Friedrich Hayek, one of my favorite economists, has some very wise words on development in his essay “Competition as a Discovery Procedure” that are worth quoting here.

If even in highly developed economies competition is important primarily as a discovery procedure whereby entrepreneurs constantly search for unexploited opportunities that can also be taken advantage of by others, then this is true of course to an even greater extent as far as underdeveloped societies are concerned. I have intentionally begun by considering the problems of maintaining an order in societies in which most techniques and productive forces are generally known, but also an order that requires continuous adjustment of activities to unavoidable small changes simply to maintain the previously attained level. At this point I do not wish to inquire into the role played by competition in the progress of available technology. I would like to emphasize, however, how much more important competition must be wherever the primary objective is to discover the still unknown possibilities in a society where competition was previously limited. While for the most part false, it might not be completely absurd to expect that we can predict and control the development of the structure of a society that is already highly developed. But it seems incredible to me to hold that we can determine in advance the future structure of a society in which the major problem is still to find out what kinds of material and human productive forces are present, or that we should be in a position, in such a country, to predict the particular consequences of a given measure.

Quite apart from the fact that there is still so much more to discover in such a country, it seems to me that there is another consideration making the greatest possible freedom of competition much more important here than in more highly developed countries. The fact I have in mind is that the necessary changes in habits and customs will occur only when those who are ready and able to experiment with new procedures can make it necessary for the others to imitate them, with the former thereby showing the way; but if the majority is in a position to prevent the few from conducting experiments, the necessary discovery procedure will be frustrated. The fact that competition not only shows how things can be improved, but also forces all those whose income depends on the market to imitate the improvements, is of course one of the major reasons for the disinclination to compete. Competition represents a kind of impersonal coercion that will cause many individuals to change their behavior in a way that could not be brought about by any kind of instructions or commands. Central planning in the service of any some “social justice” may be a luxury that rich countries can afford, but it is certainly no method for poor countries to bring about the adjustment to rapidly changing circumstances on which growth depends.

It might also be worth mentioning in this connection that the more the available opportunities of a country remain unexploited, the greater its opportunities for growth; this often means that a high growth rate is more a sign of bad policies in the past than of good policies in the present. It also seems that one cannot in general expect a country that is already highly developed to have as high a growth rate as a country whose full use of its resources has long been rendered impossible by legal and institutional barriers.

Having seen what I have of the world, it appears to me that the proportion of people who are prepared to try out new possibilities that promise to improve their situation—as long as others do not prevent them from doing so—is more or less the same everywhere. It seems to me that the much-lamented lack of entrepreneurial spirit in many young countries is not an unchangeable attribute of individuals, but the consequence of limitations placed on individuals by the prevailing point of view. For precisely this reason, the effect would be fatal if, in such countries, the collective will of the majority were to control the efforts of individuals, rather than that public power limits itself to protecting the individual from the pressure of society—and only the institution of private property, and all the liberal institutions of the rule of law associated with it, can bring about the latter.