Reddit reviews Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
We found 18 Reddit comments about Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Crown Business
Russians were very late to industrialization. The absolutistic government was very hostile to it, fearing that it would pave the way for a government change, so they only started extensively building railroads in the late 19th century. Public education was also very late, I think it started in the 1860s or so.
Germany on the other hand was among the first to industrialize on mainland Europe, and Prussia in particular was among the first in the world with widespread literacy, enacting general education in the early 18th century.
So the formerly German part of Poland had a more than a century headstart in education, and half a century in industrialization. Prussia, the part of Germany that is now Polish, was also considered to be German homeland, while it was always conquered territory to the Russians.
edit: If that topic interests you, there is a fantastic book about your exact question: "Why Nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. It goes through many historical developments in different time periods and different places on this world that show why some parts of the world are now well developed while others are not.
He's not wrong, he's just an asshole. Here are some other groups that have fewer Nobel prizes than Trinity College.
How come? The simple answer is that rich industrialized societies with secure property rights have been the source of almost the entirety of scientific innovation since the inception of the Nobel prizes. Within those societies, it's been groups with economic cache in those societies in the relevant time period (white men, including Jewish ones after the early 19th century) that have best been able to take advantage of the opportunities to study, write, and innovate.
Why did industrialization and the culture of innovation arise in the Christian world rather than the Islamic world? That's a complex question and there are a lot of excellent books and papers on the subject, such as this. Here's a hint: none of them take seriously the claim that religion has much to do with it. The fact that most Muslims had the misfortune to be ruled either by an autocratic feudal despotism or were colonized by Europeans during the relevant time periods might just have something more to do with it.
Dawkins makes a divisive little innuendo that states two facts that are related but in subtle and complex ways and implicates a simple causal relation between. He should know better.
I highly recommend Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail. They explain economic growth from an institutional economics perspective.
I would first off recommend checking out the /r/geopolitics Wiki for its page on books. From there, I recommend introductory books that really help explain the geopolitical situation of the world in a cursory fashion. Consider:
For a larger list, I can recommend our 2019 Geopolitical Reading list found here:
As mai da doua referinte la un nivel mai macro-economic pentru cat de mult conteaza un ecosistem prietenes pentru afaceri, mai ales IMM-uri... Care Iohannis chiar a stimulat in sibiu.
Prima - Why nations fail - Modelul de guvernare PSD:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307719219/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=whynatfai-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0307719219
A doua:
http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Nation-Israels-Economic-Miracle/dp/0446541478
Cum o tara fara resurse (okay cu ajutor american) si cu multe IMM-uri a ajuns putere economica.
Poor Economics for a great discussion on the many small, incremental steps that add up and could help alleviate poverty.
The Bottom Billion for a nice discussion on the various poverty traps a country can get stuck in. This book focuses more on the bigger macro picture, and less on the incentives and lives of individuals.
Why Nations Fail - I'll admit I haven't read this yet, but a lot of people seem to rate it highly. It looks at the broad picture of what determines the wealth of nations, and especially the nature of extractive vs. inclusive institutions.
I haven't heard of anyone advocating that a central bank play a key role in ending poverty. Central banks are there to help smooth output fluctuations, by keeping unemployment near its "natural" level and inflation low and stable. There's nothing in their tool-set that could bring a country out of poverty. Though they're certainly very important as bad monetary policy can destroy a country.
To describe it another way: poverty alleviation is about creating a long-term upward trend in output per person. But there are unpredictable variations the economy experiences around this long-term trend (recessions). The central bank's job is to prevent or minimize these deviations from trend, by preventing recessions. But it does not determine the long-term trend itself.
LOL, no, its a good book but there are many better recommendations.
For example, if you wanted to understand the tools of state/religious oppression and its consequences in modern context I may recommend; Why Nations fail
Or if you desired to have greater understanding of the consequences of inventing money; Debt, the first 5000 years
Or if you felt that religion was cool but the idea of God was wrong you could read; Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao
Or if you wanted to read about the decline of world wide violence; The Better Angels of our Nature
I also recommend the book "Why Nations Fail" by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219
It's a great book written from an economic history perspective and goes into the implications and historical support for the theory of institutionalism.
z.b. hier hab ich mich aus der Diskussion gezogen, weil du so unehrlich warst.
