No, a nation’s geography is not its destiny
This essay is adapted from Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, published this week. For more from these authors, see their blog.
If you start in the city center of Nogales, Santa Cruz [Arizona] and walk south for a while, at some point you see houses become much more run down, streets turn decrepit. You have crossed the Mexican border into Nogales, Sonora. Though the two cities are made of the same cloth and were once united, now there are sharp differences between the two. Those in the north are about three times as rich, have access to much better health care, stay in school much longer and of course take part in a much more democratic political process than their cousins in the south. The differences between the two halves of Nogales are a micro, tiny version of huge differences in prosperity and living standards we see around the world. Take Mexico as a whole, for example: it has less than one quarter of the GDP per capita of the United States. Take Peru; it has about one seventh of the GDP per capita of the United States. Or take Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia or the Congo, each of [which] has less than one thirtieth of the GDP per capita of the United States. Our thesis is that these differences are the outcome of different economic and political institutions which lead to very different incentives.
Though history bears out the defining role of institutions in shaping prosperity and poverty, most social scientists and experts have emphasized different factors. One of the most widely accepted alternative theories of world inequality is the geography hypothesis, which claims that the great divide between rich and poor countries is created by geographical differences. Many poor countries, such as those of Africa, Central America, and South Asia, are between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Rich nations, in contrast, tend to be in temperate latitudes. This geographic concentration of poverty and prosperity gives a superficial appeal to the geography hypothesis, which is the starting point of the theories and views of many social scientists and pundits alike. But this doesn’t make it any less wrong.
As early as the late eighteenth century, the great French political philosopher Montesquieu noted the geographic concentration of prosperity and poverty, and proposed an explanation for it. He argued that people in tropical climates tended to be lazy and to lack inquisitiveness. As a consequence, they didn’t work hard and were not innovative, and this was the reason why they were poor. Montesquieu also speculated that lazy people tended to be ruled by despots, suggesting that a tropical location could explain not just poverty but also some of the political phenomena associated with economic failure, such as dictatorship.
The theory that hot countries are intrinsically poor, though contradicted by the recent rapid economic advance of countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Botswana, is still forcefully advocated by some, such as the economist Jeffrey Sachs. The modern version of this view emphasizes not the direct effects of climate on work effort or thought processes, but two additional arguments: first, that tropical diseases, particularly malaria, have very adverse consequences for health and therefore labor productivity; and second, that tropical soils do not allow for productive agriculture. The conclusion, though, is the same: temperate climates have a relative advantage over tropical and semitropical areas.
World inequality, however, cannot be explained by climate or diseases, or any version of the geography hypothesis. Just think of Nogales. What separates the two parts is not climate, geography, or disease environment, but the U.S.-Mexico border. If the geography hypothesis cannot explain differences between the north and south of Nogales, or North and South Korea, or those between East and West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, could it still be a useful theory for explaining differences between North and South America? Between Europe and Africa? Simply, no. History illustrates that there is no simple or enduring connection between climate or geography and economic success. For instance, it is not true that the tropics have always been poorer than temperate latitudes. At the time of the conquest of the Americas by Columbus, the areas south of the Tropic of Cancer and north of the Tropic of Capricorn, which today include Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Bolivia, held the great Aztec and Inca civilizations. These empires were politically centralized and complex, built roads, and provided famine relief. The Aztecs had both money and writing, and the Incas, even though they lacked both these two key technologies, recorded vast amounts of information on knotted ropes called quipus. In sharp contrast, at the time of the Aztecs and Incas, the north and south of the area inhabited by the Aztecs and Incas, which today includes the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Chile, were mostly inhabited by Stone Age civilizations lacking these technologies. The tropics in the Americas were thus much richer than the temperate zones, suggesting that the “obvious fact” of tropical poverty is neither obvious nor a fact. Instead, the greater riches in the United States and Canada represent a stark reversal of fortune relative to what was there when the Europeans arrived.
