tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post4718607841454795271..comments2024-03-28T03:16:14.104-04:00Comments on Noahpinion: Superior Mayan engineeringNoah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-17295707483284868502013-04-24T20:23:23.973-04:002013-04-24T20:23:23.973-04:00"Political instability" in South America..."Political instability" in South America was often due to foreign interference. In Mexico, it was mostly homegrown instability from what I can tell (though it was certainly the leftovers of the caste system from the Spanish conquest). <br /><br />Further south there was an *awful lot* of foreign interference. Often the US but sometimes neighboring local South American countries.Nathanaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-50229609668300879272013-04-24T20:19:42.966-04:002013-04-24T20:19:42.966-04:00"Of course, "manufacturing-export capita..."Of course, "manufacturing-export capitalism" has eventual costs. When growth slows and the economy shifts toward services,..."<br /><br />then you may get disaster.<br /><br />You'll note that the US no longer does manufacturing-export capitalism. What has been the result?<br /><br />The 1% has seized the government, abrogated the rule of law, *destroyed our manufacturing* so that we can't do manufacturing-export capitalism any more (offshoring all of it), allowed the infrastructure to crumble, increased poverty, made the Gini coefficient worse...<br /><br />There's a serious problem here. The manufacturing-export stage is great and all, but it seems that the "natural" next stage is an unmitigated disaster. <br /><br />There's the corruption of Japan, nuking themselves with Fukushima. (Though at least they don't have the '1%' problem.) <br /><br />The similar events leading to the collapse of the USSR (formerly a manufacturing-export power, and don't forget it). And they do have the 1% problem. <br /><br />We're likely to see the same damn thing here in the US.<br /><br />Is there an alternative? The social democracies of Scandanavia seem to provide a possibility. Maybe. They're all very small. A focus on equality (keep that Gini coefficient down) and local sustainability (keep that manufacturing local) seem to be crucial.Nathanaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-89417715702235335912013-04-11T02:05:20.308-04:002013-04-11T02:05:20.308-04:00The College should assist you during your college ...The College should assist you during your college period, which includes Library, Internet, intranet, hostels, seminar halls, dispensary, student clubs, gym etc.<br />Placements of a college depend upon many factor like infrastructure, faculty, facilities provided, Rank of the college, past performance of the students in company<br />Apart from this, the college should have extra-curricular activities such as indoor and outdoor games and cultural programming’s. <a href="http://www.veltechuniv.edu.in/placement_objectives.html" title="Top Placement Engineering Colleges In Tamilnadu" rel="nofollow">Top Placement Engineering Colleges In Tamilnadu</a> <br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13445591000106824714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-75858753381766913672013-04-10T02:31:13.069-04:002013-04-10T02:31:13.069-04:00So all it takes for the poor to get richer is for ...<i>So all it takes for the poor to get richer is for them to make the workers in the rich countries poorer.</i><br /><br />So you subscribe to the "lump of wealth" fallacy too? Only you'd rather take from the poor people instead of having them take from you...<br /><br />I guess if South Korea had never gotten rich, we'd be in happy land now?Noah Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-6671786058719318772013-04-10T02:04:56.247-04:002013-04-10T02:04:56.247-04:00So all it takes for the poor to get richer is for ...So all it takes for the poor to get richer is for them to make the workers in the rich countries poorer. How convenient for you that you are nice and safe in a tenured position, wont have to worry about some Mexican economist making you obsolete at 1/10th the salary. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-88415397761646764992013-04-08T11:12:48.642-04:002013-04-08T11:12:48.642-04:00"The historical wages of exploitation are uni..."The historical wages of exploitation are unimportant in explaining amassed advantage in the present time?"<br /><br />Yes. McCloskey explains:<br /><br />"What made the modern world was the gigantic size of the entirely <br />unprecedented spoils of innovation in product and process and<br />organization, together with an egalitarian distribution of the spoils in the long run driven by entry and competition. The inventor Richard Roberts, true, was directly employed by English cotton-textile manufacturers to produce a device to break the labor power of the mule spinners. But most inventions achieved their profitability — as indeed the self-actor also did — by making costs lower for a given output, not by exploiting the workers (whether or not along the way the workers did get exploited). Exploiting the workers, to repeat, does not yield enough loot to explain rises of 100 percent, not to speak of 1500 percent, in the productivity of all — including paradoxically the exploited workers themselves. <br /><br />(...)This, to repeat, is not to say that there was no exploitation — that British or Belgian or French or Spanish or Portuguese imperialism was good news for the people imperialized."