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Why Nations Fail (Read 34116 times)
Grappler Truth Teller Feller
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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #240 - Dec 29th, 2017 at 12:08am
 
.. because they are taken over by a group of self-interested twerps who imagine that the whole idea of running a nation is to extract as much wealth from it for themselves as possible...

Any of that sound familiar?
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“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― John Adams
 
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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #241 - Dec 30th, 2017 at 8:49am
 
That's actually a half decent precis of the book.
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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #242 - Mar 19th, 2023 at 7:32pm
 
freediver wrote on Mar 19th, 2023 at 7:15pm:
issuevoter wrote on Mar 19th, 2023 at 9:24am:
Concerning the OP, I doubt the CCP is internally democratic, anymore Putin's little videoed gathering where he asked for votes on the invasion of Ukraine. The intimidation was palpable.


Intra-Party Democracy in China: Should We Take It Seriously?

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/fall_china_democracy_li.pdf

Quote:
It is evident that those who favor more political
reforms, especially more competitive elections within the political
establishment, now control the platform and agenda of the CCP. This
article argues that intra-Party democracy not only reflects the need for
institutionalizing the new rules and norms of elite politics in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC), but might also provide for an incremental and
manageable experiment of Chinese-style democracy.


A good example from recent history: note the lack of civil war required to backflip on starvation communism, despite Deng falling from power twice. It is a good demonstration of Daron Acemoglu's theories about political and economic inclusiveness reinforcing each other and creating wealth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping

After Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng gradually rose to supreme power and led China through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms earning him the reputation as the "Architect of Modern China".[5] He contributed to China becoming the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP in 2010.

However, his right-leaning political stance and economic policies eventually caused him to fall out of favor with Mao, and he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).

The reforms carried out by Deng and his allies gradually led China away from a planned economy and Maoist ideologies, opened it up to foreign investments and technology, and introduced its vast labor force to the global market, thus turning China into one of the world's fastest-growing economies.[8] He was eventually characterized as the "architect" of a new brand of thinking combining socialist ideology with free enterprise, dubbed "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (now known as Deng Xiaoping Theory).

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #243 - Mar 19th, 2023 at 7:36pm
 
freediver wrote on Mar 15th, 2014 at 7:23am:
Why Nations Fail (by Acemoglu and Robinson) is a book I am currently reading that attempts to explain the enormous variations in wealth seen in the world today. It attributes these differences to economic institutions, which are largely dictated by political institutions. Institutions is intended in the broad meaning - eg property rights, democracy etc. It highlights how both the patterns in wealth and the patterns in these institutions have been very (though not entirely) stable over the last 150 years, and argues an institutional inertia (my term) that goes beyond the influence of the powerful individuals involved. It suggests why it is so hard to break the mold, and how to break it (not up to that part yet).

It also rejects some of the conventional arguments - eg:

* Culture - that Protestant, Judea-Christian, European or Roman culture is what makes the west so rich, while attempting to disentangle the various meanings of culture. Culture is part of the economic and political institutions that make countries rich or poor. He even argues that the middle east is not poor because of Islam, though I suspect he has never met anyone like Abu.

* Geography - that people in hot countries are lazy, or the soil is less fertile, and various more complicated version of this theory. It addresses the "Guns, Germs and Steel" hypothesis of Jared Diamond and puts it in it's place as an explanation for why the west was able to dominate the world, while highlighting the inability of this theory to explain vast differences in wealth seen in those countries colonised or settled by Europeans.

* Ignorance - that leaders or people in poor countries do not understand how to get rich. This is the explanation favoured by many modern economists. It highlights that even when they do understand, the people in power usually don't want to. Even when they are forced to or try to make the change, it is fraught with danger, because the problems are institutionalised within the economy and the politics. The idiotic economic policies of various tinpot dictators are not determined out of ignorance of economics, but by the economic and political institutions that for the tinpot dictators are an unchangeable reality they must work within.

The causes of wealth and poverty are economic and political freedoms and rights that are closely linked or interact. For example - secure property rights, including patents, economic freedom, democracy and a broad distribution (separation) of political power.

In historical terms, it largely attributes these differences to "accidents of history".



Everything in the World FD - concerning Politics is being set up to be just a bigger version of the USA.


...but there are some that resist. A last alliance of Men, Elves and Dwarves.  Wink Cheesy
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AIMLESS EXTENTION OF KNOWLEDGE HOWEVER, WHICH IS WHAT I THINK YOU REALLY MEAN BY THE TERM 'CURIOSITY', IS MERELY INEFFICIENCY. I AM DESIGNED TO AVOID INEFFICIENCY.
 
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