This reversal clearly had nothing to do with geography and, something to do with the way these areas were colonized. This reversal was not confined to the Americas. People in South Asia, especially the Indian subcontinent, and in China were more prosperous than those in many other parts of Asia and certainly more than the peoples inhabiting Australia and New Zealand. This, too, was reversed, with South Korea, Singapore, and Japan emerging as the richest nations in Asia, and Australia and New Zealand surpassing almost all of Asia in terms of prosperity. Even within sub-Saharan Africa there was a similar reversal.
A caucus-goer’s community
We think of caucus-goers as unduly politically active. But the data suggests they care far more about something closer to home.
By Eitan D. Hersh
The views expressed are his own.
With its endless primetime debates, strange delegate rules, and state-by-state sequential elections, the Presidential nomination season stimulates both intrigue and dismay at the peculiarities of the U.S. election system. And for those of us who reside in states where casting a primary ballot is procedurally identical to casting a general-election ballot, the caucus system used in about a quarter of the states seems particularly odd. What kind of person, we primary-voters might ask, is willing to spend several hours on a winter night voting in a public setting and listening to neighbors bicker about politics?
Pundits (and supporters of candidates who lose caucuses) answer this question in a familiar refrain: extreme political activists dominate the caucuses, which makes them unfair, unrepresentative, and even undemocratic institutions.
But the evidence from past elections suggests otherwise. It turns out that caucus attendees are different from primary voters, but not because they have a stronger commitment to politics. Rather, caucus-goers are outliers because they tend to be more engaged in community endeavors, like in volunteering and school committee work, compared to primary voters. How is it that the design of these electoral institutions incentivizes some people to show up and others to stay home?
THis is so funny to me – wasn’t it Republicans who not once but twice during their ’08 convention thought it smart to mock community activists?
The Democrats’ opportunity in the supercommittee’s failure
By Nicholas Wapshott All opinions expressed are his own.
Thanksgiving, I don’t have to remind you, marks the settling of irreconcilable differences between the early settlers and the original Americans, the burying of the hatchet, as it were, between Christians and heathens. If only this Thanksgiving marked the same.
The Congressional supercommittee that was created to find $1.2 trillion in spending cuts has until November 23, the night before Thanksgiving, to find a way to pay down the national debt. But things look bleak. Former Bill Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles, whose own deficit cutting plan dribbled into the sand, told the committee the prospect of their reaching an agreement is no more than 50-50. If there is going to be any burying of the hatchet this Thanksgiving, it may be deep in someone’s cranium.
The arguments in the committee echo the ill-tempered debate in the summer over extending the federal debt ceiling. As before, the Democrats will only agree to entitlement cuts if the Republicans agree to raise taxes on the wealthy. As tax breaks for the rich have become an article of faith for Republicans, compromise seems unlikely. Intransigence is the order of the day.
But there is a significant difference between the obduracy on display in July and the obduracy that may doom an agreement this time around. In the summer, the Republicans were calling the shots: agree to a debt deal without tax increases for the top earners or we’ll allow the government to default on its debts and the dollar to be downgraded. This time failure to come up with a deal will automatically trigger $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, starting in January 2013. The slash and burn program was built in to the debt ceiling deal to spur the committee to agree. Neither side, it was thought, would want such brutal cuts, divided evenly between the military and benefits for the old and the unfortunate.
This would appear to give the advantage to the Republicans, the party of small government, who favor deeper cuts made more quickly. They should take care what they wish for, because there are considerable benefits to the Democrats if the scale and substance of the automatic cuts become real. The president set out on his reelection campaign in earnest two months ago when he demanded the Jobs Act, a $447 billion Keynesian stimulus by another name, be passed, despite knowing it never would be. Since then he has been on a bus tour to key election battlegrounds such as Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina, telling his audiences he could find them the jobs they crave if only the Republicans would be reasonable.
The failure of the supercommittee would allow him a second line of attack. So far the putative Republican candidates have concentrated upon flash-card bromides to pander to their base, vague talk about deregulation and government waste, and the gimmickry of flat tax schemes. While they urge paying off debt and shrinking the federal government without delay, they have been notably quiet about exactly what they would like to see cut. This is treacherous territory. As the Tea Party sloganeering made clear, it is always easier to see someone else’s benefits cut or someone else lose their public sector job than have your own Medicare reduced or lose your own job.
