> If the wealth gap between NATO members in Eastern Europe and Russian-aligned Eastern Europe continues to grow (i.e. Poland and the Baltics get rich and Belarus stays poor) [...] I’ll take that as evidence against this theory.
GDP per capita in USD: Ukraine 4800, Belarus 7300, Russia 12000, Poland 18000, Lithuania 21100, Slovakia 21400, Latvia 23700, Czechia 26800, Estonia 27900, Germany 51200.
I think we already have four layers visible here, from poorest to richest: (1) countries under Russian influence, (2) Russia itself, (3) former Soviet countries currently associated with the West, (4) Western countries. It makes a huge difference for the Eastern European countries which side they joined.
It's a question of perspective (glass half full / half empty) whether you say that that the Eastern European countries that joined the West are "not yet as rich as Western Europe" or "already halfway there". (30+ years of capitalism seem like a lot, but consider that they follow the 40+ or 70+ years of Soviet communism.)
Not sure how you want to separate the impact of geo-politics from the impact of institutions. Institutions are often the consequence of geo-politics. If you are in Russia's sphere of influence, it is virtually impossible not to be ruled by oligarchs connected to Moscow. If you join the West, you get lots of non-profit organizations.
"Not sure how you want to separate the impact of geo-politics from the impact of institutions. Institutions are often the consequence of geo-politics. If you are in Russia's sphere of influence, it is virtually impossible not to be ruled by oligarchs connected to Moscow. If you join the West, you get lots of non-profit organizations."
Yeah, this was probably the biggest weakness of the post, I don't really cover whether there could be important institutional differences between different "capitalist countries". My intuition is that it won't matter that much, fundamental "NGO" and "oligarchic" capitalist economies both run on circulating money, are coordinated by price signals, mostly align incentives to individual interests etc. They're similar under the hood.
And comparing oligarchic Russian capitalism to (can we call it oligarchic?) Russian socialism (i.e. keeping the oligarchy constant), capitalism doesn't seem like any kind of improvement.
To me, the fact that it's the Western aligned Eastern European states, and not the Russian ones, that are/have become wealthy also suggests that it's Geo-politics that matters most.
If institutions do matter a lot, I think were entering into the epistemological territory where our categories are too subjective and we're considering too many variables to make scientific theories.
> [Russian] capitalism doesn't seem like any kind of improvement.
Not sure about this. On one hand, Russian capitalism clearly failed to deliver the same results as the Western capitalism. On the other hand, are there regular shortages of toilet paper in Russian capitalism? (Genuine question; I am not a Russian, I have no idea.)
Russian capitalism sucks, but we should not underestimate how much Russian socialism sucked. Millions starved to death; millions worked to death in labor camps. You had rationing system; people outside of Moscow and Leningrad were sometimes legally prohibited from buying meat. Russian capitalism, horrible as it is, can still be an improvement over *that*. It just failed to deliver the quality of life that exists outside of Russia and its sphere of influence.
I just wanted to note that "First/Second/Third World" were originally used to denote countries that were Western, Soviet, or un-aligned, respectively. The modern use of first/third to mean rich/poor is a derivation from that. So, it's unsurprising that what you're calling "first world" nations in your post are generally western aligned--that's what the definition of "first world" used to mean.
I suppose the question to ask would be "why does a term that originally denoted geopolitical categories ~70 years ago fit so exactly onto economic categories now?" That still seems surprising/unexplained to me.
I'd say that "1 && (2 || 3)" is confusing cause and effect; it's more like "2 || 3", with US being the globalist empire which started swallowing up all promising/successful countries post-WWII, or at least all those that it could.
Think of it in terms of 1990s Microsoft gobbling up promising/successful companies like dinner snacks. Microsoft didn't make them successful. Microsoft had the wit and muscle to swallow up those that already were -- accumulating more wit and muscle in that very process. An upward spiral.
The Microsoft comparison is flawed only inasmuch as Microsoft had *competition* in that process. Whereas the US had no competition post-WWII. Japan had gutted China and Korea, US had gutted Japan, and Europe had gutted itself. This left the US in a station way above anyone else, and way above what it had been pre-WWII. US then promptly threw its Monroe Doctrine into the dustbin, and started competently leveraging that new reality.
Your perspective on China also seems slightly outdated. There sure is dire poverty remaining in China - as there is in US - but their standards are not lagging behind the west's any longer. Furthermore, Africa is barely under the western sphere of influence any more; Africa is mostly China's now, with the occasional spot of India.
