In an op-ed in the Financial Times 12/28/09 the economist, Niall Ferguson, climbed on a tall mountain and looked back on the past 500 years.  He listed 6 key traits that have given the west an edge over the east in these past five centuries: “the capitalist enterprise, the scientific method, a legal and political system based on private property rights and individual freedom, traditional imperialism, the consumer society and what Weber probably misnamed the ‘Protestant ethic of work and capital accumulation as ends in themselves.'”