Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktThis is launched off some of Shrink’s points about China. Hi, Shrink!
I’ve pointed to this video by Hans Rosling before. Yes, I’m doing it again.I love this quote early on from the video: “The world view that my students had corresponded to the state of the world the year their teachers were born.”
The point being, I would still argue that, broadly, the developed world is dragging the developing world into the 21st century (over years, not news cycles) and that the big data points support this view. Or you could say the developing world is joining the developed world, whether or not we’re doing anything to make it happen.
Whichever way you look at it, things are much better than they were, and are likely to become much better still.
Okay, and this is tangential to my main point, but since I can’t embed videos in comments, I’m going to do it here. Hans Rosling talks about how ending poverty is crucial to controlling population growth. And it’s true: the best birth control in the world is not laughter, it’s money.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
I know this. I don't agree with any of it and I think you should travel to the so called developing world. See what you think. The fallacy here, he too is using the data from the past to say all that happened before, the trends must continue to happen, because it used to.
LikeLike
My sister loves these arguments, she is a reborn christian über liberal. Everyone needs lots more money and the world will be a better place. Charming.You've diagnosed me as cynical. I am not. I am not sailing on denial. http://tinyurl.com/444p8xe
LikeLike
I have only noted that you occasionally observe things with a cynical humor, not that you are a cynic. You may be, but that professional diagnosis will require a fee."I don't agree with any of it and I think you should travel to the so called developing world. See what you think."This is difficult, both in real terms, but also for a point of comparison. Even if I had time to travel to Indonesia, it would be difficult for me to compare the Indonesia of 1950 vs the Indonesia of 2011. Also, at no point could I ever have the time to get a full sense of the country, by traveling everywhere and seeing everything. What one can do is look at statistics, like literacy, longevity, income per capita, and see general trends. They are (a) positive, but (b) indicate there is still a long way to go. I agree that everyone needs lots more money. How you accomplish this, however, is not a trivial issue.
LikeLike
Also, I can't view anything from Google images at work. I did try to look. Alas, our net nanny says no.
LikeLike
My position on the Y2K thing (back in 1999) was that it was no big deal, and everything would be all right. And it was. Of course, it will always be my position that it's not the end of the world. Until it is, at which point I will have only been wrong once, but it will have been a doozy.
LikeLike
The developed world may be dragging the developing world (kicking and screaming?) into the 21st century, but some parts of the developed world are slipping back into the 20th or possibly even the 19th century. Mexico is falling apart just over our border. And Russia strikes me as hanging on by their fingernails, with the only thing preventing them from slipping away being their petro resources that they're able to export.
LikeLike
it is of course, a picture of a dhow on the Nile.So that guy who criticizes conventional wisdom for its backward look, looks backward for his rosy views, I get that. The mirrored glass of the Generals' Bank (in Indonesia, Army Generals operate their own "investment" bank) towers over people who have never worn a pair of shoes in their life even though they have a "job". You'd have to live it, to see it to understand it, what it means. All of those people are (A) never going to have any money and (B) they are not going to stop having children. Same in Manila, Dhaka, almost all of Africa, the developing world fantasy is a western conceit, a sort of survivor guilt manifestation. This book is a dated, but everything it talks about is more true than it was then, Expectations of Modernity, Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copper Belt. Zambia, a country that had its own airline, until the copper ran out. Now, ever since, all the disasters of modernity and the future? What, affluence? Isn't that just a cruel joke?
LikeLike
In Bulgaria, a friend of mine went there this Summer, all the Soviet era mechanical stuff is broken, rusting. They can't afford to buy from the west, right next door.Farmers are back to using solid wheel carts. Solid wheels, not spokes, that ancient technology is just gone. You know how heavy a solid wood cart wheel is? So, are they waiting for development, investment, the next boom cycle? Plenty of guns though. Lots of crime.
LikeLike
Alexander (the Great) of Macedonia, now Bulgaria…oh forget it, I gotta go.Talk to you later
LikeLike
shrink:Brought forward.Trade barriers are a necessary evil and not necessarily the fewer the better, it depends who wants to trade and what they want to trade and where they got it (their trader status). So if free trade isn't really possible, and isn't entirely desireable in any event, would it be fair to say that your problem with what some people call "free trade" isn't so much that it isn't free, but rather that you would prefer it to be not free (controlled) in a different manner by someone more to your liking?Crony capitalism avoided. I don't have a stock answer. I will build an answer, but it may take awhile.No problem. But while you are building, can you consider and address the idea that the very use of the government to control and regulate business is precisely what makes crony capitalism possible, and that the more control the government exercises, the more probable and the more extensive crony capitalism will become.
