Category: History
China fact of the day
In 1974, the future Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping led a large delegation to the United Nations in New York. Chinese officials discovered, as they prepared for the expensive trip, that the could muster only $38,000 in foreign cash. In those days there were no banks in China except the People’s Bank of China, then a department of the Ministry of Finance.
Here is more.
Nuclear power reactors: a study in technological lock-in
The interesting Robin Cowan has a well-cited paper with that title:
Recent theory has predicted that if competing technologies operate under dynamic increasing returns, one, possibly inferior, technology will dominate the market. The history of nuclear power technology is used to illustrate these results. Light water is considered inferior to other technologies, yet it dominates the market for power reactors. This is largely due to the early adoption and heavy development by the U.S. Navy of light water for submarine propulsion. When a market for civilian power emerged, light water had a large head start, and by the time other technologies were ready to enter the market, light water was entrenched.
Here are some recent articles on light water reactors in Japan.
*The Way it Worked*
The author is Gordon C. Bjork and the subtitle is Structural Change and the Slowdown of U.S. Economic Growth. I recommend this not-so-well known book, first published in 1999, very highly. Among its other merits, it traces how much of the productivity slowdown results from the switch of the U.S. economy into lower-growing sectors. Excerpt:
Thus, if the 1950s structure of relative output levels and employment were combined with the intra-sector growth rates of the decade ending in 1990, the aggregate intra-sector growth rate would have been 19 percent as opposed to the 13.2 percent it actually was in the decade ending 1990. If the slow-growth decade of the 1980s had had the same output structure as the high-growth 1950s, it would have had higher growth rates than the high-growth 1950s. Conversely, if the 1990 structure had been in effect in the 1950s, the intra-sectoral growth rate for the decade would have been only 11 percent, rather than its actual 17 percent. These two examples of the effect of output structure on average growth rates illustrate the importance of structural change in determining aggregate rates of growth in per worker output by changing the relative size of sectors.
*The Philosophical Breakfast Club*
The author is Laura J. Snyder and the subtitle is Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World. This is an excellent book about the history and status of science in 19th century England and in particular the contributions of Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones, the latter an economist and of course Whewell debated induction and scientific method with Mill. Babbage too had writings on economics. Here is an excerpt from Snyder:
De Prony had been commissioned to produce a definitive test of logarithmic and trigonometric tables for the newly introduced metric system in France, to facilitate the accurate measurement of property as a basis for taxation.
De Prony had recently read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations…Smith discussed the importance of a division of labor in the manufacture of pins…
De Prony was the first to see that a Smithian division of intellectual labor could be equally valuable in the work of computation of mathematical tables — although his idea had been anticipated by Leibniz, who believed that talented mathematicians should be freed from tedious calculations that could be done by "peasants."
If you enjoy the history of science, this book stands a good chance of being the best one in that genre to come out this year. Here is one good review of the book.
Galton’s Bayesian Machine
Stephen Stigler has a cool piece on a machine that Francis Galton built in 1877 that calculated a posterior distribution from a prior and a likelihood function. Galton's originality continues to astound.
Here is Stigler:
The machine is reproduced in Figure 1 from the original publication. It depicts the fundamental calculation of Bayesian inference: the determination of a posterior distribution from a prior distribution and a likelihood function. Look carefully at the picture–notice it shows the upper portion as three-dimensional, with a glass front and a depth of about four inches. There are cardboard dividers to keep the beads from settling into a flat pattern, and the drawing exaggerates the smoothness of the heap from left to right, something like a normal curve. We could think of the top layer as showing the prior distribution p(θ) as a population of beads representing, say, potential values for θ, from low (left) to high (right)….
…the beads fall to the next lower level. On that second level, you can see what is intended to be a vertical screen, or wall, that is close to the glass front at both the left and the right, but recedes to the rear in the middle.
…The way the machine works its magic is that those beads to the front of the screen are retained as shown; those falling behind are rejected and discarded. (You might think of this stage as doing rejection sampling from the upper stage.)
…The final stage turns this into a standard histogram: The second support platform is removed by pulling to the right on its knob, and the beads fall to a slanted platform immediately below, rolling then to the lowest level, where the depth is again uniform–about one inch deep from the glass in front. This simply rescales the retained beads… the magic of the machine is that this lowest level is proportional to the posterior distribution!
Hat tip: The Endeavour.
Who will still be famous in 10,000 years?
Sam Hammond, a loyal MR reader, asks me:
Who do you think will still be famous in 10,000 years? People from history or now. Shakespeare? Socrates? Hawking?
This requires a theory of 10,000 years from now, but let's say we're a lot richer, not computer uploads (if so, I know the answer to the question), and not in a collapsed dystopia. We still look like human beings and inhabit physical space. If you wish, postulate that not all of those 10,000 years involved strongly positive economic growth.