The US sphere of influence does continue to comprise Latin America (with the occasional pocket of resistance such as Venezuela). It has established an iron grip on Europe east of the Iron Curtain as well _except_ for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. When the current war there ends - and Russia is not nearly strong enough to win it - Ukraine will be another notch in the bedpost.
Meaning that what you laid out there seems mostly correct to me, except for China and Africa.
Those are certainly some challenging arguments for my position. I can feel my brain overheating a bit trying to formulate a response, but my best answers would be:
"Africa is mostly China's now"
My understanding is that China has financed lots of economic development in parts of Africa, in a way the US never did, which, yes, must surely buy China some influence in the region. But I still think the US's potential military reach (the thing that ultimately matters most in the Great Power game) hugely exceeds China's almost everywhere in the world, including Africa (South China Sea is the only real exception).
If an African country posed a serious threat to US economic interests, I'm fairly sure the US would have no trouble thwarting that challenge, wither through sanctions or direct invasion. When Gadhafi began selling non-dollar dominated oil (i.e. undermining the petro-dollar) the US's response was a swift and crushing military intervention.
I can't imagine China is capable of launching its own version of the Libyan war unchallenged, the US wouldn't permit it and would block the move by escalating the conflict into a proxy war (like in Ukraine). So, I'd still argue Africa, and most of the Third World, is in the US sphere of influence in the relevant sense.
"There sure is dire poverty remaining in China - as there is in US - but their standards are not lagging behind the west's any longer."
China's gdp per capita is <1/5 of the US's. My impression is that, some of the coastal cities look a bit like poorer version of South Korea and Japan, but I'm not sure how you could argue China is "not lagging behind the west's any longer."
The main point about whether countries are rich because they're aligned with the US or whether the US deliberately aligns itself with rich countries (or countries with the potential to get rich) is a lot harder to address. Obviously the two theories make the same predictions about what the world should look like.
The "align" theory does require foreign policy makers in 1945 to predict, fairly exactly, who will be wealthy in 2023. Which makes it less parsimonious in my eyes.
Also, now that China is showing signs of potentially becoming wealthy, do you expect that America will invite it into the alliance? That seems unlikely. To me, the emerging cold-war lends support to the idea that they're competing over mutually exclusive geo-economic interests.
Feel like I could say a lot more on that issue. I'm not sure how much of a contender the "align" theory is in this debate though (did you hear it from Peter Ziehan?), I'd be interested to know, is anyone else reads this, if they support anything like an align theory.
"some of the coastal cities look a bit like poorer version of South Korea and Japan." Yes, I am talking about a "few coastal cities" - whereas China has a staggering 1400 million people. Capital being concentrated on the coast is fairly common, for historical/trade reasons. (the US is no exception, and hardly anyone excludes the US from first-world countries based on what happened to its "flyover territory" post-globalization)
Those "few coastal cities" comprise more population than Japan and South Korea together, and they have first-world standards. Averaged across the whole mainland territory and population, Chinese GDP does turn out lower "per capita" (about 2/5 of Japan or Korea), but Japan and Korea /together/ don't have 1/8 of China's population. Focusing on the "averaged per capita" angle can make one lose sight of the overall scale of things, and their internal distribution.
"Obviously the two theories make the same predictions about what the world should look like." No they don't, and the crux of that difference is precisely China. If one falsely files China under "third world", then that falsely upholds "1 && (2 || 3)" as opposed to "2 || 3".
China had been trying to get into the WTO for 15 years until Clinton (effectively) let them join in 2001. The lack of related trading opportunities (whom Japan had since 1955 and South Korea since 1967) had been a significant relative disadvantage. China had been catching up to them with an impressive speed ever since that relative disadvantage got lifted. And there isn't all that much difference China has left to catch up with, in spite of the significant differences in how the "institutions are organized". It's still about the #2, the population that makes up the country, more than a particular set of institutions or political paradigms.
When the WTO gatekeepers (i.e. US) decided to let China in, they were deeply convinced that this will make China fall into the US sphere of influence.
Which very evidently has not happened. It just eliminated China's remaining relative disadvantage (after the "self-inflicted" disadvantage of Mao Tse Tung had been eliminated by him passing away). The US had gotten Japan and South Korea by military means, *not* by mercantile means: Japan was invaded (surrendering only after ~300k civilians were killed by firebombing and another ~160k were nuked), and South Korea exists only thanks to US military intervention (otherwise there'd be "just Korea" -- the "north" one).
