- cross-posted to:
- science@beehaw.org
- china@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- science@beehaw.org
- china@sopuli.xyz
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4157628
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4157529
James Robinson, along with Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics for his research on the critical role institutions play in fostering national prosperity. In [this Q&A session]l with EL PAÍS, he explains that his work also seeks to highlight how the legacy of colonialism has impeded economic development in certain regions, particularly in Latin America and Africa.
James Robinson: […] we make a simple division, focusing on the presence of inclusive institutions or extractive institutions. Inclusive institutions create broad incentives and opportunities for all people equally, while extractive institutions concentrate benefits and incentives in the hands of a few. Many economists say that development comes from entrepreneurship and innovation, but in reality it comes from people’s dreams, creativity and aspirations. To be prosperous, you have to create a series of institutions that can cultivate this talent. However, if you look at countries like Colombia or Nigeria, talent is wasted because people do not have opportunities.
[…]
Institutions can be an obstacle to competitiveness. However, one should consider the impact that European integration had on countries such as Spain, Portugal or the former Soviet countries. These are remarkable success stories. There has been an almost unprecedented transition. It is true that there may be too much regulation or inefficient rules, but broadly speaking the effects of European institutions has been largely positive over the past 50 years.
[…]
[Immigration] is one of the big questions we have to solve. […] it can be difficult. It is not easy to quickly incorporate the millions of people who cross the Mediterranean [trying to reach Europe]. One of the possible ways is to help them develop in order to improve the terrible situation in their own countries. However, one of the biggest complications is that the policies recommended by Western institutions are not in tune with what is happening in these [developing] countries. At the World Bank, for example, you cannot talk about politics. How do we expect them to solve real problems when you cannot talk about them? Frankly, it doesn’t make sense. If we really want to change the world, we have to have honest conversations. I see that as a long way off.
[…]
The reality is that democratic countries have shown that they are better at managing public services and achieving rapid growth. You can find impressive examples like China among autocratic countries, but you cannot achieve an inclusive economy with an authoritarian regime and a model like the Chinese one.
[…]
I don’t think the Chinese model can continue. If you look at other authoritarian regimes, like Iran or Russia, they are incredibly weak economically and technologically. The economy cannot flourish in an authoritarian regime. Right now, technological dynamism is concentrated in one such country and in the Western world. However, one has to consider that, with Donald Trump, the institutions that have made the United States great are being seriously questioned. This could affect the context, and that is why the European Union and NATO are so important.
[…]
[Populism is linked to the growing disconnect between governments and citizens] and an example of this is Latin America. Democracy promised too much and did not always deliver. People’s lives did not change, and they sought new alternatives. There are various factors why democracy has not achieved transformations, such as clientelism and corruption. […] Venezuela was governed in a deeply corrupt manner, and Hugo Chávez was clever in taking advantage of it. You also see this with Donald Trump, who has gone far because he realized there was widespread dissatisfaction with traditional politics. The failures of democratic institutions are real, and that is why we have to think about how to make them more empathetic to what people need.
[…]
Artificial intelligence can be wonderful, but like all technologies, it depends on how it is used. If artificial intelligence is used to create replacements for humans, that could be devastating. […] It is all about how it is used, and that depends on our governments. I think that these decisions should not be left to the tech gurus. They only think about what makes them the most money, even if this is not related to the general well-being of society. In the case of artificial intelligence, it is very important, because it could have a tectonic impact on the world.
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Oh boy, ml is going to be real mad about this one. 🫳🍿
Agreed. The economy and well-being of countries definitely suffer from authoritarian regimes in the long term, but…
What about their armies?
Their armies suffer too. Authoritarian regimes rely on repression, which rely on the military. This means that the military cannot be allowed to be staffed by competent men at all levels, or they might realize that THEY are the true power in the state, and overthrow the oligarchs to institute their own oligarchy. This is why so many long-lasting authoritarian regimes have massive armies that absolutely dissolve the instant pressure is put on them. They’ve been hollowed out by years of political maneuvering by rightfully-paranoid oligarchs.
You sure about that? China and Russia hiked their way up to the top 3 in what… 15 years?