<br /><br /> Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-39873168583101300182013-04-08T00:32:28.854-04:002013-04-08T00:32:28.854-04:00The historical wages of exploitation are unimporta...The historical wages of exploitation are unimportant in explaining amassed advantage in the present time?<br /><br />And the "money makes us happier" point -- well, it seems having access to the necessities of life and some creature comforts and options makes us happier; beyond that point, it takes exponentially more to make us happier. The linked graph doesn't defy the Easterlin Paradox, it redefines it. Easterlin (and others) showed something like a saturating (Michaelis Menten) curve for wealth's effects on happiness. The linked graph makes this disappear by making the x-axis a log scale. So what they have "proved" is a kind of "both are right" -- money (or rather, what money can buy) makes us happier, but it takes exponentially more of it as we get more of it. In other words, it starts appearing to saturate. Even if it does not literally asymptote, something requiring exponentially more money to increase effectively requires either pouring disproportionately more and more resources into making the happiest happier, or maintaining some significant dedication to sharing (redistribution to) the lowest in order to bring them into the medium/high range.<br /><br />In a resource limited (i.e., the real) world, these choices become zero sum sooner or later (I'd argue sooner).<br /><br />Also, I don't love the "rising tide" metaphor. A rising tide, after all, lifts all boats because you can't pile water-- every increase is exactly equally distributed to all points on a plane. (Even if one posits different "depths" -- starting wealth -- each depth benefits proportionate to the whole, not to their starting depth, such that as n --> (large numbers) the depth of water over all points --> parity. That is, something unlike most economies in practice.)Jhttp://iamj.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-53312239539759614352013-04-07T23:03:06.322-04:002013-04-07T23:03:06.322-04:00Well, the cotton-exporting parts of America remain...Well, the cotton-exporting parts of America remained persistently poorer than the rest of the country, where they remain to this day. Since the United States is a big country which has had very serious regional divisions, it might make more sense to look at the country regionally instead of as one unit. (Although I don't have a concrete sense of how the North's export numbers would have broken down per se, since the North still grew plenty of crops too.)UserGoogolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07451696693372858067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-80790281514546677462013-04-07T22:51:44.295-04:002013-04-07T22:51:44.295-04:00America's a very developed country so that'...America's a very developed country so that's kind of irrelevant. We should still invest in infrastructure and education and all that jazz, (since those sorts of things promote welfare directly instead of just promoting economic development) but in general the sorts of things countries should do in order to develop and the sorts of things after they've developed need not be the same.UserGoogolhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07451696693372858067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-26157859455066826762013-04-07T21:27:39.933-04:002013-04-07T21:27:39.933-04:00"manufacturing-export capitalism" where ..."manufacturing-export capitalism" where it has worked in the long haul has meant massive government intervention and high tariff walls. The only possible counterexample has been the UK, and they had a unique global empire. It is also part of a zero sum game since not every society can be a net manufacturing exporter. It actually has relatively little to do with capitalism if one actually looks at the internal mechanisms, and more to do with government directed development.Kaleberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05283840743310507878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-17944463617344471622013-04-07T16:17:57.631-04:002013-04-07T16:17:57.631-04:00I think work-to-rule is a lousy example to illustr...I think work-to-rule is a lousy example to illustrate your point, which is rather vague. From your source: "Sometimes work-to-rule can be considered by employers as malicious compliance as they pursue legal action against workers." So it cuts both ways. Work-to-rule is nothing more than two parties exercising their rights under a contract under which they've both agreed to the terms (albeit often under duress). However, enforcement of that contract <i>is</i> subject to rule-of-law. And that's where things can go seriously off the rails, as it has here in the U.S., where it's been relegated to a quaint notion of the past--dead since Bush v Gore, FISA reform, Guantanamo, and Citizens United. Maybe our new wealth model to replace "land theft" is "Wall Street theft," "Speech=Money," and "Corporations are People." Whether that model is sustainable remains to be seen, but I doubt it.