Economic law and 3rd world nations
Someone passed this on to me - I am not sure who wrote it. It is interesting and I agree with some of it.
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Why are Third-World countries poor, while those in the First World aren't? (The phrase "third world" is a tad shaky, embracing as it seems to Taiwan, Thailand, and Mexico, and also Haiti and Zaire. We will use it for convenience.)
The standard explanation in the Third World is that the West, chiefly the United States, exploits them, buying their raw materials and selling them manufactured goods. Everything is someone else's fault. The reasons I think are otherwise. The advanced nations will exploit anyone they can, but this hasn't kept Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Argentina, and many other countries from prospering.
Start with corruption. In many poor countries, virtually everything is for sale. You can bribe the cops to get out of a ticket or bribe them to beat up an enemy, bribe a general in the army to overlook illegal logging, bribe anybody to do anything. The result is that really the country barely has laws, which means that you can never be sure of your legal ground. Businesses need predictability.
Corruption exists in advanced counters, but there is less of it, and it tends to take organized form, as in campaign contributions, affirmative action, and seats of boards of directors after leaving office.
Suspected Economic Law: The easier it is to bribe a working-stiff cop, the poorer the country.
Sheer governmental inefficiency has much to do with it. When I was in Taiwan many years ago, when the country was first developing, I talked to an American businessman about Asia. Taiwan, he said, had Enterprise Zones, fenced regions with buildings and utilities in place. You signed one document, brought in your machinery, hired workers, and started production.
In Thailand, he said (it may no longer be true) you had to negotiate for months with the Interior Ministry to get land, then months with the Labor Ministry, then months, then months, meanwhile bribing everybody right and left. I've got the names of the ministries wrong, but you get the point.
Suspected Economic Law: Prosperity varies inversely with the time between beginning negotiations to open a factory and getting first product.
While inefficient government retards economic progress, it doesn't follow that countries with inefficient governments will always be poor. Industry in the United States has been so productive that, although the government is worse than useless, the country can withstand it.
A serious obstacle to prosperity is Half-Assedness, a quality not widely recognized in econometrics but well known to experienced travelers. Half-Assedness is a curious mixture of just not giving a damn, lack of ambition, little interest in academics, and sometimes something that looks like lethargy.
You go into houses and never see books. A man will start a garage to repair cars for a living. He won't think of expanding and owning a chain of garages. His family has enough to eat, so why do more? The young, though they could pursue school beyond some pre-high school level, don't. They marry early instead of establishing themselves first. They live in the present, whereas people in rich countries have one foot in the future. An American thinks college, grad school, career. He is going somewhere, or trying to. He may not adhere to his plan, but he has one.
An element of Half-Assedness is a slack attitude toward maintenance. People who could easily afford nineteen cents for a brake-light bulb don't. They throw trash in the streets. Potholes go unprepared for years.
Suspected Economic Law: National income is inversely proportional to the amount of trash in the streets.
Another aspect of Half-Assedness is an incapacity to attach importance to time. This comes in two flavors, wholesale and retail. At the wholesale level, an American thinks, "Oh my god, I'm thirty and haven't made partner." A Third-Worlder lacks any sense of urgency. He sees existence as a period through which one passes instead of an interval in which one does things.
At time's retail level, Third-Worlder's think that four o'clock means anywhere from five-thirty to not at all. It isn't rudeness or inconsideration. If you do it to them, they won't be offended. By contrast, an American reporter, say, knows that if his nine-o'clock interview happens at nine, the one at eleven will be possible, and the business lunch will come off on time, so that he can hit the computer by three and file at five. It works. Americans show up ten minutes early and wait. In the Third World, writing the same story would take three days instead of one.
Suspected Economic law: Per capita income correlates with the average number of minutes by which people miss appointments.
In the Third World there is a different attitude to commerce. An American businessman is likely to give a new client a good price, or at least the going price, in hopes of acquiring him as a regular customer. If in the Third World a European gets a haircut without asking the price, he will be charged eight dollars when the correct price is four dollars. He will never come back.
This is normal third-world economics-gouge the customer to the max without thought of the future. The practice is encouraged by the reliance on haggling in poor countries. I have sometimes wondered whether this doesn't make tricking the customer more important than having a good product.
Suspected Economic Law: Countries that bargain have less money than those that don't.
