World News

I would really love to have a conversation about how the Nazis had a great economy, capable of going from rebuilding from WWI to starting WWII in 20 years.

I feel like worshipping the economy, and having it be the sole measure of society, inevitably leads us to the far-right. China is not going to magically crumble, and economic prosperity is achievable without societal progress.

We need to have societal progress as the goal, not some magic by-product of line go up.

There's a lot in there I agree with and a lot I find unconvincing, but the thing that really jumped out to me was this line:

Elites seek to concentrate profits. In our book Why Nations Fail, we compare Bill Gates and Carlos Slim. In the book, we point out that while Gates made his fortune through innovation, Slim did so by forming a telecommunications monopoly thanks to his close relationship with the government. It is an example of the link between monopolies and clientelism that has been seen throughout history in Latin America since colonial times.

I'm sorry, what? Does he not remember Microsoft losing perhaps the most famous successful American antitrust case of the last fifty years?

I don't think this guy is dumb, but I don't know how to fully take him seriously when he says something like this in passing.

Alfred Nobel never created a Nobel Prize for Economics.

Instead what there is is the Swedish Central Bank Prize For Economics In Honor Of Alfred Nobel, which is not a Nobel Prize but they convinced the Nobel Committee (using a lot of $$$) to treat it as one.

Now, I don't know if this guy is right or if he is wrong, but trying the whole Appeal To Authority thing using a "Nobel Prize" which is no such thing to throw some generic criticism on other Political models has a strong whiff of Propaganda.

PS: Also his arguments are very much cherry picking. For example I'm Portuguese and calling European Integration a "remarkable success story" for Portugal is hilarious - the actual reality was that Portugal grew massively when it kicked out Fascism (and the country was very Leftwing back then, so for example invested massively in Education and created a National Healthcare System) accelerated a bit when it joined the EU (because the money the EU sent to help with integration of what was then one of the poorest countries in the EU added up to a significant fraction of the GDP), then braked hard when the EURO came to be, culminating in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash with the country's Economy significantly shrinking and the Troika coming over and forcing Austerity (which later even Cristine Lagarde admited was "the wrong thing to do") and forced Privatization of actual profit-making state companies creating veritable anchors around the neck of the Economy in the country (for example, Telecoms are compared to average incomes very expensive in Portugal, a "rent" borne by the rest of the Economy which pulls down for example small businesses and kills business opportunities that rely on widespread digital access). Looking back all the best things that were done for Portugal were very much Leftwing such as investment in quality Public Education, a National Health Service and large programs of public housing (which were stopped decades ago, so now we have a giant house price bubble).

It wasn't Capitalism that pulled Portugal out of the shitter, it was kicking out the Fascists and basically Social Democracy (and I don't mean in the Portuguese Social Democrat Party, who are hard right with have nothing at all to do with the actual ideology in the name of the party), topped up with charity from the EU (in a way good while it lasted but then again went into all the wrong things, so the country has disgracefully bad rail-service everywhere but the North-South between the two main cities but lots and lots of underused highways built with that money).

Strangely enough, I think the CCP is a lot more of an inclusive institution than Robinson and his coauthors are happy to admit. A lot of the decisions the Chinese government makes are aimed at increasing national wealth and power. Narrow extractive behavior -- siphoning wealth away to benefit the elites -- definitely does happen in China, but not significantly more (and maybe less) than nominally democratic countries at a similar stage of development.

There's plenty of scope to dunk on the CCP, e.g. human rights. But Acemoglu/Robinson political economy framework, based on inclusive/extractive institutions, isn't the right argument for this.

Income equality is just one of many other factors to assess a just society as we know. But as many focus on China's GDP growth in its recent history, here are just numbers:

Between 2014 and 2022, in China the share of the bottom-50% income group (pre-tax) in the national income fell from 14.4% to 13.7%. In the same period, the shares of the top-1% and top-10% income groups rose from 13.7% and 41.5% to 15.7% and 43.4%, respectively. In a nutshell: the Chinese rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

For Western-style democracies, the numbers are diverse:

In European democracies like Germany and especially Norway, top income groups lost while the bottom-50% gained, while in countries like Finland all three mentioned groups gained, suggesting that the 'middle class' paid the bill. In other countries like Sweden, Denmark, and the U.S., the numbers show gains for the top at the cost of the bottom half.

And in Australia, top income groups lost significantly more than the bottom-50% gained, suggesting the middle class benefited, while in countries like Canada and Japan there appear to be only slight or even no significant changes in the period between 2014-2022.

But as I said, we must also focus on other factors that make a good society (the four freedoms come to my mind: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear). Given the fact that some in this thread cite China's growth of GDP and national wealth as a factor of societal success, it is clear that this argument does not hold, though.

[Edit typo.]

Democracy is a fundamental value, but you still have to be able to take action on big stuff. There’s a time to gather all the best information possible and a time to make an actual decision that has consequences. Unfortunately, by not taking that lead, democracies are outsourcing the big consequential stuff to undemocratic corporations.

I wonder what that person who I talked to yesterday who was telling me that monarchies were superior to democracies would say about this?

I asked them who got to be king if the democracies were replaced with monarchies, but they wouldn't tell me.

Hopefully not a Habsburg.

that's just rehashed fukuyama

Oh boy, ml is going to be real mad about this one. 🫳🍿

Libs: There is no way to avoid genocide. You must vote for genocide!

Also Libs (accepting "nobel prize in econ"): Enjoy your democracy!

What democracy? Is he talking about the oligarchy that rules the US?

In a piece published in November 2022, Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu argues that China’s economy is rotting from the head.

For a while, [China's leader] Xi, his entourage, and even many outside experts believed that the economy could still flourish under conditions of tightening central control, censorship, indoctrination, and repression [after Xi secured an unprecedented third term (with no future term limits in sight), and stacked the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with loyal supporters]. Again, many looked to AI as an unprecedentedly powerful tool for monitoring and controlling society.

Yet there is mounting evidence to suggest that Xi and advisers misread the situation, and that China is poised to pay a hefty economic price for the regime’s intensifying control. Following sweeping regulatory crackdowns on Alibaba, Tencent, and others in 2021, Chinese companies are increasingly focused on remaining in the political authorities’ good graces, rather than on innovating.

The inefficiencies and other problems created by the politically motivated allocation of credit are also piling up, and state-led innovation is starting to reach its limits. Despite a large increase in government support since 2013, the quality of Chinese academic research is improving only slowly.

[...] The top-down control in Chinese academia is distorting the direction of research, too. Many faculty members are choosing their research areas to curry favor with heads of departments or deans, who have considerable power over their careers. As they shift their priorities, the evidence suggests that the overall quality of research is suffering.

Xi’s tightening grip over science and the economy means that these problems will intensify. And as is true in all autocracies, no independent experts or domestic media will speak up about the train wreck he has set in motion [...]

But not too democratic because then the economy suffers amirite? Like, in the democracies, the poors must always be kept on a leash otherwise they might start getting ideas, right? RIGHT?

So when china eventually surpasses all other countries economically and the BRICS countries prosper as a whole, will this guys ideas be disproven or will he have excuses?