<br /><br />Taylor BAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-45145567250621186862013-04-07T09:17:49.275-04:002013-04-07T09:17:49.275-04:00Noah: Thanks for your reply! I'm sorry you quo...Noah: Thanks for your reply! I'm sorry you quoted that stuff about Gotcha. I like a bit of fencing with people like Mattski, but I did actually start with engaging seriously with your ideas, and I do appreciate how Mattski does occasionally make a relevant point in amongst the Gotcha attempts. <br /><br /><i>The idea here is that Britain and the Netherlands had a "captive market" because of their large colonial empires.</i><br /><br />Doesn't this imply that currently poor countries therefore don't need to wait for what the rich countries can absorb, but could start getting rich by exporting to other poor countries as well? <br /><br /><i>And nowadays, according to the hypothesis, rich countries are a much better source of demand for the manufacturing exports of rapidly growing countries...this allows countries like Korea, China, etc. to industrialize faster now than Britain did back in the day.</i><br /><br />But surely any country now could industralise faster than Britain did? Britain had to both invent new technology, and figure out how to implement that technology in the context of Britain's particular geography and society. Countries like China and Korea can buy in the latest technology, and draw on experiences from countries as diverse as Canada to Singapore about how to apply it to their own societies' context. Assuming that people in china now are at least as intelligent as those in Britain 200 years ago, I'd expect the process of industrialisation to be faster just on that basis alone. (It's why we have education in the sciences, because most of us can learn what others have invented, such as Newtonian physics, far faster than we could reinvent it ourselves). Tracy Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08999246551652981965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-6357936757365202642013-04-07T08:57:38.937-04:002013-04-07T08:57:38.937-04:00Mattski: "Japan beat Russia at war in 1905, w...Mattski: <i>"Japan beat Russia at war in 1905, which is over 100 years ago."</i><br /><br /><i>Seriously?</i><br /><br />Yes, seriously. You could check this information at your local library, if you don't trust Wikipedia nor Google. <br /><br /><i>This looks to me like an amateurish attempt at Gotcha.</i><br /><br />Sadly it looks to me like that too. But I'm sure that with a bit of effort you could move up to the professional level. Or (my preferred option) you could stop your attempts at Gotcha and try actual rational debate about the ideas in question. <br /><br /><i>Does it take a genius to figure out that some countries had to be first to industrialize and become relatively wealthy and that obviously, those countries didn't have wealthy nations to sell to... there weren't any! </i><br /><br />I agree with you entirely that it doesn't take a genius to figure this out. That's why I didn't bother spelling out this point, instead I just asked my question. I assumed that my readers would be intelligent enough to figure this out, and I am glad that you, at least, live up to my expectations on this point.<br /><br /><i>This is what characterizes early economic development, the lack of wealthy trading partners. And that is a fundamental difference to the recent history Noah's post addresses.</i><br /><br />Yes, and why do you and Noah think it is a relevant difference? If Britain and the Netherlands could develop without wealthy trading partners, couldn't current poor countries develop by selling to other poor countries now? <br /><br /><i>Why don't you apply your "perfect level of awareness" </i><br /><br />Why don't you apply your own advice to read carefully? First you missed Noah's references to events well before one hundred years ago, now you are misquoting me. If you had followed your own advice, you'd note that I said that I had read Noah's post with a "perfect level of carefulness". <br /><br /><i>Get back to us when you decide what period of history it concerns itself with. Thanks.</i><br /><br />How about we make a deal? You agree to read and quote what I and Noah say carefully, you are after all fairly intelligent, in amongst the nonsense above for example you managed to figure out (unaided!) the relevance of my comment about the Netherlands and Britain, and once you've done so for two comments then I will carry out this request to the best of my ability. Deal?Tracy Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08999246551652981965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-77274943414264240622013-04-06T22:45:06.643-04:002013-04-06T22:45:06.643-04:00Same Anon here.
Mexico is also close to the U.S, ...Same Anon here.<br /><br />Mexico is also close to the U.S, so that argument doesn't seem to hold. (And Canada was invaded by the U.S. and had territory chopped off too).<br /><br />It's a myth that Canada has too much land. The reason is that the whole section from International Falls to Muskoka is simply uninhabitable. Same with Hope to Calgary (excluding a couple pockets). Can't grow crops on rock. While the U.S. has both latitude and longitude, Canada has a 4000 km strip 150 km wide. And the places that Canada is colder than includes Kiev, Buffalo, and Bangor.<br /><br />I get that resources can be a curse, but that's not enough. Finding resources after industrialization doesn't matter, as you say (United States, Norway, Britain)? Making sure that Shell doesn't develop your resources is exceedingly important (Nigeria)? Kicking out the white devils helps (Saudi) or hurts (Iran)?