Aus einen Blogpost von den Autoren der Bücher:
>"From the point of view of Why Nations Fail, the types of social norms that Ferguson talks about are institutions — they are rules that people face that centrally govern their incentives and opportunities. Of course they are not laws or written in the Lesotho constitution, rather they are what Douglass North called “informal institutions”. But they are institutions, none the less."
http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/10/23/cows-capitalism-and-social-embeddedness.html
>So what sorts of institutions did we emphasize? Not the written aspects of the constitution such as whether or not there is a parliamentary democracy, another thing that Henry and Miller focus on. Those things can be important, but the types of institutions that influence the political and economic incentives in society can be very different. For example, in the first chapter of Why Nations Fail, we emphasized that the distinctive economic performance of the United States was created by the US Constitution with its checks and balances and separation of powers. But we also argued that this document was an outcome of a set of political institutions that had already been established during the colonial period. A further illustration from the same period that other types of institutions matter is the two-term limit for presidents in the United States. This was not part of the Constitution. Rather, it was established as a social norm by George Washington when he decided not to run for a third term. The social norms worked form 150 years until Franklyn Roosevelt violated it. The role of the Supreme Court in assessing the constitutionality of legislation was not in the Constitution either, but likewise emerged as a social norm after the landmark Marbury versus Madison case in 1803.
>In our post last week about Cows and Capitalism, we pointed out that social norms, like the one in Lesotho that cash could be converted into cows but not vice versa, counted as institutions according to the definition we used. In this case the social norm that Washington set, for example, clearly created incentives and constraints for future US presidents that influenced their behavior. That’s what institutions do.
http://whynationsfail.com/blog/2013/10/29/what-are-institutions.html
Jetzt nochmal Wikipedia Definition.
"Institutions are "stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior". As structures or mechanisms of social order, they govern the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community. Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern living behavior. The term "institution" commonly applies to both informal institutions such as customs, or behavior patterns important to a society, and to particular formal institutions created by entities such as the government and public services. Primary or meta-institutions are institutions such as the family that are broad enough to encompass other institutions."
Die Definition passt hier so viel mehr, als deine Anspielung auf die katholische Kirche oder das römische Reich.
aber wikipedia nimmt hier die falsche Definition... und du erwartest von mir das ich hier noch weiter diskutiere? Wenn du mir mit voller Absicht ins Gesicht lügst? Wenn du genau weißt das ich das Buch gelesen habe und mich da eigentlich auf dein Wort schon verlassen musste um überhaupt eine weitere Diskussion möglich zu machen?
Naja ich klatsch in die Hände, das weißt du dir auch gleich wieder easy weg dass es eh so gemeint war und hurr durr. Das mehrere Nobel Laureate genau diese Institutionen Argumentation preisen, ist dir ja egal, weil du ja so viel bessere Internetkommentare verfasst als diese dummen Nobelpreisträger.
https://www.amazon.de/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219
>“This important and insightful book, packed with historical examples, makes the case that inclusive political institutions in support of inclusive economic institutions is key to sustained prosperity. The book reviews how some good regimes got launched and then had a virtuous spiral, while bad regimes remain in a vicious spiral. This is important analysis not to be missed.” —Peter Diamond, Nobel Laureate in Economics
>“Acemoglu and Robinson have made an important contribution to the debate as to why similar-looking nations differ so greatly in their economic and political development. Through a broad multiplicity of historical examples, they show how institutional developments, sometimes based on very accidental circumstances, have had enormous consequences. The openness of a society, its willingness to permit creative destruction, and the rule of appear to be decisive for economic development.” —Kenneth Arrow, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1972
>“This fascinating and readable book centers on the complex joint evolution of political and economic institutions, in good directions and bad. It strikes a delicate balance between the logic of political and economic behavior and the shifts in direction created by contingent historical events, large and small at ‘critical junctures.' Acemoglu and Robinson provide an enormous range of historical examples to show how such shifts can tilt toward favorable institutions, progressive innovation and economic success or toward repressive institutions and eventual decay or stagnation. Somehow they can generate both excitement and reflection.” —Robert Solow, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1987
Wie arrogant muss man eigentlich sein um zu meinen man weiß mehr über ein Thema als 3 Top Wissenschaftler dieses Gebietes? Sowas von Lächerlich. Wegen solche Sachen verwehrst du dir jeglicher zukünftiger Diskussionen mit mir.