You sure about that? China and Russia hiked their way up to the top 3 in what… 15 years?
Yes, I am absolutely sure about that. Russia managed to fuck up a surprise attack against an enemy directly on their border they had been making plans against for the past decade and that they outgunned by an order of magnitude, with a population and military 5 times its size, and ample intelligence and access to intelligence within the country.
That’s not the performance of a powerful military. That’s the performance of an authoritarian regime’s showpiece being put up to an actual test and failing miserably.
I would really love to have a conversation about how the Nazis had a great economy, capable of going from rebuilding from WWI to starting WWII in 20 years.
I feel like worshipping the economy, and having it be the sole measure of society, inevitably leads us to the far-right. China is not going to magically crumble, and economic prosperity is achievable without societal progress.
We need to have societal progress as the goal, not some magic by-product of line go up.
The Nazis overheated the German economy not entirely unlike what is happening in Russia right now. It wasn’t sustainable nor healthy.
I would really love to have a conversation about how the Nazis had a great economy, capable of going from rebuilding from WWI to starting WWII in 20 years.
Okay. 14 years under a relatively liberal democratic regime, and then 6 years of a fascist government seizing the property of anyone who was against the state, followed by another 6 years of a fascist government plundering nearby countries in order to fuel the war machine, all without providing a decent standard of living to its population. But hey, they had lots of guns, so I guess that’s success.
The only competent Nazi economist of note was sidelined less than 3 years into the regime’s rule.
I would really love to have a conversation about how the Nazis had a great economy, capable of going from rebuilding from WWI to starting WWII in 20 years.
I mean more than two thirds of those 20 years were the Weimar republic, so if anything the credit goes to Weimar Germany here. The only contributions Nazis made to the economy were plundering Eastern European and Jewish wealth.
Germany didn’t build up middle class as much, more the lower class (that was saved from starvation), the added a lot to national wealth & common everyday lives via accessible public infrastructure (all of it basically, not just the roads & railroads).
And China is curbing it’s economical growth, and societal changes are happening, the first gens with mandatory education are now retired already.
I can’t really say how much and what directions it’s taking them, but no-one can prob - time will tell.
He’s right, but it can take a long time and people will suffer in the mean time. Would be nice to skip ahead.
In a piece published in November 2022, Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu argues that China’s economy is rotting from the head.
For a while, [China’s leader] Xi, his entourage, and even many outside experts believed that the economy could still flourish under conditions of tightening central control, censorship, indoctrination, and repression [after Xi secured an unprecedented third term (with no future term limits in sight), and stacked the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with loyal supporters]. Again, many looked to AI as an unprecedentedly powerful tool for monitoring and controlling society.
Yet there is mounting evidence to suggest that Xi and advisers misread the situation, and that China is poised to pay a hefty economic price for the regime’s intensifying control. Following sweeping regulatory crackdowns on Alibaba, Tencent, and others in 2021, Chinese companies are increasingly focused on remaining in the political authorities’ good graces, rather than on innovating.
The inefficiencies and other problems created by the politically motivated allocation of credit are also piling up, and state-led innovation is starting to reach its limits. Despite a large increase in government support since 2013, the quality of Chinese academic research is improving only slowly.
[…] The top-down control in Chinese academia is distorting the direction of research, too. Many faculty members are choosing their research areas to curry favor with heads of departments or deans, who have considerable power over their careers. As they shift their priorities, the evidence suggests that the overall quality of research is suffering.
Xi’s tightening grip over science and the economy means that these problems will intensify. And as is true in all autocracies, no independent experts or domestic media will speak up about the train wreck he has set in motion […]
I wonder what that person who I talked to yesterday who was telling me that monarchies were superior to democracies would say about this?
I asked them who got to be king if the democracies were replaced with monarchies, but they wouldn’t tell me.
Hopefully not a Habsburg.
Did they give you any reasoning?
Curtis yarvin is a slime
Cool. Who gets to be king? You?
Edit: sorry, I thought you were agreeing with the monarchist. My mistake.
Strangely enough, I think the CCP is a lot more of an inclusive institution than Robinson and his coauthors are happy to admit. A lot of the decisions the Chinese government makes are aimed at increasing national wealth and power. Narrow extractive behavior – siphoning wealth away to benefit the elites – definitely does happen in China, but not significantly more (and maybe less) than nominally democratic countries at a similar stage of development.
