The best answer to this question I have ever found is in the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally heterogeneous cultural development.
[edit] the explantation I just gave is a massive oversimplification of his argument, but it would be very hard to fit his book into a post.
If you care to comment, what other books on the subject have you read and what about them made you think Diamond's book is better? (Because this could be interpreted as a flame-baiting statement in a volatile thread, I'm asking from the perspective that book recommendations should follow the requirements outlined here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gu/the_best_textbooks_on_every_subj... )
An even better answer specific to the "Why Nations Fail" question is in Jared Diamond's Collapse. Which specifically explores the manifold reasons nations and cultures fail.
There is also the elephant in the room with this subject, which is when you look which cultures might be at risk from collapse in the future. Or perhaps I have just read Snowcrash too many times.
Diamond's five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues.
I'd throw resource depletion into the "environmental problems/issues" bucket (interesting that he distinguishes this from "climate change" now that I look at it again).
My own off-the-top-of-my-head list: Overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental contamination, anthropogenic climate change, societal inequities, WMD proliferation (particularly to non-state actors and rogue states), general systemic fragility/complexity, social intransigence in the face of many such issues (e.g.: US counterfactual denial political movements, rightist movements in various EU states, militant Islamist movements, etc.), government / corporate / social corruption, breakdown of social institutions, failures in universal education (primary, secondary, and higher). In no particular order.
It takes a look at the question of why one group of people ended up with the tech first and largely comes to the conclusion that it is part of a complex interaction involving the environmental availability of species and geography neccessary for the development of sedentry existence and then also a maximally heterogeneous cultural development.
[edit] the explantation I just gave is a massive oversimplification of his argument, but it would be very hard to fit his book into a post.