Excellent article. I think the dynamic you describe happens in other ways, too. The Allies flattened Germany and Japan in WW2 and what wasn't destroyed in Germany was carted off by the Russians and to some extent, the West. England was extremely slow to get its economy back after the war and never really fully recovered, in part because they still had their aging industrial infrastructure that was just good enought to not scrap. German rebuilt from scratch, with almost zero industrial base to preserve. Much the same went for the clearing out of human management "infrastructure" that the War caused. It's hard to change things but relatively quick and easy to simply replace. Japan was flattened ever worse than Germany and likewise, was unencumbered.