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-78286107491729594392013-04-06T19:32:52.573-04:002013-04-06T19:32:52.573-04:00This looks to me like an amateurish attempt at Got...<i>This looks to me like an amateurish attempt at Gotcha. Does it take a genius to figure out that some countries had to be first to industrialize and become relatively wealthy and that obviously, those countries didn't have wealthy nations to sell to... there weren't any! This is what characterizes early economic development, the lack of wealthy trading partners. And that is a fundamental difference to the recent history Noah's post addresses.</i><br /><br />Yes. The idea here is that Britain and the Netherlands had a "captive market" because of their large colonial empires. That doesn't mean, however, that the colonial empires lost out from that trade, so that game needn't have been zero-sum.<br /><br />And nowadays, according to the hypothesis, rich countries are a much better source of demand for the manufacturing exports of rapidly growing countries...this allows countries like Korea, China, etc. to industrialize faster now than Britain did back in the day.Noah Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-61134011982868030572013-04-06T19:29:05.845-04:002013-04-06T19:29:05.845-04:00Japan beat Russia at war in 1905, which is over 10...<i>Japan beat Russia at war in 1905, which is over 100 years ago.</i><br /><br />Seriously? Look, you asked a rhetorical question above,<br /><br /><i>which were those rich countries that the Dutch and British exporting to when they first industrialised?</i><br /><br />This looks to me like an amateurish attempt at Gotcha. Does it take a genius to figure out that some countries had to be first to industrialize and become relatively wealthy and that obviously, those countries didn't have wealthy nations to sell to... there weren't any! This is what characterizes <i>early</i> economic development, the lack of wealthy trading partners. And that is a fundamental difference to the recent history Noah's post addresses.<br /><br />Why don't you apply your "perfect level of awareness" to the theory Noah references as the best explanation of why manufacturing-export capitalism works so well? Get back to us when you decide what period of history it concerns itself with. Thanks.mattskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07936264188400397646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-32750399653738054112013-04-06T15:07:23.389-04:002013-04-06T15:07:23.389-04:00Uh. Canada?
Canada is a partial exception for sev...<i>Uh. Canada?</i><br /><br />Canada is a partial exception for several reasons. Canada always had too much land and too few people (it still does). That limited the power of land owners. If the "Family Compact" got too oppressive in Ontario there was wilderness just a hundred miles away that could be cleared and farmed. <br /><br />Proximity to the US was another factor. If conditions got too onerous in Canada it was a short trip to get into the United States and that gave poor people another exit (a lot of French Canadians from Quebec went to New England to work in textile mills.)<br /><br />The big resource advantage of Canada came with oil after the Second World War - that is after Canada had industrialized. When oil prices are high there are huge internal stresses in Canada - the dollar goes up, Alberta booms, and manufacturing in Ontario and Quebec gets slaughtered - so Canada is suffering a version of the resource curse. <br /><br />Absalonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09131268683451462949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-90591292652071833252013-04-06T13:38:53.182-04:002013-04-06T13:38:53.182-04:00And in plenty of countries today, something simila...And in plenty of countries today, something similar is still true. In countries suffering from the "resource curse", most of the income comes from oil drilling, or mining, or farming, or logging - in other words, from land. The people who own the land get fabulously rich, and the poor people languish in poverty, with little to do but open little shops and stalls in the slums, or work the mega-farms of the land barons.<br /><br />Uh. Canada?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-14144487554272023752013-04-06T10:01:46.436-04:002013-04-06T10:01:46.436-04:00lol to the Tom Friedman comment. And this is part...lol to the Tom Friedman comment. And this is particularly insightful, and deserves repeating: "Now, I don't want to get too down on people who believe that narrative, because that really was the way the world worked for many thousands of years. Almost all economy was farming, logging, mining, fishing, etc. The only capital was land, and land was fixed. Grab the land, and you grab the wealth. A zero-sum game where kings ruled and slaves starved."<br /><br />I believe there is quite a bit of cultural hangover from this situation -- it exists in minor proportion materially these days, but it's sort of embedded in people's feelings about wealth and powerGraham Petersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01026808626031607339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-84413727739150198842013-04-06T09:05:53.233-04:002013-04-06T09:05:53.233-04:00Mattski, on your claim that you think that Noah wa...Mattski, on your claim that you think that Noah was commenting about the last 100 years or so, my original careful reading of Noah's post covered this sentence:<br /><i>But in general, South Korea followed a blueprint outlined by America, Germany, and Japan. That blueprint is called, for lack of a better term, "manufacturing-export capitalism". </i><br />Now, America, Germany and Japan started getting rich earlier than South Korea. Japan beat Russia at war in 1905, which is over 100 years ago. Noah is clearly talking about a far wider sweep of history than the last 100 years ago (let alone the last 50 years). <br /><br /><i>There is good reason to believe that early and pre-industrial development differed in many significant particulars to the development of recent history.