>But the point of redistribution is not to grow the pie, it is to ensure everyone gets a big enough piece - KNOWING that this reduces the size of the pie.
You are assuming a model of benevolent, disinterested redistributors sitting at the top, pondering how to best distribute desert according to just deserts, even if this reduced the total amount of desert served. (Plato's Guardians become Plato's Redistributors).
But a far more accurate model is: everyone throughout the system, at all points up and down, left and right, using it to grab as much of the pie as they can for themselves, and NOT CARING if this reduces what everybody else gets or the size of the total pie.
The reason why capitalism/democracy has created such a huge increase in wealth in the last 200 years is that it breaks up the monopolies that groups always used in the past to extract wealth for themselves at the cost of everyone else, throughout all pre-modern-capitalist-democratic history.
See, for instance, Nobelist Douglas North's Violence and Social Orders or Acemoglu & Robinson's Why Nations Fail.
The model used in this analysis is very important. Apply the false one, you get failure-to-disaster.
>Why does the government do this? From a utilitarian point of view: declining marginal utility of income (whereby each additional dollar leads to a smaller increase in happiness - giving a millionaire a dollar does not create as much happiness as giving a beggar a dollar).
Bah! I guarantee you, no politician ever thought in those terms. They all think in terms of "(1) What's best for me. (2) What's best for the allies I need", when pondering how much to take from who to give to whom (i.e. "redistribute").
>From a political realist point of view: your redistributed tax dollars purchase social stability (so that rioters don't send you to the guillotine).
Ah, but just remember that the voters who threaten to send politicians to the guillotine are those with political power, not those with "high marginal utility of income" need. The correlation between the two is near zilch.
The members are AARP as a group on average have far more wealth and disposable income than all the people below age 40 -- that's all you Redditors reading this -- whom they will force to pay much higher taxes to pay off the deca-trillions of dollars of unfunded entitlement benefits they expect come to them, which they didn't pay for themselves.
But if those AARPers get the idea that those benefits will be cut -- even by mere means-testing to assure the benefits only actually do go to those among them with "high marginal utility of income" -- well, we've already seen what happens. It's "Attack! Off with the heads" of those damn politicians! very much threatening social stability to keep their gettings...
"Dan Rostenkowski's being attacked by his own constituents after telling them that they would have to pay for their own catastrophic health care coverage isn't just a long-forgotten event from a bygone era.
"To this day, it's something that members of Congress cite chapter and verse when discussing the budget. Like a story passed down from generation to generation, this includes current representatives and senators, the vast majority of who weren't in office when the event occurred.
"I can't tell you the number of times the Rostenkowski incident has been mentioned by members of Congress at meetings I've attended. Usually it's mentioned as a throw away line ("I don't want my constituents chasing me down the street")...
"It seems to be a story that elected officials feel most personally. Staff invariably do not raise it first.
"Historically, my guess is that it will assume a place right up there with the Whiskey Rebellion that occurred in Pennsylvania in the late 1770s. The picture below shows the incident where a federal tax collector was tarred and feathered, the Revolutionary War equivalent of attacking the limo of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. "
So do not make the naive mistake of thinking redistribution schemes are designed by well-meaning, disinterested leaders for the benefit of the "high marginal utility of income" needy, ever.
They are in fact always designed and enacted by entirely self-interested politicians in response to political power -- the marginal utility of the income of the recipients be damned.
The comment does exist, and hasn't been moderated. Reddit's servers may be having an issue.
Here's the reply again:
"This is really somewhat hilarious. You're dismissing the plurality view of the academic field because I "haven't posted evidence of it" (even though the research we're discussing actually supports that conclusion, if you read the paper), and it hurts your feelings.
Fine, here are some citations. Since you don't even know what "literature" means, I'll leave out things behind paywalls:
Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth? by William Easterly
The Elusive Quest for Growth by William Easterly
Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson
Coffee and Power by Jeffrey M. Paige
The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
The Anti-Politics Machine by James Ferguson
Social Cohesion, Institutions, and Growth by William Easterly, Jozef Ritzen, and Michael Woolcock
African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis by Nicolas Van de Walle
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen
Doing Bad by Doing Good by Christopher Coyne
From Subsistence to Exchange by Peter Bauer"
As a note, several of these are ones that one of the mods posts when asked about good books on development.
Those are two very important points and the main reason, why neoliberals think that inclusive institutions are so important. Inclusive institutions are rules in a society that make shure that everyone can participate in societal developments both economically and politically.