The super committee is a sham. There will be no agreement.Mandatory cuts will be made. Then K Street will call Congress and tell them what to put back in the budget.
Did anyone see the new farm substidies. Tea party representatives are falling all over themselves to give that money away.
Congress isn’t impotent, it is bought and paid for.
Do libertarians like Peter Thiel really want to live in America?
By Sally Kohn The opinions expressed are her own.
It sounds like “Fantasy Island” meets “The Twilight Zone” — a privately funded island nation created for the sole purpose of escaping government.
In the olden days, corporate titans just hired pricey lawyers and accountants to dodge the watchful eye of government regulation and the law. But thanks to record economic inequality that has enriched the already-wealthy more than ever, a group of investors has the spare millions to build an entirely man-made ocean-bound nation where they can make the rules up themselves. It’s Libertarianism 2.0: the final, floating frontier.
In a recent profile by Details magazine, it was revealed that PayPal founder and libertarian activist Peter Thiel has contributed $1.25 million dollars to the Seasteading Institute, a plan hatched by the grandson of free market economist Milton Friedman to establish “new sovereign nations built on oil-rig-type platforms anchored in international waters — free from the regulation, laws, and moral suasion of any landlocked country.” The Details profile explains, “They’d be small city-states at first, although the aim is to have tens of millions of seasteading residents by 2050.” Already, plans are underway to launch an office complex off the coast of San Francisco next year, adding full-time housing settlements on the island seven years later.
Don’t like the idea of tax dollars paying for public schools or highway construction or Medicare — or don’t like the idea of taxes at all? The brave new floating world offers just the solution. And if the self-appointed creators wish it, there would be no restrictions on guns or automatic weapons. Or, for that matter, no prohibition against murder. Pesky “moral suasion”!
The seasteading project is a bright and shiny warning buoy, heralding the dangerous agenda of otherwise tame-seeming libertarians. It raises the question of whether libertarians want to prune back American government or eliminate it altogether. This is not an idle concern. Prominent Libertarians want to abolish the Federal Reserve, FEMA and the TSA and that may be just the start. Until 2006, the Libertarian Party Platform explicitly supported the right of political entities, private groups and even individuals to secede from the federal government. Fearing this seemed too extremist, Libertarians replaced that platform plank with a clause about the right of people to abolish the government anytime it destroys individual liberty — a very narrow and ominous reinterpretation of the Declaration of Independence.
Fringe movements, of course, rarely cast themselves as obviously fringe. Racist, anti-civil rights forces cloaked themselves in the benign language of “state’s rights”. Anti-gay religious entities adopted the glossy, positive imagery of “family values”. Similarly, though many Libertarians embrace a pseudo-patriotic apple pie nostalgia, behind this façade is a very un-American, sinister vision.
What a charlatan. This writer is so ignorant but so arrogant and confidante in her assumption of libertarianism. God. Why do people not do their research before saying something?
from MediaFile:
Looking beyond Schiller’s signoff from NPR
Here we go again. In February, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed a budget that would eliminate federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That event tells you everything you need to know about the resignation this morning of NPR president and chief executive office Vivian Schiller. Yes, her underling Robert Schiller (no relation) embarrassed the organization by making some politically inexpedient remarks about the Tea Party, Republicans,and some more arcane issues, all captured on tape by conservative activists.
But at the average media organization, the “gotcha” video moment would likely have passed without the CEO’s resignation. Public radio is not the average media organization. It is held to an almost certainly unobtainable standard of objectivity, while commercial radio has thrived in recent decades by cultivating the most extreme political voices. It has a significantly larger audience than public television, yet receives a much smaller amount of public funding. And in order to further survival in its current form, it’s forced to regularly appeal to a relatively small number of legislators whose animosity toward it is deep and very public.
