No country gets rich by following a blueprint recommended by the great powers of the day, who want the latecomers to wait patiently in line, resigned to their lot in the world division of labor. Rebellion against the formulas prescribed by those powers is not always rewarded; obedience is invariably punished. To rise, a country must not only be ready to adopt institutions and policies defying those formulas, it must also equip itself with the practical means by which to sustain its defiance. Yes, fiscal realism is indispensable but not for the reasons invoked by the peddlers of a false orthodoxy: so that nations and their governments are not beholden to the whims and interests of high finance and can dare to be bold in opening development trajectories based on the democratization of opportunities and capabilities.

If these two strategies fail, what works? Mobilize national resources to build the country undeterred by dogmas about what government and private enterprise can do; both can do, especially together, much more than we suppose. Think of this part of what works as a war economy without a war. And innovate in the organization of markets so that more people can access more markets in more ways and acquire the means to become more productive.

Sound radical and far-fetched? Consider the United States in the first half of the 19th century: Alexander Hamilton’s plan to build the country from above could not have been so successful if agriculture and finance had failed to be democratized. In those two sectors, and despite the fearsome incubus of African slavery, Americans didn’t just regulate markets or attenuate their inequalities by progressive taxation and social spending. They reinvented the market economy and innovated in the institutions and laws that shape the basic distribution of economic advantage.

Today, such an effort, in South America and in the United States, needs a different focus. There is a new vanguard of production, founded on science and technology and marked by permanent innovation. This knowledge economy remains confined, everywhere in the world, to fringes that exclude the vast majority of workers and businesses, with far-reaching consequences for economic slowdown and inequality. Denial of the most advanced practice of production to most people and businesses in even the richest countries has slowed growth. The chasm between the advanced and backward parts of the economy has generated an inequality too severe for progressive taxation and redistributive social spending to correct.

Deepening and disseminating the knowledge economy is today’s road to greater and more inclusive prosperity. The United States and South America got off that road. It’s just that Americans were much richer than South Americans when they got off. Nevertheless, they share different versions of the same quandary and the same illusions.