Live data from Hacker News

How Kerala got rich

aeon.co

271–280 of 329 posts

Re: How Kerala got rich

#271
At the same time, also check out: How serious is Kerala’s drug crisis? (Data Point) - https://youtu.be/CLkRAmkgEM4

Kerala is in the grip of a rapidly growing drug crisis. The state’s High Court issued a stark warning about the ‘poisonous fangs of the drug mafia’. And the State Assembly even paused regular business to debate the issue.

Kerala now leads the country in drug-related cases, far ahead of states like Punjab and Maharashtra. The numbers are also far too high to be explained by good policing alone.

Re: How Kerala got rich

#272
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't planning to respond to this topic, since I'm a Keralite living and earning in Kerala. But this seems a little odd: > Kerala is a very empty place. People emigrate parmanently or stay outside for decades. Elderlies live on their own. Schools and home remain empty. It is just intuitively sad. One should read this interesting piece... I'm writing this from my home here in Kerala. Empty is not how I would descri…

Many Keralian small towns and villages seemed empty to me. That's what I meant. I am sure what you are saying is true.

What you call empty, many would call spacious. Not everywhere has to be crowded.

Re: How Kerala got rich

#273
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are efficient, obviously as economies of scale. Add in consulting and quants and they'll rise in profitability. But the problem is decision making power lies in hands of select few. When you are a too large a corporate, you basically have no oversight over how much you can optimize in exchange for ill social effects. All corporates had humble beginnings, and over time hyper optimization for profits creep in…

Mom and Pop shops likely won't invest in softwares for inventory or payrolls or analytics but big chains will. That means the more big chain markets swallowing mom and pop shops more capitals invested for software and other tertiary services. This boost GDP

It may boost GDP, but does that improve the life of the Moms and Pops who are now stacking shelves at the hypermarkets?

Re: How Kerala got rich

#274
post #3

I was born in the US but my parents are from Kerala and I still have family there that I visit. One thing I found interesting was the pride in literacy and education. Kerala has a 96% literacy rate which is the highest in India [1]. It's one of my favorite places to visit. Unlike other parts of India such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderbad -- it's tropical and lush with much less pollution than what you might see in t…

The connection between education and wealth is very strong. Very sad that the US has decided to pursue a trajectory towards poverty in this area.

Questionable. There is defiantly some connection, but in what direction is open for debate. But its also the case that the Soviet block countries had lots of educated people, but couldn't make the economy work out.

And given for how many years the US has had sub-optimal results in international education comparison, while the overall economy has done well also doesn't fit.

Re: How Kerala got rich

#275
post #3

I was born in the US but my parents are from Kerala and I still have family there that I visit. One thing I found interesting was the pride in literacy and education. Kerala has a 96% literacy rate which is the highest in India [1]. It's one of my favorite places to visit. Unlike other parts of India such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderbad -- it's tropical and lush with much less pollution than what you might see in t…

The connection between education and wealth is very strong. Very sad that the US has decided to pursue a trajectory towards poverty in this area.

I honestly can't tell if you're referring to the current administration or the previous one with this comment.

(Fun SNL video with similar confusion: https://youtu.be/8h_N80qKYOM)

Re: How Kerala got rich

#276
post #92

I was born in the second southernmost district of Kerala, Quilon (now Kollam). I am now a U.S. citizen in the Bay Area. Growing up in Quilon, I attended an Anglo-Indian boy's school called Infant Jesus - in a small strip of land called Thangassery, people predominantly spoke English. I was taught British dialects emphasizing pronunciations that mimicked the world stage. I didn't really understand it until much later…

> Kerala has a mix of Western population that decided to stay back after the Indian Independence that brought with them Christianity, education, hospitals, and the Catholic culture. Kerala is also one of the few places in India where you can eat beef without inhibitions. Christianity in Kerala is much older than European Christianity. Literally the land of the Apostles

> Literally the land of the Apostles

That's literally just a nice story that people claim with very, very, very little to back it up. But I guess they literally claim that.

Re: How Kerala got rich

#277
post #61

Kerala has extremely aggressive out-migration (including my entire family): it is a bad place to be ambitious, particularly with the France-like union culture. If India is to become China-rich or Mexico-rich, my prediction is Kerala will regress to the mean of India states. Its model seems geared towards being an extremely good place to be poor (which is a huge achievement to be clear: they dealt with COVID better th…

I noticed this in Taiwan between 2018-2020 when I was staying there. A highly educated population but with little to no opportunities. Most of very ambitious talent found jobs in China or Singapore. A strong business environment, or strong investment opportunities, or a large consumer base is very much needed to have attractive jobs. A strongly educated workforce does little to enable such an environment. Intuitively…

I think its just perception. A place that is smaller will appear to have more movement because its across country, while in China or the US you would just move internally. Taiwan had amazing economic growth for 50+ years.

The reality is that in all places the most ambitious people are likely going to move, as such talents usually depend on specific environments.

And with things like TSMC in Taiwan, claiming anything close to 'no opportunities' is a bit ridiculous.

Re: How Kerala got rich

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the policies and results of Deng to Mao, the latter is more "literally communist." Their embracing of capitalist principles is what enabled their boom, same with Vietnam with their Đổi Mới policies.

Deng famously said "white cat, black cat, as long as it catches mice it's a good cat". His policy choices were not driven by 'embracing' of any principles but pure pragmatism.

He can say whatever he likes, but in reality, what he did is literally throw in the garbage the complete intellectual baggage of the European socialist/communist movement and basically copied what Western allied South East Asian nations were already doing.

If it makes him feel good not to call that 'capitalism' then that's fine. I guess it wouldn't have played well with the base back then.

But in reality and operations, its is how capitalism has worked in practice.

Re: How Kerala got rich

#279
post #273
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mom and Pop shops likely won't invest in softwares for inventory or payrolls or analytics but big chains will. That means the more big chain markets swallowing mom and pop shops more capitals invested for software and other tertiary services. This boost GDP

It may boost GDP, but does that improve the life of the Moms and Pops who are now stacking shelves at the hypermarkets?

It'll give a good life for software developers

Re: How Kerala got rich

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, capitalist principles are indeed pragmatic, hence why he chose them.

"Capitalism" is a very confusing word that should be avoided in a serious discussion one way or the other, society is a lot more complex than that. For instance "crony capitalism" is also seemingly capitalism but is directly opposed to the broad principles of a market economy that people think of as good.

"Crony Capitalism" is just a term socialists came up with to shit on capitalism. The reality is every society is going to have some amount of corruption and cronyism. But "Crony Capitalism" isn't an actual coherent concepts, it doesn't have 'principles', its just highlighting something negative that happens in countries, including capitalist ones.

Socialists love to add some negative word 'X' to capitalism to highlight that all bad things in the world are connected to capitalism, and if they could finally defeat capitalism, then the world would be perfect. Instead of actually trying to fix 'X' they will tell you that what we really need to change is 'capitalism'. Surveillance Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Disaster Capitalism and so on.

Trying to fix corruption, to hard, lets just destroy property rights and money instead. Great idea!

Post reply on HN