The what-me-care attitude can be, to an American, incomprehensible. You want a roof job that would cost several thousand dollars, a lot of money in many countries. The workmen promise to come the next day to give you an estimate. They don't show. You call, and they say, well, my car broke. Next day, same thing. They got to your town but couldn't find the house. And so on. So you go to Wal-Mart or Home Depot or some similar First-World enterprise and get the job done.
Another element of Half-Assedness is, depending on your politics, cultural or inherent, but unmistakable. Some populations just aren't very bright, or at any rate don't seem to be. Sub-Saharan Africa, though rich in resources, is pea-turkey poor and not improving. Arab countries, even when awash in oil money, do not establish First World societies that could survive without oil. In South America the white countries, such as Chile and Argentina, could be in Europe. The highly Indian countries, as for example Bolivia and Peru, would be basket cases if they could afford the basket.
Suspected Economic Law: The more European or East Asian blood, the more money.
***************************************
Why are Third-World countries poor, while those in the First World aren't? (The phrase "third world" is a tad shaky, embracing as it seems to Taiwan, Thailand, and Mexico, and also Haiti and Zaire. We will use it for convenience.)
The standard explanation in the Third World is that the West, chiefly the United States, exploits them, buying their raw materials and selling them manufactured goods. Everything is someone else's fault. The reasons I think are otherwise. The advanced nations will exploit anyone they can, but this hasn't kept Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Argentina, and many other countries from prospering.
Start with corruption. In many poor countries, virtually everything is for sale. You can bribe the cops to get out of a ticket or bribe them to beat up an enemy, bribe a general in the army to overlook illegal logging, bribe anybody to do anything. The result is that really the country barely has laws, which means that you can never be sure of your legal ground. Businesses need predictability.
Corruption exists in advanced counters, but there is less of it, and it tends to take organized form, as in campaign contributions, affirmative action, and seats of boards of directors after leaving office.
Suspected Economic Law: The easier it is to bribe a working-stiff cop, the poorer the country.
Sheer governmental inefficiency has much to do with it. When I was in Taiwan many years ago, when the country was first developing, I talked to an American businessman about Asia. Taiwan, he said, had Enterprise Zones, fenced regions with buildings and utilities in place. You signed one document, brought in your machinery, hired workers, and started production.
In Thailand, he said (it may no longer be true) you had to negotiate for months with the Interior Ministry to get land, then months with the Labor Ministry, then months, then months, meanwhile bribing everybody right and left. I've got the names of the ministries wrong, but you get the point.
Suspected Economic Law: Prosperity varies inversely with the time between beginning negotiations to open a factory and getting first product.
While inefficient government retards economic progress, it doesn't follow that countries with inefficient governments will always be poor. Industry in the United States has been so productive that, although the government is worse than useless, the country can withstand it.
A serious obstacle to prosperity is Half-Assedness, a quality not widely recognized in econometrics but well known to experienced travelers. Half-Assedness is a curious mixture of just not giving a damn, lack of ambition, little interest in academics, and sometimes something that looks like lethargy.
You go into houses and never see books. A man will start a garage to repair cars for a living. He won't think of expanding and owning a chain of garages. His family has enough to eat, so why do more? The young, though they could pursue school beyond some pre-high school level, don't. They marry early instead of establishing themselves first. They live in the present, whereas people in rich countries have one foot in the future. An American thinks college, grad school, career. He is going somewhere, or trying to. He may not adhere to his plan, but he has one.
An element of Half-Assedness is a slack attitude toward maintenance. People who could easily afford nineteen cents for a brake-light bulb don't. They throw trash in the streets. Potholes go unprepared for years.
Suspected Economic Law: National income is inversely proportional to the amount of trash in the streets.
Another aspect of Half-Assedness is an incapacity to attach importance to time. This comes in two flavors, wholesale and retail. At the wholesale level, an American thinks, "Oh my god, I'm thirty and haven't made partner." A Third-Worlder lacks any sense of urgency. He sees existence as a period through which one passes instead of an interval in which one does things.
At time's retail level, Third-Worlder's think that four o'clock means anywhere from five-thirty to not at all. It isn't rudeness or inconsideration. If you do it to them, they won't be offended. By contrast, an American reporter, say, knows that if his nine-o'clock interview happens at nine, the one at eleven will be possible, and the business lunch will come off on time, so that he can hit the computer by three and file at five. It works. Americans show up ten minutes early and wait. In the Third World, writing the same story would take three days instead of one.
