Results for “age of em”

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One of the biggest annoyances in long-distance running is lace
management. After banging out 50 miles, it can be hard to squat or even
bend over long enough to tie your shoes.  The North Face recently
responded to Karnazes’ complaints and came out with the $130 M Endurus
XCR Boa.  Its laceless upper is enmeshed in thin steel cables that
connect to a tension dial at the back. A simple turn cinches the shoe
onto the foot.  No more slowing down to fiddle with laces.

Here is the full story of an obsessed runner.  Get this bit:

Finding four hours for a 30-mile run during the day was next to impossible. The solution: sleep less…He now gets about four hours of shut-eye a night.

By the way…

…in 1995 Karnazes entered a 199-mile relay race – by himself.  He competed against eight teams of 12 and finished eighth.

In the five years I observed vice in Maquis Park, there was only one fatality for a prostitute who was managed by a pimp.  In contrast, thirteen self-employed prostitutes died during the night hours at work.  Of these, ten died at the hands of either an abusive john, a spouse or partner jealous of their work, or a pimp trying to clear them away from a spot: the other three died of drug overdoses, although they too may have been dealing with some type of harassment.

Sex workers with pimps can earn more money, and their work is more steady.

Shades of Walter Block.  From this data set it does seem that pimps beat their prostitutes a lot, but that otherwise there are more beatings.  That is from Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.  Here is my introductory post on the book.

Currency policy: The early to mid 1980s were a disaster, largely because Chilean banks were unsound and Chile pegged to a rising U.S. dollar.  This was the biggest economic mistake of the Pinochet regime.  It was a huge error which ruined the Chilean economy for years.  It should be noted, however, that the move from 1000 percent inflation to 10 percent inflation is never an easy one.

Copper: Rising copper prices were a key part of Chilean economic success, and yes Allende had nationalized the copper mines.  Pinochet did not re-privatize them.  You can count this in his favor, but not in a free market way.  Note that copper often counted for 50 percent or more of Chilean export earnings.  You can talk about voucher privatization, but in fact the Chilean state needed a fiscal base to avoid the distortionary (but revenue-raising) policies that are otherwise so common in Latin America.

Agriculture and diversification: Chile moved from very high tariffs to virtual free trade.  The Chilean economy diversified and became far less dependent on copper; this included some moves to hi-tech and light industry.  The regime gets high marks on this score, as few modern nations have benefited more from free trade.  Under Allende tariffs were commonly 100 percent or higher.  Conception was the most rapidly growing Chilean city during much of the reform era, and this shows that the story is not just about copper.

Welfare: As in the New Zealand economic miracle, social welfare spending rose over the broader course of the Pinochet reforms.  I take this to be for public choice and social control reasons, not benevolence.  The distributional consequences of the Chilean reforms were generally inegalitarian, although there was the creation of a large and growing middle class.

Social security: The vaunted "privatization" was in fact done on top of an already-existing government-run system.  Its free market nature is much overrated.  It probably was a good idea at the time, given the stellar performance of the Chilean stock market (which it helped drive), but it has created long-run problems and it is no longer a system to be envied.

School vouchers: Not clear they had much of an effect.  But I recall seeing a more positive recent study, which I can no longer find.  Here is more debate.

Privatization: Pinochet sold off steel, fertilizer, and an airline, among other companies.  The procedures were corrupt, but nonetheless an improvement overall.  There was no good reason why those companies should have been owned by the state.

Banks: Interest rates were freed up and financial repression was replaced by financial liberalization.  Do note that the Chilean government took over the banking system in 1983 or so, to avoid collapse, but later returned it to private hands.

The Allende regime: It was ruining the Chilean economy.  The recipe included deficits, foreign debt, high inflation, price controls, and devaluation, the usual stuff.  The guy was brave, but as a leader we should not idolize him.  He was an economic disaster.

Credibility: The Pinochet regime did restore the economic credibility of Chile.  Investors came to expect pro-commercial policies.  Although Pinochet himself was deeply corrupt (this was not known at the time), on net Chile extended its reputation as the least corrupt country in Latin America.

The 1990s: Much of the superior economic performance of Chile came after Pinochet left the stage (do look at the graph behind that link).  But the roots of this growth spring from the Pinochet years.  The moderate and left-wing successors left virtually all of his economic policies in place and of course they were democratic and eliminated the torture.

The bottom line: Many economic mistakes were made.  The biggest gains came from agricultural diversification, general credibility, the rising demand for copper, and the move away from terrible economic policies.  Chile had the best economic policies in South America from the late 1980s onward and it was and still is the envy of the continent.  But Chilean history from this period is as much a "state-building" miracle as a "free market" miracle. 

The Wikipedia entry on Chilean economic policy is reasonably good.  Here are some other links.  Out of the Ashes is the most comprehensive defense of Pinochet; it has useful material but overall it is not to be trusted.  Google yields up many more critiques than defenses.

Pinochet the man behaved so badly, both during his term and after, as to be morally indefensible.  From second hand accounts I have heard, it is also not clear how much the man himself was personally responsible for the good economic policies.  Still many good policies happened.  We need a closer look at the Chilean economic legacy, which is a complicated story and by no means wholly negative.

Addendum: It is worth asking which reforms could have succeeded in a democratic environment, but that would require a post all its own.  Someday you will get it.

Here is one summary, consistent with my research and travel experience:

1. "The average person living at under $1 a day does not seem to put
every available penny into buying more calories…Food typically
represents from 56 to 78% [of household spending]."

Despite this, hunger is common. Among the extremely poor in Udaipur, only 57% said their household had enough to eat in the previous year, and 72% report at least one symptom of disease.

2.
"The poor generally do not compain about their health – but then they
do not complain about life in general.  While the poor certainly feel
poor, their levels of self-reported happiness or health are not
particularly low."

3. Spending on festivals – religious ceremonies,
funerals and weddings – is high.  In Udaipur, median spending on these
by people living on $1 a day was 10% of income.

4. In several countries, the extremely poor spend about 5% of income on alcohol and tobacco.

5. In the Ivory Coast, 14% of people on $1 a day have a TV – and 45% of those on $2 a day have one.

6.
Many of the extremely poor get income from more than one source.
Cultivating their own land is not always the main source of income.

7. Participation in microfinance is not as high as you’d think. The poor seem unable to reap economies of scale, therefore.

Here is the underlying paper, by Banerjee and Duflo of MIT, highly recommended, hat tip to Michael Blowhard. 

Here is one more controversial bit, I wonder what they see as the relevant alternative:

…it is easy to see why so many of them are entrepreneurs.  If you
have few skills and little capital, and especially if you are a woman,
being an entrepreneur is often easier than finding a job: You buy some fruits
and vegetables (or some plastic toys) at the wholesalers and start
selling them on the street; you make some extra dosa mix and sell the
dosas in front of your house; you collect cow dung and dry it to sell
it as a fuel; you attend to one cow and collect the milk. As we saw in
Hyderabad, these are exactly the types of activity the poor are
involved in.  It is important, however, not to romanticize the idea of
these penniless entrepreneurs.  Given that they have no money,
borrowing is risky, and in any case no one wants to lend to them, the
businesses they run are inevitably extremely small, to the point where
there are clearly unrealized economies of scale.  Moreover, given that
so many of these firms have more family labor available to them than
they can use, it is no surprise that they do very little to create jobs
for others.  This of course makes it harder for anyone to find a job and
hence reinforces the proliferation of petty entrepreneurs.