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Why nations fail

economist.com

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Re: Why nations fail

#101

Post by roguecoder »

entangld wrote: post #20

The author's main point seems to be that corrupt governments allow too much money in too few hands. Maybe this isn't the grand theory to support them all, but it reminds me a lot of why cancer is so destructive. One part of a large community using far too many resources. There could be a cluster theory to support the causes of cancer as well, but cluster theories are very hard to find solutions for. We don't just nee…

The difference is based on how people perceive the inequality. If it is seen as being unfairly earned, it severely hurts the incentive to work (through, say, paying lower taxes than poorer people, being awarded business through lobbying or social classes, being born into wealth, exploiting or underpaying the working class, or more generally anything where random Person On The Street couldn't do the same thing).

It doesn't matter what the outcome is, as long as it is seen to be fair. As soon as it isn't, people will resent the system, subvert it or rebel. This is a trait we share with monkeys and elephants, and is possibly the basis of social organization.

Re: Why nations fail

#102

Post by eru »

zasz wrote: post #84
narrator wrote: post #83

Joseph A. Tainter's The Collapse Of Complex Societies is a bit academic but very good study of civilizational collapse. It has a lot of data, studies many different civilizations and examines all popular theories of civilizational collapse. It points to diminshing marginal returns on increasing complexity in civilizations as the mechanism of collapse. It's far better than the trendy Jared Diamond writing. IMHO, Jared…

Really? I found _Collapse_ to be much more boring than I expected. One of the major reasons he claims that a society collapses is a lack of trading partners. Not very sexy at all, and not leftist.

> Not very sexy at all, and not leftist.

I can't make out whether that's meant as a compliment or a complaint. Would you elaborate on that description, please?

Re: Why nations fail

#103

Post by eru »

nl wrote: post #72

Note that this is a review by the (economically conservative) Economist . I haven't read Why Nations Fail , but I do read their blog[1] and my interpretation of their theories is much less absolute than the Economist's is - or rather, I think the emphasis is more on the problems of Extractive institutions (which may well be state institutions, but also could be private institutions or hybrids or the two). For example…

> Note that this is a review by the (economically conservative) Economist.

I thought they were one of the most liberal papers in existence. (In the classical European sense.)

Re: Why nations fail

#104

Post by roguecoder »

fragsworth wrote: post #6

I can't get past how needlessly wordy this article is. It's as if someone is trying to flaunt their language skills and it distracts me from the actual content; I must admit that I read the whole thing and did not catch wind of the author's point. Sentences like these just read as nonsense to me: "The intuition behind the theory is nonetheless compelling, which makes the scarcity of policy prescriptions frustrating."

The Economist is a specific publication that has the whole of the English language available to its authors, rather than just the portions introduced before 8th grade. USA Today exists for the other markets.

Complex vocabulary has the opportunity to convey nuance and heterogeneity that simplistic vocabulary glosses over. It is one of the features of the paper, along with occasionally admitting they are wrong and usually providing rational explanations for the positions they take. I also don't agree with them, but have read the paper for over two decades and it has never induced the blind rage the stupidity and sloppy thinking of network news always seems to manage in the first few minutes.

Many discussions could be more productive if other people emulated their philosophy.

Re: Why nations fail

#105

Post by bdunbar »

roguecoder wrote: post #100
bdunbar wrote: post #62

Reading this review - and others - I was reminded of Ralph Peters essay 'Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States' http://www.carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/Parameters/Articles/98spr... Which doesn't really explain 'why' but does set out in concise form 'what failure looks like'.

It seems like "discouraging or prohibiting work" is the common theme, among both these and extractive institutions. Which may be too tautological to be useful: in cases where work isn't worth doing or is outright prohibited, less work/science/innovation gets done.

Which may be too tautological to be useful

Depends on what you need it to be useful for.

Understanding the root problems in a philosophical sense? Maybe not.

A rough guide for where to put a factory, do business with, startup ideas? Useful.

Re: Why nations fail

#106

Post by Jach »

davidw wrote: post #86
moldbug wrote: post #3

Once again Occam's butterknife is spotted in the wild. Richard Lynn, call your office: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations

This is why some of us point out that articles like this are "Not Hacker News". They inevitably lead to wildly off-topic, and unproductive discussions.

