by
Ryan Avent
162
Hyperglobalization and the Never-Developing World
0
terms
4
notes
165
[...] social capital is the indispensable factor. Successful countries have good institutions, such as strong and stable governments committed to protecting personal property rights. Social capital supports the evolution and development of growth-boosting institutions, which in turns support the continued accumulation of social capital.
[...] healthy democracies and market economies cannot be imposed on sociteies that lack the underlying supportive social capital; they are emergent phenomena in countries with the right sort of social capital.
And so, historically, rich countries tend to stay rich while poor countries tend to stay poor. [...]
[...] development of the right sort of social capital is hard. Sadly, social scientists lack a satisfying explanation for how it occurs.
he poses the question on p165 but notwhere on any of these pages does he mention colonialism or its modern-day equivalent ...? or differing access to natural resources? i can't even
also is it an accident that he parroted the Tory motto here lmao
[...] social capital is the indispensable factor. Successful countries have good institutions, such as strong and stable governments committed to protecting personal property rights. Social capital supports the evolution and development of growth-boosting institutions, which in turns support the continued accumulation of social capital.
[...] healthy democracies and market economies cannot be imposed on sociteies that lack the underlying supportive social capital; they are emergent phenomena in countries with the right sort of social capital.
And so, historically, rich countries tend to stay rich while poor countries tend to stay poor. [...]
[...] development of the right sort of social capital is hard. Sadly, social scientists lack a satisfying explanation for how it occurs.
he poses the question on p165 but notwhere on any of these pages does he mention colonialism or its modern-day equivalent ...? or differing access to natural resources? i can't even
also is it an accident that he parroted the Tory motto here lmao
174
[...] we once devoted most of our household budgets to physical things: food and drink, clothing and furniture. Now we spend vast amounts on things like education and healthcare, or on housing [...]
funny he mentions those three because they have all been provided (to varying degrees) by the govt in various parts of the world at different points in time ... he's talking about a household budget, not govt, so maybe he means American consumer here? but then that's an isolated case where tons of money is being siphoned off in the system by (say) overpaid administrators / HMOs and pharmaceutical companies / predatory landlords and letting agencies. ofc he doesn't address that aspect
[...] we once devoted most of our household budgets to physical things: food and drink, clothing and furniture. Now we spend vast amounts on things like education and healthcare, or on housing [...]
funny he mentions those three because they have all been provided (to varying degrees) by the govt in various parts of the world at different points in time ... he's talking about a household budget, not govt, so maybe he means American consumer here? but then that's an isolated case where tons of money is being siphoned off in the system by (say) overpaid administrators / HMOs and pharmaceutical companies / predatory landlords and letting agencies. ofc he doesn't address that aspect
176
[...] warehouses are potentially a source of vast amounts of employment for less-skilled Indians (of which there are hundreds of millions). Yet the falling cost of simple robotics and the increasing power of computing means that many of those jobs may never be created. Instead a very small number of highly skilled Indian programmers may earn a good living writing code to control the robots who travel the great aisles within these warehouses, moving around goods shipments that might otherwise have been handled by human workers.
he recognises this but doesn't go into the positive implications of this (assuming we can sort out the distributional problems)
[...] warehouses are potentially a source of vast amounts of employment for less-skilled Indians (of which there are hundreds of millions). Yet the falling cost of simple robotics and the increasing power of computing means that many of those jobs may never be created. Instead a very small number of highly skilled Indian programmers may earn a good living writing code to control the robots who travel the great aisles within these warehouses, moving around goods shipments that might otherwise have been handled by human workers.
he recognises this but doesn't go into the positive implications of this (assuming we can sort out the distributional problems)
177
[...] Advanced economies cannot turn poor countries into rich ones, and we lack a foolproof recipe for poor countries seeking to make themselves rich. What can be achieved and has reliably been achieved, is the process of helping residents of poor countries to become rich by welcoming them into places with strong social capital.
Mass immigration has always been the obvious, pie-in-the-sky solution to wide gaps in incomes across countries. [...]
the lack of consideration of power dynamics / unfair distribution of goods & resources is ASTOUNDING, like actually shocking
- if immigration is a solution, it's a reactionary and clearly unsustainable one, and yet he somehow seems to endorse it
[...] Advanced economies cannot turn poor countries into rich ones, and we lack a foolproof recipe for poor countries seeking to make themselves rich. What can be achieved and has reliably been achieved, is the process of helping residents of poor countries to become rich by welcoming them into places with strong social capital.
Mass immigration has always been the obvious, pie-in-the-sky solution to wide gaps in incomes across countries. [...]
the lack of consideration of power dynamics / unfair distribution of goods & resources is ASTOUNDING, like actually shocking
- if immigration is a solution, it's a reactionary and clearly unsustainable one, and yet he somehow seems to endorse it