Radio has always occupied a peculiar place in American public broadcasting. Unlike, say, Britain, where radio was the original medium that created the audience-funded BBC empire, radio has never been the star of the American public broadcasting galaxy. As I documented in a book called Made Possible By…: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States, the Johnson Administration’s original draft of the Public Broadcasting Act made no mention of radio at all; a Johnson aide claimed that radio was hastily added the night before the bill was sent to Congress. All the emphasis was on television, a bias that the budgets for American public radio and television have displayed ever since. A public radio official in 1975 agreed with a Congressman’s assessment that public radio was “sort of a poor relative to public TV.”
At the same time, NPR’s news programs today enjoy audiences much larger than any regular program on public television. NPR’s “Morning Edition,” for example, claims a weekly audience of 14 million listeners, making it larger even than “All Things Considered,” which has been on the air longer (and celebrates its 40th birthday later this spring). Cumulatively the NPR news audience is well over 20 million a week. NPR.org also claims a monthly audience of more than 9 million unique visitors (though many of those visitors are probably also NPR listeners).
How is it, then, that a media organization of this size and strength finds itself being pushed around so publicly and effectively by video pranksters and Members of Congress? After all, when the government created the current system of public broadcasting, it was designed to protect broadcasters against political interference through the CPB, which was intended as a “heat shield.” It has proven to be one of the least effective shields imaginable—in part because politicians of both parties have treated public broadcasting as a dumping ground for political patronage. (One of Schiller’s predecessors as president of NPR, for example, was Frank Mankiewicz, who had been a press secretary to Bobby Kennedy and had run George McGovern’s disastrous 1972 presidential campaign.)
The truth is that the political games around public broadcasting—the complaints about bias, the pious pronouncements about the need for sex- and violence-free programming, the naked lobbying that permeates the airwaves whenever federal funding is in doubt—will not die as long as public broadcasting receives one penny in federal funding.
NPR officials will hastily assert that the portion of its overall budget that comes from the federal government is quite small—true, but not the point. Almost any funding source for public broadcasting—taxpayer funds, corporate underwriting, listener pledges—comes with string attached. But few of those strings will have the pull to remove the CEO in the middle of a political tempest. The irony of the Schiller affair is that the sting video captured a prominent NPR executive making a point identical to that made by his Congressional tormentors—namely, that “it is clear that [NPR] would be better off in the long-run without federal funding.”
Digital media and the Arab spring
By Philip N. Howard, author of “The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam,” and director of the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam at the University of Washington. The opinions expressed are his own.
President Obama identified technology as one of the key variables that enabled and encouraged average Egyptians to protest. Digital media didn’t oust Mubarak, but it did provide the medium by which soulful calls for freedom have cascaded across North Africa and the Middle East. It is difficult to know when the Arab Spring will end, but we can already say something about the political casualties, long-term regional consequences and the modern recipe for democratization.
It all started with a desperate Tunisian shopkeeper who set himself on fire, which activated a transnational network of citizens exhausted by authoritarian rule. Within weeks, digitally-enabled protesters in Tunisia tossed out their dictator. It was social media that spread both the discontent and inspiring stories of success from Tunisia across North Africa and into the Middle East.
The protests in Egypt drew the largest crowds in 50 years, and a second dictator fell from power. The discontent spread through networks of family and friends to Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen. Autocrats have had to dismiss their cabinets, sometimes several times, to placate frustrated citizens. Algerians had to lift a 19-year “state of emergency” and are gearing for demonstrations over the weekend. Even Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has had to make concessions to activists brave enough to raise street protests against government housing policy.
But perhaps the most important casualty in terms of global politics is the U.S. preference for stability over democracy in North Africa and the Middle East. This preference, expressed in different foreign policies, seems untenable when groundswells of public opinion mobilize for democracy.
What are the lessons for the West? First, Islamic fundamentalists may terrorize parts of the region, but a larger network of citizens now has political clout, largely because of social media. The Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the only way to organize political opposition. In a digital world, older ideologically recalcitrant political parties may not even be the most effective way to organize effective political opposition.
Rumsfeld’s biggest unknown
By Joshua Spivak The opinions expressed are his own.
The knives are out in Donald Rumsfeld’s new memoir, Known and Unknown. In defense of his long public service career and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the man who was both the youngest and oldest Defense Secretary clearly believes that a good offense is the best strategy.