Well, I've learned a lot from the various links that have been thrown around (and expect to learn more when I get around to reading more of them than I have), so I don't think it's entirely unproductive. I agree these posts are "Not Hacker News", but not for their content, or for their "unproductive discussions", but for bringing out the side of HN members for whom disagreement ==> downvote, and disagreement-from-majority-view ==> downvote-to-oblivion. It's unpleasant to witness and I have enough outlets for my unpleasant-reality-seeking desires; HN is nice because it's still not overall unpleasant like for instance Reddit.

Re: Why nations fail

#107

Post by Jach »

ktizo wrote: post #45
tatsuke95 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation is bad enough that I'm a little sensitive to agreeing with what you've said here. According to a few posts up, that makes me a racist, I guess. The problem is, I never really understood why it's a stretch to believe that in all of the messy soup of chromosomes and culture (variables of a magnitude beyond what we could ever possibly research) that there are tangible differences between human beings. And…

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 hete…

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... )

Re: Why nations fail

#108

Post by dredmorbius »

ktizo wrote: post #93
dredmorbius wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's specifically the question Diamond is looking for an answer to. We're staring down several of his modes of failure.

I wonder how his analysis stacks up next to Dymitri Orlov's 'Reinventing Collapse' - http://cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk

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).

A few other views on "problems facing the world" based on exhaustive research (viz: a quick Web search): http://aspdeveloper.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/10-problems-or-... http://www.globalissues.org/ http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org/wbp

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.

Re: Why nations fail

#109

Post by philwelch »

hristov wrote: post #36
moldbug wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genetic differences between races are very minor as compared to the genetic differences between individuals within a race. In case you're posting from a different dimension, these "minor" differences can change the color of our skin, the shape of our bones, and even (gasp) the size of our brains. If these are minor organs, what are major ones? In case you're posting from the same dimension, your fallacy has a name: h…

Thank you for the Google link. There I learned that Lewontin's fallacy is a fallacy because "Richard Lewontin is a Marxist Jew who has dedicated his career to attacking genetics as an explanation for human variation." That explains so much. It is really cute how you think you can tell an Englishman from a German. Do you know, by the way, the genetic make up of the Englishman? Do you know where the word "England" came…

Not stepping into this argument here...but frankly, the bulk of the English gene pool is not Anglo-Saxon: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/10/mythsofbritishance...

Re: Why nations fail

#110

Post by moldbug »

barrkel wrote: post #77
moldbug wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're having a productive, sincere conversation here! I don't see any relationship, necessary, causal, or otherwise, between an executioner and a pragmatic principle of equality. But you do see a relationship between racist/nationalist/fascist ideology and racist/nationalist/fascist executioners, right? http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/battal... I certainly can't interpret your post in any other…

> But you do see a relationship between racist/nationalist/fascist ideology and racist/nationalist/fascist executioners, right? No. I see systems of power-hungry humans manipulating other humans by whatever means they can to achieve their ends. Propaganda and ideologies are usually just vectors - potent vectors - for the transmission of instrumental power. Humans, in the large, are like packs of rabid dogs; it takes…

What you haven't established clearly for me is an objective criterion for what makes a discussion "abhorrent and taboo."

Why does this matter? Well, we know what makes a discussion "abhorrent and taboo" in the People's Republic of China. It simply boils down to anti-government speech. My suspicion is that when you examine your own epistemology closely enough, you'll find you're applying exactly the same test. It is certainly an objective test!

The "discussion of how Jews run media, banking, etc." is a poor example, I feel, because it's a very easy discussion to have - especially in the light of Cochran & Harpending 2005.

There are two statements here, a factual one which is true and an implicit one which is false. The true statement is that these industries are full of Jews; the false one, that they act collectively as Jews (eg, under the direction of the "Elders of Zion"). We know the false statement to be false because we know that your media or banking Jew is almost always an assimilated, nontribal, anti-nationalist, and in other words communist Jew - utterly indistinguishable from his WASP communist friends. So there's no social network for exclusively Jewish collective action.

What was abhorrent and taboo about that? Except possibly the communist part. Somehow in a world that contains living equivalents of General Blokhin, it's socially taboo to speak ill of communism. Don't you find that a little peculiar?

I'd also warn you against the word "determinant." There are a large number of differences, many surely relevant, between Japan and Haiti. Japan is a much larger island and has a much larger population - not to mention colder weather. We cannot say that genetic diversity is the only reason that international development assistance seems unable to develop Haiti into a new Caribbean Japan - or at least a Singapore. Hence declensions of determine are inappropriate, I feel.

What's good, though, is that we agree there's an elephant in the room. All we disagree on is who's allowed to notice it. What a strange world we live in!

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