> So you just hope that your government can do that without getting corrupt like literally every government in the history of the world?
Freedom of corruption (and democracy of course) is really important to keep politics inclusive and to achieve that political power is spread among the population, so I think it is a good idea to take countries with very low corruption like Denmark as a role model in that regard.
> Also how is that government's job different than democratic socialism?
The right that everybody can own property, is another important inclusive institution: You want to make shure that every person, no matter what her background is, has an incentive to contribute her abilities to society. In a socialist society you are not allowed to own things like patents, so that is how it would be different from democratic socialism.
You might want to read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoğlu if you want to learn more about inclusive institutions.
Exactly. However I think they may be complementary, in which case i'd add
Why nations fail and The mystery of Capital - Enough there to give you a more informed understanding of why things are as they are.
I can see your heart is in the right place, but the reason that Russia is falling farther and farther behind is because of its authoritarian government. Please, if you intend to vote in another election I beg that you read up on the relationship between democracy, liberty, and economic progress. Just read a few chapters of Why Nations Fail and I know you'll be convinced that Russia is on the wrong path.
For one, Parente and Prescott reckon developing countries can triple outputs with no increase in input by regulatory change, and that is without taking into consideration a better investment climate (for inputs) if the judiciary is reliable.
More explicit proponents of governance focus include Daron Acemoglu, though you should know that his book Why Nations Fail is the only one Bill Gates has gone out of his way to criticise; and Francis Fukuyama, who perhaps focuses more on 'culturism'. Explicit haters include Ha-Joon Chang and most anti-neoclassical-ists. The truth is somewhere in between them.
It's also the doctrine behind IMF and World Bank lending conditions, broadly referred to as the Washington Consensus.
Mah, surprinzator de putine lucruri se rezolva cu cooperare oficiala si "hai sa facem!" spirit. Exemplul meu ideal sunt ecologistii si becurile economice. N-am trecut la becuri care consuma de 5 ori mai putin si dureaza 8 ani din spirit civic sau dragoste de natura, ci pentru ca sunt o alternativa mai buna decat becurile cu incandescenta.
Asa se face si o natiune. Ai clasa de mijloc, care-i facuta mostly din corporatisti care lucreaza 9 ore la cate-o internationala, plus 1-2 ore drum de acasa la job. Primesc salarii care incet incet trec de 1000 euro, cumpara o casa, o masina, apoi a doua masina (ca noh, un second hand e mult mai ieftin decat s-o duci pe nevasta la servici in fiecare zi), platesc impozite mai mari, duc copii la facultate etc.
Nu-i viata de basm, nu-i miscare populara - e exact ce s-a intamplat in toate tarile in care acum e un pic de prosperitate.
Daca te intereseaza subiectul si iti plac discutiile interesante, pune mana pe carti. Strange bani de-un kindle si citeste, de exemplu: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219 sau orice de Nassim Taleb.
PS: nu ma pot abtine. Drogurile nu-s rele, heroina e :D
The experts on the subject of economic development say otherwise.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719219
The real problem with colonialism is that the entire function of the government bureaucracy is capturing rents from primary-sector activities and that they use this revenue to buy popularity. There is not enough economic freedom or development to encourage domestic growth.
Big bad dictator owns the state oil company which used to be a French firm. Uses oil money to build schools in a handful of villages inhabited by his own people to get the UN off his back.
The colonial governments left a legacy that the post colonial governments continued. New boss same as the old boss. This is the real reason why imperalism was bad, not some kind of marxist concept of removing wealth or whatever.
Yes it really was. Basic consumtion barly grow. Hunderts of millions of people either starved (all because of the weath of course) and tousends of people where murdered.
Many of the people not murdered were forced to work, as in work that much or you get shoot in the head.
All the talk about growth of the USSR is kind of missing the point. Talking money from one place and investing it somewhere will get you whatever your want but that is not really growth. Dont belive people who site something like GDP numbers, you cant measure GDP in the USSR in any reasonable way. They tried doing it by look what goes into the system and then compare it to other countrys. If you produce 50'000 tons of steel but it does not go where it should you dont really dont get the same thing as if the US (for example) prudeces 50'000 tons of steel.
Also most of the fun stuff they had, including books, TV, radio and such where all basiclly stolen or pirated.
The USSR was a disaster in economic and social freedom.