Category: History
dyfalu
In Welsh poetry, dyfalu is the piling on of comparisons, definition through conceit. The word also means “to guess” in Welsh, and many poems of dyfalu have an element of guesswork, a fanciful and riddling dimension. “The art of dyfalu, meaning “to describe” or “to deride,” rests in the intricate development of a series of images and extended metaphors which either celebrate or castigate a person, animal, or object,” the encyclopedia of Celtic Culture explains. Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poems to the mist and the wind are classic fourteenth-century examples.
That is from Edward Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary, which I am quite enjoying. There is interesting material on every page and it is written with passion. A hendiatris is a “figure of speech in which three words are employed to express an idea, as in Thomas Jefferson’s tripartite motto for the Declaration of Independence: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”” When there are only two words so employed, it is of course a hendiadys.
The chance of Scottish independence this September?
PredictWise and Betfair both say 28.4%. Last I checked, that is.
Hat tip goes to David Rothschild.
Interview with a former Auschwitz prison guard
It is interesting throughout, here is just one bit:
SPIEGEL: What did people talk about?
W.: People weren’t enthused about the leadership. We of course knew and everybody almost felt that it couldn’t end well, that it couldn’t been good when trains were being brought here full of people who were then getting killed. We all had that feeling. But, I mean, when you’re a soldier …
[Commentary] In the personnel files of camp staff members, there are official declarations stating, “I may not cause bodily harm or death to opponents of the state (prisoners).” It also states, “I am aware and I have been informed today that I will be punished by death if I misappropriate Jewish property of any kind.” The SS team at Auschwitz — a camp where the indiscriminate torture, robbing and murder of people was part of everyday life — were required to pledge in advance to do precisely the opposite.
One could view forms like that as a special form of cynicism. Or one could see it as a pseudo-legal facade aimed at covering up the Holocaust. One provision called for “absolute secrecy” to be maintained. In practice, it had no meaning.
The full interview is here.
The dangers of “cooperation” in a Malthusian world
Sapiens [the new book by Yuval Noah Hariri] devotes large sections to unsparing accounts of the domestication and factory farming of cows, pigs and chickens. This, he contends, has made them some of the most genetically “successful” creatures in history but the most miserable too.
It is an interesting question how much that will prove to be the equilibrium more generally, namely the genetic superiority of slaves because they can reap more external investment. After all, capital is more productive today than in times past, so evolution might now produce more slaves. Here is another bit from John Reed’s coverage of the lunch interview with Hariri:
What allowed humans to become history’s most successful species, he [Hariri] argues, was our ability to construct and unify small groups behind certain “fictions” – everything from national legends and organised religion to modern value systems like human rights, and the modern limited liability company with thousands of employees and vast credit lines at its command.
…I tell Harari I like the idea of fiction as the supreme human construct.
That is from the FT’s lunch with Yuval Noah Hariri. If I recall correctly, I pre-ordered Sapiens from UK Amazon.
The agricultural origins of time preference
Here is a new paper by Galor and Özak, highly speculative of course:
This research explores the origins of the distribution of time preference across regions. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically, that geographical variations in natural land productivity and their impact on the return to agricultural investment have had a persistent effect on the distribution of long-term orientation across societies. In particular, exploiting a natural experiment associated with the expansion of suitable crops for cultivation in the course of the Columbian Exchange, the research establishes that agro-climatic characteristics in the pre-industrial era that were conducive to higher return to agricultural investment, triggered selection and learning processes that had a persistent positive effect on the prevalence of long-term orientation in the contemporary era.
Didn’t Irving Fisher once say something like this? My view in contrast is that virtually everyone has a high rate of time preference, but some (wise) people can act like low time preference individuals by choosing the proper perceived rewards and benefits, for instance by courting approval from others for saving or waiting. It may just be pretense, but who cares? It is not unusual to see the same person switch rapidly from high time preference to low time preference modes of thought and behavior, and this to me suggests it is all about perceptions, environment, expectations, peer effects, and other social factors, rather than genes. In other words, choose your framing wisely.
