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Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

asteriskmag.com

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Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#51

Post by mathverse »

phpnode wrote: post #27
jongjong wrote: post #12

Simple answer; people from rich countries will use flaws in the political structures of certain other countries to install corrupt politicians; these politicians are then going to work for the interests of their rich foreign patrons and against the interests of their own people (for kickbacks/self-enrichment). The corrupt politicians will do things like saddle their people with significant public debts (which will fo…

There's really no reason to blame this on the foreigners installing corrupt politicians, corruption is far more frequently organic and homegrown. Corrupt people work to further their own goals, if that happens to be using their power to take on e.g. debt on unfavourable terms then so be it, but that's not because they're beholden to foreigners, it's because that is their best route to enriching themselves - they can…

It's not as simple as that. Building domestic industries takes time and you can never be sure about the outcome (especially if you believe everyone around you is corrupt as was believed in the countries behind the Iron Curtain). The easy money from foreign investors is hard to resist.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#52

Post by zozbot234 »

jongjong wrote: post #12

Simple answer; people from rich countries will use flaws in the political structures of certain other countries to install corrupt politicians; these politicians are then going to work for the interests of their rich foreign patrons and against the interests of their own people (for kickbacks/self-enrichment). The corrupt politicians will do things like saddle their people with significant public debts (which will fo…

> That's why, as a regular citizen, it's vitally important to live in a country which has reliable, honest politicians.

There is no way to ensure reliable and honest politicians. The best you can do is hope most policymakers are at least somewhat honest, and then institute stringent checks and balances to ensure a corrupt politician can't do too much damage. Which is what most developed democracies do, with varying degrees of success.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#53

Post by somedude895 »

jongjong wrote: post #12

Simple answer; people from rich countries will use flaws in the political structures of certain other countries to install corrupt politicians; these politicians are then going to work for the interests of their rich foreign patrons and against the interests of their own people (for kickbacks/self-enrichment). The corrupt politicians will do things like saddle their people with significant public debts (which will fo…

> Simple answer;

No, read the article before commenting please.

Edit: I just realized this comment breaks the site's rules

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article.

I do wish @dang was around though, most of the comments in here don't reference the article at all, even though it's really insightful.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#54

Post by durnygbur »

nivenkos wrote: post #31

A strange example since back then South Korea was a dictatorship that massacred over 100,000 of its own citizens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_League_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_massacres

One mentally blacklist some countries because of their genocidal histories and preserves positive or not-that-bad opinion on some other countries which frequently were the victims... and then one learns more about the histories of these other countries...

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#55

Post by lupire »

brutusborn wrote: post #37
ninkendo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there has to be poor people in order for there to be rich people, let’s make robots be the poor people. The best endgame we can probably hope for is for there to be a sustainably small number of really comfortable, happy humans on this planet, and an army of robot servants/AI to keep us all fat and happy.

I used to have the same utopic dream, but I have started to question whether a "small number" is actually desireable. If everyone on earth is working on great things, having more people might be better. Maybe even Elons vision of people spilling out into the stars.

Everyone on Earth is contributing to the destruction of the ecosystem. "Spilling out into the stars" is impossible, there aren't enough physical resources.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#56

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dusted wrote: post #49
version_five wrote: post #2

Thermodynamics. You can only extract work from a gradient

I'm with you on this.. There can only be rich countries if there are poor countries.. Otherwise there would just be.. countries.. One of the reasons that the standard of living is so high in rich countries, is because we're paying poor countries to do the work + pollution, if they had as much money as rich countries, they'd be unwilling to do that work/polution for that price, and the "true" price of the work would r…

Easy to say from an easy chair in a rich country.

But that paying poor countries to do work, that's their current route out of poor. To take that away over some social-action-theatre objection is just cruel and thoughtless. From one point of view.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#57

Post by pydry »

mathverse wrote: post #40
pydry wrote: post #16

The formula is pretty simple. The US not only allowed South Korea to pursue export oriented industrialization, it actively encouraged it. It saw South Korea as a military bulwark against the Soviet Union. Why can't every country follow in its footsteps? Well, some did and were encouraged for similar reasons. Taiwan, Japan, etc. However, without preferential access to the markets of the world's richest nation(s), expo…

It's a combination of a lot of factors. Access to a rich market is one thing but protecting your own markets against much stronger competition is another. South Korea was a mercantilist nation and it protected its core industries in the early stages. That's why companies in traditional industries (construction,banking,insurance,food etc etc) in Korea are still mostly Korean when in Eastern Europe they are German,Fren…

>protecting your own marketing against much stronger competition is another.

That's the whole point. Most countries that do this are locked out of rich markets. They're said to be competing "unfairly". They know mercantilism works they just can't practice it without being slapped with countervailing tariffs.

It was US policy both to allow and encourage mercantilism for South Korea because that meant it could function as a military bulwark against the communist nations surrounding it.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#58

Post by RugnirViking »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #36
actionfromafar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several studies which have shown that cash transplants have a lasting beneficial effect on poverty.

That must be to a very limited degree to the point where you can't extrapolate the effect to my hypothesized scenario. In fact there is evidence in support of my thesis: Most lottery winners lose all their won money within a few years.

That's a myth, which stemmed from a misquote of NEFE [1]. Most research shows that this isn't really true. https://time.com/5427275/lottery-winning-happiness-debunked/

[1] https://www.nefe.org/news/2018/01/research-statistic-on-fina...

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#59

Post by throwaway294566 »

aflag wrote: post #30
awb wrote: post #9

> Yet even though extreme poverty has fallen, in 2018 about 80% of the world population still had material living standards less than one-third of that in the United States. That’s it right there. If wealth is relative then you can’t possibly create a system that will result in equality of outcome since we’re all born unique.

Quoted post unavailable.

You are trying to put a racist spin on something that is simply a matter of time and circumstances: You cannot instantly, just by declaring it to be so, have technology, infrastructure, efficient agriculture. You need to start where you are and continuously improve the status quo in your country. That takes time. How much depends on things like corruption, means, climate, openness for change, local resources and topography. And of course there can be setbacks, e.g. if the aforementioned circumstances change. TFA has some nice graphs on that, where you can e.g. see the almost parallel development of USA, Germany and South Korea, just with different starting points in time. Otoh, there is another graph, where cirumstances changed for the worse, taking development down again.

Re: Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?

#60

Post by Koshkin »

docdeek wrote: post #18
newyankee wrote: post #8

One reason is how much ever we try to disagree, the socio economic construct is still a zero sum game with an ever increasing pie. People who argue otherwise point to the size of the pie without practically ever stating what those in difficult positions can realistically do to get more of it. Other reasons are that honestly there is not much "real work" to be done so we can argue that a very small % of existing popul…

FTA: In 2019 there were about 648 million people living in extreme poverty, subsisting on the equivalent of $2.15 per day or less. Those 648 million people made up 8.4% of world population — representing an improvement over 1990, when 35.9% of people lived on that little. This seems to be the inverse of a zero-sum game: the West might have got a lot richer, but hundreds of millions of people were lifeted out of extre…

> equivalent of $2.15

But what does this even mean? The buying power of the dollar (or its “equivalent”) where those people live can be much higher than in the US. (Unless you mean to compare with living on that much per day in the US.)

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