There’s plenty of scope to dunk on the CCP, e.g. human rights. But Acemoglu/Robinson political economy framework, based on inclusive/extractive institutions, isn’t the right argument for this.
Yes, exactly this - the first half of the title I was sure it was a comment on western economies.
And I do think that, we live under economic dictatorship.
When production is high enough that scarcity is only planned/artificial, and when you have (such excessive) inequality in labour compensation, it’s not in the overall economical systems interest to continue such nonsense (but ofc it’s in the elites, which have to constantly change and maintain the system in such a state).I think it superficially seems inclusive because the overwhelming majority, over 90%, of Chinese citizens are the same ethnicity of Han Chinese.
deleted by creator
that’s just rehashed fukuyama
From what I can see, their whole Nobel is just claiming to have discovered things everyone in many other disciplines has known for decades (at the last). Maybe economists are just a bit slow.
Neoliberal hacks gonna hack I guess.
OK, so show me this democracy, that had 30+ years f double digit economic growth.
I’m all for democracy, and will oppose anything else, but let’s not make our ideals cloud our vision of reality.
China is not succeeding despite or because of a 1 party rule, but because they’ve had economic policies that stimulated growth.Economies prefer open markets and stability and predictability, whether it’s delivered by a democracy or not is probably irrelevant.
Democracies tend to be the best guarantee for the conditions that benefit economy, but China has done a very good job at it too.Democracy is a fundamental value, but you still have to be able to take action on big stuff. There’s a time to gather all the best information possible and a time to make an actual decision that has consequences. Unfortunately, by not taking that lead, democracies are outsourcing the big consequential stuff to undemocratic corporations.
But not too democratic because then the economy suffers amirite? Like, in the democracies, the poors must always be kept on a leash otherwise they might start getting ideas, right? RIGHT?
See Hong Kong circa 2019
☂️<-pretend it’s yellow
what‘s this inclusive economy he‘s talking about?
So when china eventually surpasses all other countries economically and the BRICS countries prosper as a whole, will this guys ideas be disproven or will he have excuses?
Anyone who mentions BRICS like it’s a coherent organisation disqualifies themselves from being taken seriously.
I mean Chinese GDP per capita is below the worldwide average so I’m not sure what you’re talking about. China has a mildly conscientious government so they’re doing well for an autocracy, but make no mistake they’re not coming close to Western countries if you account for population differences. Also don’t forget that China is one mad dictator away from completely falling apart (remember Mao?) so statistically they’re not gonna survive long enough in their current state to beat the West.
They also have a youth unemployment rate of over 20%.
Angry youth is not a good thing for a regime.
China was doing better when it was an oligarchy; Xi’s consolidation of power will not end well for China. Or it won’t end well for Xi. One or the other.
I also have hopes and dreams.
Income equality is just one of many other factors to assess a just society as we know. But as many focus on China’s GDP growth in its recent history, here are just numbers:
Between 2014 and 2022, in China the share of the bottom-50% income group (pre-tax) in the national income fell from 14.4% to 13.7%. In the same period, the shares of the top-1% and top-10% income groups rose from 13.7% and 41.5% to 15.7% to 43.4%, respectively. In a nutshell: the Chinese rich got richer, the poor got poorer.
For Western-style democracies countries, the numbers are diverse:
In European democracies like Germany and especially Norway, top income groups lost while the bottom-50% gained, while in countries like Finland all three mentioned groups gained, suggesting that the ‘middle class’ paid the bill. In other countries like Sweden, Denmark, and the U.S., the numbers show gains for the top at the cost of the bottom half.
And in Australia, top income groups lost significantly more than the bottom-50% gained, suggesting the middle class benefited, while in countries like Canada and Japan there appear to be only slight or even no significant changes in the period between 2014-2022.
But as I said, we must also focus on other factors that makes a good society (the four freedoms come to my mind: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear). Given the numbers and the fact that some in this thread cite China’s GDP and national wealth as a factor of societal success, it is clear that this argument does not hold, though.