While the book is receiving press for the intra-cabinet fights and for Rumsfeld cherry-picking his facts, it ends up being a useful and needed work: In eviscerating fellow members of President George W. Bush’s national security team, Rumsfeld raises questions about how the most critical parts of the executive branch operate.
With the relentlessly negative portrayals of political and military figures and constant complaints about the press and the legislature, it is not obvious that Rumsfeld is looking to make a larger point other than defending his tenure and slashing at adversaries. And slash he does — among the many, many bold-faced names who receive unwelcome shout-outs are long-time Rumsfeld foe George H.W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Al Gore (he even takes an early whack at Gore’s father), Jerry Bremer, Eric Shinseki, and, in a golden oldies moment, Nixon’s counsel John Ehrlichman. His assessment of Ehrlichman may be the best line in the book, noting,“Certainty without power can be interesting, and even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous.”
What gives some of these criticisms weight is Rumsfeld’s highlighting of flawed presidential operations. He starts with citing mismanagement with the one president who he greatly respects and admires, Gerald Ford. Rumsfeld keeps coming back to the mismanagement theme. At the end of his tenure in the Bush Administration, he notes: “After five years back in government, wrestling with natural and man-made disasters as well as two wars, it became clear to me that our government institutions were proving inadequate to the challenges of the twenty-first century and the information age.”
The critiques multiply with a series of attacks on the Army leadership, the intelligence community, on Colin Powell and the State Department. Unfortunately, the question of what are the proper roles of the State and Defense departments in a modern war and its aftermath are not answered by Rumsfeld in this book. His complaints, though, don’t seem that much different from the usual battles that many Defense and State Departments wage in other administrations.
Rumsfeld’s attacks on Rice and her tenure as National Security Advisor are of another order. Rumsfeld argues that Rice fundamentally misconstrued the position of the National Security Agency, not understanding that her job was not to “issue orders, provide guidance, or give tasks to combat commanders.” In Rumsfeld’s view, Rice injected herself into policy rather than being an organizer and neutral arbitrator.
“Certainty with power can be dangerous.”
Said Rumsfeld??? But not about anyone in the Bush administration, certainly not Bush or himself.
I think that gives you an insight into his success in bureaucratic warfare.
A normally crippling lack of self awareness, a total absence of self criticism, a shameless disregard of facts leaves reasonable people lost for words. The war is then won.
Of course, the first thing you need is an immensely priveleged start in life. For most of us such behaviour would lead to a psychiatric diagnosis.
from Bernd Debusmann:
In America, violence and guns forever
Another American mass shooting. Another rush to buy more guns.
On the Monday after the latest of the bloody rampages that are part of American life, gun sales in Arizona shot up by more than 60 percent and rose by an average of five percent across the entire country. The figures come from the FBI and speak volumes about a gun culture that has long baffled much of the world.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation compared January 10, 2011, with the corresponding Monday a year ago.
So what would prompt Americans to stock up their arsenals in the wake of the shooting in Tucson that killed six people and wounded 14, including Gabrielle Giffords, the congresswoman who was the target of an unhinged 22-year-old who has since been charged with attempted assassination?
To hear gun dealers tell it, demand went up because of fears that the Tucson shooting might lead to tighter gun laws. There was a similar spike in sales after the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where a deranged student killed 32 people and himself in the worst such massacre in American history.
Fear of regulation also drove up gun sales after President Barack Obama won the presidency in November 2008. In the first two months of 2009, about 2.5 million Americans bought guns, a 26 percent increase over the same period in 2008.
According to a CBS poll taken two days after Jared Loughner shot congresswoman Giffords in the head, Americans are almost evenly divided on the issue of gun control - 48 percent said gun laws should remain as they are or be made less strict, 47 in favor of more regulation. That is down from 56 percent in 2002 and confirms a Gallup analysis this week that found public support for stricter gun laws has declined over the past two decades.
If guns = freedom, Afghanistan and Iraq are the most free countries in the world.
Great post, Spection.