</i><br /><br />And if you or Noah spell out how you think these differences make the examples of Britain and the Netherlands irrelevant, I will read what you say with interest (and, of course, carefully). My pre-existing awareness of this possibility is why my original comment was a question, and prefaced with "I'm somewhat doubtful about this". <br /><br />As for your complaint about my quoting, I note that we are both commenting on Noah's original post, so anyone wishing to check Noah's exact words and caveats is free to scroll up and read that post. Your suggested standard strikes me as sacrificing brevity for no gain in reader information. I note even you yourself don't live up to your proposed standard as you've not included a single quote of my uncertainty in my original comment.<br /><br /><i>So, yeah, maybe you should read more carefully.</i><br /><br />Maybe, but I doubt it. I am feeling even more confident that I read Noah's post with the perfect level of carefulness than when you first brought this topic up. Tracy Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08999246551652981965noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-27044869996788178492013-04-05T23:35:35.724-04:002013-04-05T23:35:35.724-04:00Good grief, Tracy. I guess I have to spell this o...Good grief, Tracy. I guess I have to spell this out don't I? For starters, how you can read this post as a sweeping theory of the history of economic development is certainly a mystery. Noah is clearly talking about the last 100 years or so, if not the last 50 years of economic history (the story of South Korea's successful development.) Thus Absalon's point, which is congruent with Noah's. There is good reason to believe that early and pre-industrial development differed in many significant particulars to the development of recent history.<br /><br />Add to that, you have Noah claiming, "X is the only way a country gets rich." Now look at the passage you cite,<br /><br />"We don't really know what countries can do to get rich but the really successful ones all seem to do something that looks like "manufacturing-export capitalism. ... There's only a certain amount of manufacturing exports that the rich countries can absorb."<br /><br />I read that, I see words like "we don't really know" and "seem" and "looks like". It doesn't add up to your characterization, and it certainly doesn't pretend to stretch back into history indefinitely. So, yeah, maybe you should read more carefully.<br /><br />mattskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07936264188400397646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-52507876682970163142013-04-05T15:21:40.841-04:002013-04-05T15:21:40.841-04:00You just described what has worked for Mexico, Sou...<i>You just described what has worked for Mexico, South Korea, who cares if some successful policies enacted would be supported by "bad guys" (the "right").</i><br /><br />Exactly.<br /><br /><i>Just as I was about to praise you for a well-thought out post,</i><br /><br />It's OK, praise makes me feel uncomfortable.Noah Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-46118497342595548982013-04-05T13:50:25.831-04:002013-04-05T13:50:25.831-04:00Just as I was about to praise you for a well-thoug...Just as I was about to praise you for a well-thought out post, I got to this part:<br /><br />"(This doesn't mean I think that the Right has it right in Latin American countries..."<br /><br />You just described what has worked for Mexico, South Korea, who cares if some successful policies enacted would be supported by "bad guys" (the "right").<br /><br />I think we get farther by being more pragmatic about what works for development and what does not.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-66396817556946109362013-04-05T11:02:03.991-04:002013-04-05T11:02:03.991-04:00The Irony is that Latin America is in general much...The Irony is that Latin America is in general much closer to middle income than poor. I think manufacturing is an important step and the ability to tap foreign markets means you don't need to develop domestic ones immediately alongside manufacturing growth. The real development is agricultural workers become factory workers, this leaves you middle income, then factory workers become knowledge/service workers.<br />Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13305124836711242805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-24224725335881855822013-04-05T09:34:47.954-04:002013-04-05T09:34:47.954-04:00Mattski, what you say has a good deal of truth on ...Mattski, what you say has a good deal of truth on it,and I feel glad that I avoided the fault you identify and instead made a comment carefully connected to what Mattski clearly did say. Tracy Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08999246551652981965noreply@blogger.com