More broadly, there is a “brute fact” that one bunch of societies have a lot of correlated positive features, and another group of societies do not. I don’t think we’ve gotten very far beyond that brute fact in terms of what we can infer from that distribution.
The original pointer to the article is from www.bookforum.com.
What will be humanity’s most enduring monuments?
Trevor Paglen speculates:
Humanity’s longest lasting remnants are found among the stars. Over the last fifty years, hundreds of satellites have been launched into geosynchronous orbits, forming a ring of machines 36,000 kilometers from earth. Thousands of times further away than most other satellites, geostationary spacecraft remain locked as man-made moons in perpetual orbit long after their operational lifetimes. Geosynchronous spacecraft will be among civilization’s most enduring remnants, quietly circling earth until the earth is no more.
That is via Kottke.
MRU class on international finance
Our new class on international finance is up here. The class description reads as follows:
International finance covers some of the most complex but also important topics in economics. How are exchange rates determined? When if ever are ongoing trade deficits harmful? Are fixed or floating exchange rates better? What are the roots of the euro crisis and what resolution can we expect? Does China manipulate its exchange rate and if so how does that matter? We cover all of these topics and more, with an eye toward what a person really might want to know. There is no use of mathematics in this course beyond the very basic.
The interesting thing about international finance is that even a lot of professional economists don’t understand it very well, unless they have specialized in the area. If you complete this course, you’ll probably know a lot which they don’t!
You will find particular videos on capital controls, the classical gold standard, “dark matter,” “the Dutch disease,” the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and are devaluations contractionary?, among many other topics.
Again, here is Guinevere Liberty Nell’s recent class on the Soviet Union (still relevant alas!) and our Principios de Microeconomía, by Andres Marroquin, is growing as well. There is more on the way!
Why I endorsed Evo Morales
Well, “endorsed” isn’t exactly the right word, but I did say “simpatizante.” Here are my views:
1. I disagree with most of his economic policy, for reasons you can find stated in Adam Smith and the other classical economists.
2. Governments work very hard to stay in power.
3. In a weighted average of public opinion sense, I think of Bolivia as about 60-70% “indigenous,” one way or another.
4. If a Bolivian government is not strongly connected to the country’s indigenous population, that government cannot have a strong base. Yet it will still work hard to stay in power (#2), which will mean it will resort to oppressions and distortions, with high long-run costs. Bolivian history has seen an especially large number of coups and attempted coups, illustrating this weakness of the power base, which you can think of as the major problem in historical Bolivian public choice. Think of Mancur Olson on permanent vs. temporary bandits, where most of the past bandits have been temporary, and thus Bolivian governance has been of extremely low quality, even relative to its region.
5. The government of Evo Morales is quite popular and pretty stable. It has a strong and enduring power base, partly because of its specific policies and partly for symbolic reasons, such as its strong and explicit attachment to indigenous culture and “cosmovisions,” a notion newly embedded in the nation’s constitution.
6. The stability gains from #5 — the permanency of the bandit so to speak — exceed the costs from #1.
7. A democratic Bolivia will have “an indigenous government” sooner or later, better sooner. Let’s hope they learn some better economic policy. Something like the Morales government was in any case a necessary step, again without denying #1.
8. Bolivia is too decentralized for the Morales government to collapse into true dictatorship and Chavismo of Venezuela. That said, I would feel better if it were assured that the Morales government were to be limited in term.
9. See also my reasons why I am optimistic about Bolivia, including their fiscal prudence, supported by Morales I might add.
I made this argument to an audience of elite Bolivians and elite Bolivian students. Some of them hated it, some of them really liked it. A speaker should usually try to shake up his or her listeners in some manner.
China mixed marriage markets in everything
Chinese authorities in the restive western region of Xinjiang have begun offering large cash incentives for interracial marriages in the latest attempt to quell growing unrest among the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic group that inhabit the region.