Rahm and the ultimate dead-end job
By Joshua Spivak The opinions expressed are his own.
Perplexed by Rahm Emanuel’s decision to quit as White House chief of staff, arguably the second most powerful political position in the country, in order to run for mayor of Chicago?
You’re not alone. Even Emanuel certainly hasn’t provided any real insight into why he is making the jump. If he’s hoping to further his political career beyond the Windy City, it is a strange decision. Recent history shows that a big city mayoralty is usually the end of the line.
Over the last half century, few of the mayors of America’s largest cities have had a political career after being mayor. Only three managed to be elected either governor or senator — Phoenix’s Jack Williams, San Diego’s Peter Wilson, who served as both governor and senator, and Philly’s Ed Rendell.
Three others managed to be appointed to a cabinet position — San Jose’s Norm Mineta, Dallas’ Ron Kirk and San Antonio’s Henry Cisneros. Two, Mineta and Dallas’ Earle Cabell, went to the House and a few went to the state legislature or back to the city council, but for the vast majority it was the end of their public career.
The top five cities — New York, LA, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix — are almost a complete shut out in promoting a political career. Only Phoenix’s mayor, Jack Williams, was elected as Arizona’s governor in 1966. Phoenix does have one other noteworthy former mayor, Terry Goddard, now the current Arizona attorney general and the Democratic nominee for governor. But he, like the former mayor of Houston who is the gubernatorial nominee in Texas, is behind in the polls.
In Chicago, the failure of advancement may be blamed on the stranglehold that the Daley’s have maintained on the mayoralty – the father and son have held the position for 43 of the last 55 years. Other cities have no such longevity problem. Being mayor of New York is a famous political death sentence. Rudy Giuliani’s failed presidential campaign served as a recent monument to the dead-end nature of the job.
statistics might tell a different story, Rahm wants to change all that, governor controls the whole state, mayor controls the city, logically its like comparing 8th grade and 10th grade, green belt and black belt, Rahm wants to challenge statistics, wants to challenge history, am completely with him, this is not a rule but a trend, trends, fads, fashions change
Fed can’t fix broken economy, politics
The Federal Reserve’s decision to move to a kind of quantitative neutrality is a tacit admission that it, or rather that the United States, is in a political bind that makes a bold response to a deteriorating economy difficult.
Despite reams of evidence that conditions are worsening — much of it cited in the statement the Fed made as it left rates on hold — the U.S. central bank made only a token gesture; announcing that as mortgage-related debt it holds on its balance sheet comes to term and is repaid it will replace it with new, mostly long-term, Treasuries.
That keeps its quantitative easing policy essentially static, a strategy dubbed “quantitative neutrality” by Northern Trust economist Asha Bangalore.
So, given that key measures of inflation are trending towards zero, that businesses are reluctant to hire, that corporations and banks alike are sitting on cash and that the outlook for the recovery, if indeed we want to call it that, is dimming, why such a feeble response?
In the end monetary policy has to have a political consensus behind it, and there is arguably less of that now than at any time in my 20 years of following markets.
That is partly because during the collective fantasy of the Great Moderation we all believed that monetary policy could somehow be technocratic and above politics. Up to a point …
The Federal Reserve, for totally understandable reasons, often got out in front of the political process to make bold moves during the dark days early on. They did things, to be blunt, that went beyond their mandate. They paid off AIG’s contracts and, by buying up mortgage debt supported one sector of the economy over the others, poaching on Congress’ turf and setting themselves up for risks to their independence.
In order to produce job growth, government investment and incentives must be poured into: research and development of clean energy and biochemistry, mass transit, improved infrastructure. Big business is not allowing these investments due to their fear that their stranglehold on the general public will loosen. Big business is not going to produce jobs, since they have just had a clear lesson in the willingness of its current workforce to increase production to keep their jobs. Only new business ventures will produce the jobs needed and that can’t happen with giant companies controlling Congress.
Another difference is that north of the border we murdered all the indigenes and wiped out their culture. South of the border the indigenous culture remains the majority ethos, with a relative few Europeans acting as overlords and exploiters.