LikeLike
I reject your top premise, since it can't be avoided that means it is desirable. Do you know what a necessary evil is, or do you reject that premise?Yes the reason it isn't an easy problem is because of the paradox you describe. That which is a necessary evil isn't called an evil on moral grounds, it is because what makes trade work for people also inhibits it. The trick is to maximize agility, innovation, efficiency and minimize cronyism, rent seeking, all that. No one is going to say that is easy, but it has to be done. Now I really gotta run, I'll be back later.
LikeLike
Scott – anti-trust regulation is essential to Smith's view of capitalism which involved protecting the competitive mechanism from monopoly or even oligopoly. Capitalism was a refreshing new way to look at the world which was either feudal or mercantilist or both. The East India Companies were not what capitalism was about. Alexander Hamilton was an unreconstructed mercantilist and did not accept "Wealth of Nations". Much as I admire Hmilton I do accept the protection of the competitive mechanism as a job for government and I oppose the notion that capitalism is thus by definition crony capitalism.When the major car companies threw stumbling blocks at TESLA several years ago that the feds were complicit in, that was crony capitalism. Using the weight of the government to stifle the competitive mechanism is a hallmark of mercantilism [the modern analog of which is found in some Asian regimes] or of topside down feudalism [the modern analog of which was Mussolini's fascism].Folks are too used to talking about "capitalism" and "marxism" and "socialism".There are other modes out there. What shrink calls Chinese "crony capitalism" is not capitalism at all but thinly disguised mercantilism. Small town bourgeoisie capitalism may exist in China but I'd bet you that steel company that got the Bay Bridge deal is an equivalent to the Dutch East India Company. What Shrink describes in Suharto sounds positively feudal. Makes a true believing capitalist like me want to vomit. Competition, Scott!
LikeLike
"Much as I admire Hmilton I do accept the protection of the competitive mechanism as a job for government and I oppose the notion that capitalism is thus by definition crony capitalism."The primary protection any government can provide against monopolies is not to create them, by allowing, say, IBM or AT&T or Pan Am to write laws that protect their monopolies from competition. The first thing the government should do is now outlaw competition. Aspiring monopolies seek to use the government to outlaw competition (or, in the case of AT&T, and even today many cable and content providers) seek to structure the law to make it illegal for their customers to use their products in ways that they don't approve of. Long-standing monopolies require, primarily, government collusion in constructing the law to prohibit competition with the monopoly. This can be subtle, such as crafting legislation to favor one company over another in terms of spectrum usage or right-of-ways, but government has been, historically, extremely important in the maintenance of long-term monopolies. "When the major car companies threw stumbling blocks at TESLA several years ago that the feds were complicit in, that was crony capitalism."Indeed! I refer you to the excellent film, "Tucker: The Man And His Dream". Featuring Jeff Bridges. I am more ambivalent about the government's role in the prevention of mega-mergers, but I generally suspect huge bank mega-mergers are not going to turn out to be good things for the public at large, and this generally tends to be the case. I don't suspect the AT&T-mobile merger would turn out to be particularly good for consumers, or the employees of T-mobile.
LikeLike
"Farmers are back to using solid wheel carts. Solid wheels, not spokes, that ancient technology is just gone."That's not progress. There will always be places going in the wrong direction. And I may be wrong, and you may well be right. Do you really want to be right about this? Anyway, the general trends are real. But as Mr. Rosling points out in the second presentation, on population growth, 50 years ago there were 2 billion people in poverty (definition, their primary material aspiration would be a pair of shoes) and today there are 2 billion people in basically the same condition. The trends are real but not perfectly linear, and still far, far below what we (human beings) are capable of achieving. "All of those people are (A) never going to have any money and (B) they are not going to stop having children. Same in Manila, Dhaka, almost all of Africa, the developing world fantasy is a western conceit, a sort of survivor guilt manifestation."I think you may be right, in our lifetime. But do I believe that their children's children's children are going to be in the same place, after 100 years? I don't think they will be. I don't know, of course, but I do hope they are better off, and have a little more money, and a few less children.
LikeLike
"but some parts of the developed world are slipping back into the 20th or possibly even the 19th century"Indeed. This will always happen, I think, but hopefully, at this point, we can avoid a global dark ages. Even though general progress as a race is going to be far from linear, especially from region to region.
LikeLike
how ending poverty is crucial to controlling population growth.—-HELL YES IT IS.Dump a truckload of bc supplies in the drinking water of the major cities every month for a period of 5-10 years.Problem solved!I am totally in love with the idea of having fewer kids. Like, can you limit to just one, for a generation or two? Please?
LikeLike
Back to the original thought, I'd make a slight modification. Education is the best contraception. Rising education levels for girls and women mean smaller families. Smaller families means more investment into the kids you have. A virtuous circle.BB
LikeLike