In that case, I'll go with the major religious leaders (Jesus, Buddha, etc.), Einstein, Turing, Watson and Crick, Hitler, the major classical music composers, Adam Smith, and Neil Armstrong. (Addendum: Oops! I forgot Darwin and Euclid.)
My thinking is this. The major religions last for a long time and leave a real mark on history. Path-dependence is critical in that area.
Otherwise, an individual, to stay famous, will have to securely symbolize an entire area, and an area "with legs" at that. The theory of relativity still will be true and it may well become more important. The computer and DNA will not be irrelevant. Hitler will remain a stand-in symbol for pure evil; if he is topped we may not have a future at all. Beethoven and Mozart still will be splendid, but Shakespeare and other wordsmiths will require translation and thus will fade somewhat. The propensity to truck and barter will remain and Smith will keep his role as the symbol of economics. Keynesian economics may someday be less true, as superior biofeedback, combined with markets in self-improvement, ushers in an era of flexible wages, while market-based expected nominal gdp targeting prevents a downward deflationary spiral.
The fame of those individuals will not perish, in part, because the more distant future will produce fewer lasting mega-famous people. Achievement will be more decentralized and more connected to teams. The dominance of Edison and Tesla, in their breakthroughs, will not be repeated. There won't be a mega-Einstein eighty years from now, to make everyone forget the current Einstein, even if (especially if) science goes very well.
*Things to Come* (spoilers for an old movie in this post)
This Alexander Korda adaption of H.G. Wells was in 1936 perhaps the most visually spectacular movie of its time. It looks like the first thirty, black and white minutes of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, yet few people watch the movie today, in part because the actors shout at each other.
A world war starts in 1940 and lasts through the 1970s, fought with barbed wire and Art Deco tanks. A pandemic wipes out half the human race. Technology shuts down and for a while airplanes are a rarity. Afterwards, a highly productive reign of science is established, enforced by air power ("Wings Over the World"). It is centered in Basra, Iraq and we see bombers and drones from Iraq take over England, enforcing a "brotherhood of efficiency, and a freemasonry of science." There is no talk of ethics. Eventually the world comes to resemble a Westin atrium and lobby. Life expectancy goes up, but for hairstylists a cost disease still operates. In 2036 they are facing not a Medicare cost crisis but rather preparing the first trip to the moon.
It is noted that man is "conquering nature" and creating a "white world" and no one seems to flinch; Wells favored eugenics. Everyone becomes increasingly bug-eyed and a Luddite rebellion arises, although it seems to be barked down at the end of the movie.
The distinction between "a good movie" and "a movie which is good to watch" has never been more salient.
Things to Come is on Amazon here and on Wikipedia here. Some stills and commentary are here. Here is an NYT review from 1936: "probably as solid a prophecy as any."
The historical roots of yoga
The reality is that postural yoga, as we know it in the 21st century, is neither eternal nor synonymous with the Vedas or Yoga Sutras. On the contrary, modern yoga was born in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. It is a child of the Hindu Renaissance and Indian nationalism, in which Western ideas about science, evolution, eugenics, health and physical fitness played as crucial a role as the ‘mother tradition’. In the massive, multi-level hybridisation that took place during this period, the spiritual aspects of yoga and tantra were rationalised, largely along the theosophical ideas of ‘spiritual science,’ introduced to India by the US-origin, India-based Theosophical Society, and internalised by Swami Vivekananda, who led the yoga renaissance.
In turn, the physical aspects of yoga were hybridised with drills, gymnastics and body-building techniques borrowed from Sweden, Denmark, England, the United States and other Western countries. These innovations were creatively grafted on the Yoga Sutras–which has been correctly described by Agehananda Bharati, the Austria-born Hindu monk-mystic, as ‘the yoga canon for people who have accepted Brahmin theology’–to create an impression of 5,000 years worth of continuity where none really exists. The HAF’s current insistence is thus part of a false advertising campaign about yoga’s ancient Brahminical lineage.
The full story is here, and hat tip goes to The Browser.
What counts as enough progress?
Bruce Cleaver asks:
Pondering your thesis in TGS, (which has some evidence to back it up; the change in society from the early part of the 1900's to 1973 does seem sharper than subsequent change, irrespective of the status of median income), I would ask you (in all seriousness) what changes/inventions now, today, if they were to exist, would cause you to say "The change from 1973 onward was just as sharp". Flying cars? Affordable interplanetary space travel? Teleportation?
Teleportation is not required, though it would…suffice. Alleviating traffic congestion would have been a significant advance, though we are moving in the opposite direction. Add in a cure for cancer, 3-D printing, seventy percent green energy, life expectancy of ninety-five, a Segway that people want to use, and higher graduation rates than we had in the late 1960s, and we are getting there. Median family income of $90,000. As it stands, it seems we will be getting 3-D printing, although I am not sure exactly when or for how many items.
Coming at this from another direction, a few years in the late 1990s genuinely did not exhibit "great stagnation" numbers and this is consistent with on-the-ground observations at the time. Think of the last forty years, and imagine that thirty or thirty-five of them were like that period.