The policy, celebrated by local Communist party officials as advancing the “great cause of assimilation” and “ethnic unity”, offers couples entering into mixed marriages an annual bonus of Rmb10,000 ($1,600), equivalent to 135 per cent of average annual rural incomes.
Uighurs, Mongolians and other ethnic minorities who marry people from the dominant Han race, which makes up more than 90 per cent of China’s 1.36bn population, will also be eligible for a broad range of medical, schooling and housing benefits.
There is more here, via Fabrizo Goria.
Why I am a relative optimist about Bolivia
1. Bolivia became a semi-stable democracy in the early 1980s and it has stayed that way.
2. For all the rhetoric to the contrary, the current regime is a mix of 1990s-era market-oriented reforms and Evo Morales. Probably you like one of these, though perhaps not both.
3. Many more Bolivian children go to school than before, and the incidence of malnutrition has been plummeting, with longer-run benefits for IQ. You will read many fabricated or non-causally-backed claims about the connection between inequality and growth, but for Bolivia I believe these arguments.
4. Bolivia has done so many things wrong in the past, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit through purely internal improvements. For instance the country is a fantastic tourist destination, but would not at this moment be experienced that way by mainstream American tourists, due to language, hotel, and infrastructure shortcomings. Eventually those problems can be and will be solved. Eventually.
5. Bolivia does not have much export exposure to China, and does not face much geopolitical risk.
6. Of all commodities, hydrocarbons may be relatively protected in price through the forthcoming global turmoil, because the Middle East implosion will make Bolivia’s current main resource more valuable.
7. Bolivia’s fiscal situation is surprisingly sound.
The three main reasons to be pessimistic about Bolivia are:
1. Most of their economic policy is quite bad, especially when it concerns the nationalization of foreign direct investment. The FDI future of Bolivia will be extremely unfavorable. The rhetoric and indeed the behavior of the government sometimes is like a villain from an Ayn Rand novel.
2. Their main trading partner is Brazil, a country which will have gone from eight percent growth to near-zero growth in but a few years time. Argentina is either the number two or number three trade partner, along with the U.S., depending on the year in question.
3. Bolivia hasn’t done that well in the past.
Of those three reasons, #1 probably matters a bit less than you might think, and #3 a bit more.
It is much debated in Bolivia whether corruption is going up or down. I believe it is going up, but partially for good reasons. For instance the construction sector is doing well, and construction tends to be corrupt in many countries, for reasons intrinsic to the activity itself (e.g., lots of big contracts, easy to claim invisible expenses, etc.). That means higher corruption but also a better corruption than the penny ante bribes of a shrinking economy.
Right now Bolivia is growing at a rate of above six percent.
Putin ends the interregnum
By Lilia Shevtsova, this is the best essay I have read on Russia, Ukraine, and Putin. It is difficult to excerpt, but here is one short bit:
Having flipped the global chessboard with his annexation of the Crimea and an undeclared war against Ukraine, Putin effectively ended the most recent period of interregnum and inaugurated a new era in global politics. However, no one yet knows what this era will bring. The global community is still reeling in shock, when it isn’t trying to pretend that nothing extraordinary has in fact occurred. This denial of the fact that the Kremlin has dealt a blow to conventional ideas, stable geopolitical constructs, and (supposedly) successful policies proceeds from the natural instinct for self-preservation. It is also quite natural that the political forces that have grown accustomed to the status quo will try to look to the past for answers to new challenges—this is precisely what those who were unprepared for a challenge always do. It was easy enough to predict that many politicians and political analysts would explain what Putin has done to the global order by using Cold War analogies. Drawing these historical parallels is potentially useful in only one respect: if they help us to see what is truly new about the current situation, and the scale of the risks involved.
Read the whole thing.
What has Economics Done for You Lately?
A very nice talk by Robert Litan on the contributions of economists and economic ideas to the internet economy:
Love in the old East Germany
The East German woman had a job, was economically independent, self-confident, and divorce-happy; at a time when only 50 percent of West German women made their own money, 90 percent of women in East Germany were employed.