Suspected Economic law: Per capita income correlates with the average number of minutes by which people miss appointments.
In the Third World there is a different attitude to commerce. An American businessman is likely to give a new client a good price, or at least the going price, in hopes of acquiring him as a regular customer. If in the Third World a European gets a haircut without asking the price, he will be charged eight dollars when the correct price is four dollars. He will never come back.
This is normal third-world economics-gouge the customer to the max without thought of the future. The practice is encouraged by the reliance on haggling in poor countries. I have sometimes wondered whether this doesn't make tricking the customer more important than having a good product.
Suspected Economic Law: Countries that bargain have less money than those that don't.
The what-me-care attitude can be, to an American, incomprehensible. You want a roof job that would cost several thousand dollars, a lot of money in many countries. The workmen promise to come the next day to give you an estimate. They don't show. You call, and they say, well, my car broke. Next day, same thing. They got to your town but couldn't find the house. And so on. So you go to Wal-Mart or Home Depot or some similar First-World enterprise and get the job done.
Another element of Half-Assedness is, depending on your politics, cultural or inherent, but unmistakable. Some populations just aren't very bright, or at any rate don't seem to be. Sub-Saharan Africa, though rich in resources, is pea-turkey poor and not improving. Arab countries, even when awash in oil money, do not establish First World societies that could survive without oil. In South America the white countries, such as Chile and Argentina, could be in Europe. The highly Indian countries, as for example Bolivia and Peru, would be basket cases if they could afford the basket.
Suspected Economic Law: The more European or East Asian blood, the more money.
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quote:Suspected Economic Law: The easier it is to bribe a working-stiff cop, the poorer the country.Not necessarily true - Taiwanese authorities are notoriously easy to bribe, as are their politicians and senior military officials.
quote:Suspected Economic Law: Prosperity varies inversely with the time between beginning negotiations to open a factory and getting first product.Seems a bit simplistic and business-centric. If I'm not mistaken, Nike had no trouble opening a plant in Indonesia and let's just say their standard of living hasn't improved all that much.
quote:Suspected Economic Law: National income is inversely proportional to the amount of trash in the streets.But the trash in the streets is not a cause so much as a symptom - and symptoms are the result, not the cause. He seems to attribute trash in the street to a racial and/or national failure in character, never once considering that maybe if you have no means with which to maintain an infrastructure that it won't be maintained.
quote:Suspected Economic law: Per capita income correlates with the average number of minutes by which people miss appointments.Interesting.
quote:Suspected Economic Law: Countries that bargain have less money than those that don't.This is a load of horse manure - does he really think America doesn't bargain? Admittedly our notion of bargaining 90% of the time is dictating terms, but we are afforded that not because we make wealth, but because we already possess it. It takes money to make money and money is much easier to maintain once you have a ton of it.
quote:Suspected Economic Law: The more European or East Asian blood, the more money. Correlation is not causation as much as any of us would like to think that being cultured and rich has something to do with what's in our blood.
All in all, it's a little too self-satisfied, holier-than-thou, and smugly preachy for my tastes.0 -
It's the old "survival of the fittest" modified to fit the modern World. In the World of Homo Sapiens Sapiens these days "fittest" more and more means the Nations with the overall highest intelligence average, not necessarily the most people or largest land mass. What's known as the Western World has demonstrated the highest levels of intelligence for the longest period of any culture on Earth, hence the most highly developed social, technological, and last, but certainly not least, military capability. The Orientals, though with a ways to go, are hard on the job. It only makes sense that the more intelligent, thus more powerful societies exploit and manage the resources in the areas where societies of a lesser intelligence have a majority population. That's really the best way to manage these resources. In many ways the backward people of these regions benefit from that exploitation, in others it has been a bad deal for the natives. 0 -
Bribery works everywhere it's just more expensive in a developed countries, L@@K at freezer burn congressman Jefferson demo/congressman Louisanna allegations. Talk about a stretch, He's using a O.J. race card defense in his lawyers view the Republicans are the Mark Thurmans, I generally don't defend Republicrats but, however thats as absurd a lie ever. 0 -
Social Darwinism is the only way for a society to function. 0 -
Most civilized first world nations are able to grow food to feed it's own people. Real successful nations are fortunate enough to export food. Now the developed nations that cannot grow enough food to feed it's own people have embraced the concepts of capitalism. They have taken advantage of economical;y priced labor. As the manufacturing base has developed, so has the education and quality of labor. 0
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