The Pippi Longstocking essay and gay adoption in Sweden
Thanks to Jayme Lemke, it has fallen into my clutches; the previous summary reference was here. The essay by Henrik Berggren and Lars TrägÃ¥rdh, is interesting throughout. It has useful insights on Sweden, statism, how collectivism and individualism interact, what architecture reflects, and why many things are not always as they seem. Here is one good passage with a different slant than what I already covered:
While it is obviously true that gay marriage remains a highly controversial issue in the US, what is often over-looked is that adoption of children by gays is not prohibited but indeed rather common. In Sweden the opposite is true: gay marriage or partnership is today relatively uncontroversial (although an opposition of course exists there as well), where the adoption of children by single or couples gays remains a problematic issue.
One way of understanding this difference is to see that while in the US marriage is a highly public matter, and the family a sacred institution, children are by and large seen as a kind of private property, or something to which every adult individual has a right. In Sweden, on the other hand, the family is a private matter, while it is the child who is the public matter.
Can Swede readers attest to this? This short BBC bit seems to confirm. Gay adoption was legalized in Sweden in 2002, but in 2000 16 children were put up for adoption in Sweden. As in the Netherlands, it seems that Swedish gays are not always encouraged to adopt abroad, given that the source countries often object. There is now a Swedish film comedy about gay adoption.
You can find the essay in this unorthodox and stimulating book.
Labor history bleg
C.R., a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
I'm writing with a small favor, I was wondering if you could recommend (or ask for recommendations on MR) for a good history of labor unions in the US. I know a lot has been written especially from the left labor economists, but I don't have the knowledge to sort out the good from the bad. I'm interested in it from a historical perspective (origins and accomplishments) and a current political analysis perspective (what are reasonable claims about the costs&benefits of modern union membership). The case in Wisconsin has really grabbed my attention and I'm curious about unions as a case study of the creation, growth and changes of institutions.
I know where to go for the standard economics of labor unions, if you wish start with the surveys in Journal of Economic Perspectives (on-line and free) and then go to the Handbook of Labor Economics. But what about labor history? What is the best way to approach this often controversial topic?
Libya fact of the day
*How Measurement led to the Modern World*
That's the very good subtitle, the less interesting title is The Institutional Revolution, and it is a book manuscript by Douglas W. Allen. Someone sent it to me in the mail. The bottom line:
Once fundamental measurement problems were solved — involving time, distance, weights, and power, among others — it became possible to cheaply measure worker performance, input and output quality, and the role of nature, in areas of life that were unheard of before. This ability to cheaply measure ushered in the world of modern institutions.
Pre-modern customs, in contrast, were all about dealing with trust, the need for direct supervision, and facing up to the enormous risks posed by nature. The astute reader will note the influence of Yoram Barzel, one of the most underrated economists.
When will this book come out?
The Great Stagnation in medicine
Here is one bit from a very good Robert Gordon essay (which I will cover again in a while):
…if one starts down the road of comparing changes in life expectancy, the yearly rate of increase in life expectancy at birth during 1900–50, resulting in substantial part from the inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution, was 0.72 percent per year, the 0.24 percent annual rate during 1950–95.
James Le Fanu, in his 2000 history of modern medicine, lists definitive moments of modern medicine. In the 1940s there are six such moments, seven moments in the 1950s, six moments in the 1960s, a moment in 1970 and 1971 each, and from 1973-1998, a twenty-five year period, there are only seven moments in total.
For his "Dates of the discovery and sources of the more important antibiotics," the list starts in 1929-1940 with penicillin and ends in…1963, with Gentamicin.
Ezra has a very good post on penicillin. Megan has a very good post and piece on the drying up of the pharmaceutical pipeline. Andrew Jack has a very good and scary piece on the withering of pharmaceuticals innovation in the UK.
As Le Fanu writes: "Currently most medical researchers would concede that progress has slowed in recent years…"
As an aside, this has a number of political economy implications for health care reform, none of them cheery. In both Washington and in the blogosphere, we're very focused on insurance and coverage issues, but is not the innovation pipeline more important? Does it receive one-tenth the discussion? One-fiftieth? Does a slow pipeline mean that health care policy is doomed to be unpopular?
Quick quiz: is health care a growing or a shrinking part of the U.S. economy?
Rescuing Jews is a normal good
From Mitchell Hoffman, based on Holocaust data:
I find that (1) Richer countries had many more rescuers than poorer ones, and (2) Within countries, richer people were more likely to be rescuers than poorer people. The individual-level effect of income on being a rescuer remains significant after controlling for ease of rescue variables, such as the number of rooms in one's home, suggesting that the correlation of income and rescue is not solely driven by richer people having more resources for rescue. Given that richer people might be thought to have more to lose by rescuing, the evidence is consistent with the view that altruism increases in income.
Hat tip goes to BPS Digest.