…the East German woman didn’t consider her male partner an enemy but rather a partner who, economically speaking, had little or nothig on her. Indeed, the average East German man, unless he had managed to gin a foothold in the regime’s upper echelons — but what woman would want a man like that? — wasn’t in a position to boast any typically macho privileges. He couldn’t show off with money, fast cars, or a house on Ibiza. he had to rely on his potential talent as a lover and his qualities as a father and partner. As a result, he tended to cultivate a rather “soft” masculine image.
…And, on top of all this: the suppression of free movement in public in East Germany had led both sexes to develop a relatively uninhibited attitude toward sex. What other unregulatable pastime did East Germany have to offer its citizens?
That is from the newly translated book by Peter Schneider, Berlin Now: The City After the Wall. Much of that passage makes sense, but one part confuses me: does “rely on his potential talent as a lover” support or contradict “cultivate a “soft” masculine image”?
Along what axis is the Ukrainian electorate aligned right now?
It seems to be economic policy orientation toward Europe or Russia, and not either language or ethnicity. Here is a new paper by Timothy Frye:
Language, ethnicity, and policy orientation toward Europe are key cleavages in Ukrainian politics, but there is much debate about their relative importance. To isolate the impact of candidate ethnicity, candidate native language, and candidate policy orientation on a hypothetical vote choice, I conducted a survey experiment of 1000 residents of Ukraine in June 2014 that manipulated three features of a fictional candidate running for parliament: 1) ethnicity as revealed by either a Russian or Ukrainian name 2) native language of Russian or Ukrainian and 3) support for closer economic ties with Russia or with Europe. The results reveal little difference in the average response to these 8 fictitious candidates despite the candidate’s different ethnicities, native language, and economic policy orientations. This seeming homogeneity masks vast differences in the responses of self-reported native speakers of Russian and Ukrainian. Analyzing the responses among Ukrainian and among Russian speakers yields considerable differences in the responses to the different candidates. Perhaps most striking is that among both native speakers of Russian and native speakers of Ukrainian a candidate’s economic policy orientation toward Europe or Russia appears to be a more important determinant of vote choice than a candidate’s language or ethnicity. That policy retains its importance for voters despite the intense politicization of both ethnicity and language and ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine suggests that vote choice in Ukraine has not been reduced to an ethnic or linguistic census.
Hat tip goes to www.bookforum.com.
The Ford Foundation and the Virginia School of Political Economy
David M. Levy and Sandra J. Peart have unearthed some very valuable, hitherto undiscovered material in the history of economic and political thought, as well as the history of American philanthropy. I have followed this paper through several drafts, with great enthusiasm, and am pleased to report it is now on-line. The abstract is here:
In 1960 the Thomas Jefferson Center [TJC] of the University of Virginia applied for a “massive” grant from the Ford Foundation. Although James Buchanan, Warren Nutter and Ronald Coase had all received grants from Ford, Ford turned down their proposal because of the Center’s unified “point of view.” We report on correspondence and private discussions of the events. Following the submission of their proposal, Buchanan, Nutter and then President of UVA, Edgar Shannon met with representatives of the Ford Foundation, Tom Carroll and Kermit Gordon. Buchanan concluded that the “reaction of the Ford representatives must be considered to have been almost wholly negative.” The crux of the matter, in Gordon’s assessment was the TJC reflected “a single ‘point of view’.” As the conversation unfolded, it became clear to the UVA representatives that by this the Foundation officials meant a narrow ideological perspective, one in line with Chicago-style economics. Buchanan attempted to dispel this conclusion, arguing that the program was “sufficiently broad” to “encompass wide and divergent points of view.” Coase was particularly incensed by allegation of ideological narrowness since, as he explained, he had close ties to the Fabian Society. Despite the attempts of both Coase and Buchanan to defend their proposal, Ford officials turned down the application and the TJC never fully recovered.
This is what they call “real history.” In my version of this story, of course, the Virginia School, Coase, Buchanan, and Tullock were the good guys, as was demonstrated by their subsequent research record.