienced this miraculous transformation. But we will in this century if our economy keeps growing as it has in the last two decades. Compared to the West's historic 3 per cent economic growth we are growing at more than 6 per cent. The key is to keep reforming our institutions. Prosperity is not a matter of national character but of institutions. As East and Southeast Asia have shown, all countries can move from poverty to prosperity. Our economic reforms are creating an autonomous economic sphere from political interference. They are slowly replacing the licence-raj institutions, where bureaucrats made economic decisions with competitive market institutions where entrepreneurs, firms, and markets make economic decisions. In a democracy this process will inevitably be slow unless we can throw up an economic reformer like Margaret Thatcher. However, it will take more than de-regulation to succeed. Widespread prosperity needs the reform of our education and health institutions as well. Even after we replace bureaucrats with competitive markets, we will still need honest constables and efficient judges to dispense speedy justice. Hence, we need to strengthen our administrative institutions. We should not unduly worry that our firms are not delivering innovation, which was at the heart of the West's industrial revolution. We are only ten years old as a free economy, and innovation takes time. Japan has only just become an innovator. Korea and Taiwan are not yet innovators. At this stage we ought to be content to imitate, for innovation often emerges out of imitation. Latecomers have this advantage, and smart nations, like smart entrepreneurs, don't reinvent the wheel.