For Africa, the US would indisputably have the upper hand on the military side, but that means little when a US military invasion there is unconceivable in the current century. There's a mercantile war for Africa, and the Chinese are winning it; calling it "development in a few parts of Africa" vastly understates what is happening; the extent to which China is taking control of African key infrastructure and natural resource exploitation. (which is a matter for a /long/ post)
> If the wealth gap between NATO members in Eastern Europe and Russian-aligned Eastern Europe continues to grow (i.e. Poland and the Baltics get rich and Belarus stays poor) [...] I’ll take that as evidence against this theory.
GDP per capita in USD: Ukraine 4800, Belarus 7300, Russia 12000, Poland 18000, Lithuania 21100, Slovakia 21400, Latvia 23700, Czechia 26800, Estonia 27900, Germany 51200.
I think we already have four layers visible here, from poorest to richest: (1) countries under Russian influence, (2) Russia itself, (3) former Soviet countries currently associated with the West, (4) Western countries. It makes a huge difference for the Eastern European countries which side they joined.
It's a question of perspective (glass half full / half empty) whether you say that that the Eastern European countries that joined the West are "not yet as rich as Western Europe" or "already halfway there". (30+ years of capitalism seem like a lot, but consider that they follow the 40+ or 70+ years of Soviet communism.)
Not sure how you want to separate the impact of geo-politics from the impact of institutions. Institutions are often the consequence of geo-politics. If you are in Russia's sphere of influence, it is virtually impossible not to be ruled by oligarchs connected to Moscow. If you join the West, you get lots of non-profit organizations.
"Not sure how you want to separate the impact of geo-politics from the impact of institutions. Institutions are often the consequence of geo-politics. If you are in Russia's sphere of influence, it is virtually impossible not to be ruled by oligarchs connected to Moscow. If you join the West, you get lots of non-profit organizations."
Yeah, this was probably the biggest weakness of the post, I don't really cover whether there could be important institutional differences between different "capitalist countries". My intuition is that it won't matter that much, fundamental "NGO" and "oligarchic" capitalist economies both run on circulating money, are coordinated by price signals, mostly align incentives to individual interests etc. They're similar under the hood.
And comparing oligarchic Russian capitalism to (can we call it oligarchic?) Russian socialism (i.e. keeping the oligarchy constant), capitalism doesn't seem like any kind of improvement.
To me, the fact that it's the Western aligned Eastern European states, and not the Russian ones, that are/have become wealthy also suggests that it's Geo-politics that matters most.
If institutions do matter a lot, I think were entering into the epistemological territory where our categories are too subjective and we're considering too many variables to make scientific theories.
> [Russian] capitalism doesn't seem like any kind of improvement.
Not sure about this. On one hand, Russian capitalism clearly failed to deliver the same results as the Western capitalism. On the other hand, are there regular shortages of toilet paper in Russian capitalism? (Genuine question; I am not a Russian, I have no idea.)
Russian capitalism sucks, but we should not underestimate how much Russian socialism sucked. Millions starved to death; millions worked to death in labor camps. You had rationing system; people outside of Moscow and Leningrad were sometimes legally prohibited from buying meat. Russian capitalism, horrible as it is, can still be an improvement over *that*. It just failed to deliver the quality of life that exists outside of Russia and its sphere of influence.
I just wanted to note that "First/Second/Third World" were originally used to denote countries that were Western, Soviet, or un-aligned, respectively. The modern use of first/third to mean rich/poor is a derivation from that. So, it's unsurprising that what you're calling "first world" nations in your post are generally western aligned--that's what the definition of "first world" used to mean.
I suppose the question to ask would be "why does a term that originally denoted geopolitical categories ~70 years ago fit so exactly onto economic categories now?" That still seems surprising/unexplained to me.
1) Communism/totalitarianism can suppress the natural wealth building of high IQs. This explains China.
2) Low IQs can't advance very far no matter what they do.
3) An interesting question is East Asian IQ.
a) It is superior, equivalent, or inferior to western IQ (creativity, etc).
b) Are East Asian societies about as rich as they can get given their resource dearth, population density, and low starting points.
I'd say that "1 && (2 || 3)" is confusing cause and effect; it's more like "2 || 3", with US being the globalist empire which started swallowing up all promising/successful countries post-WWII, or at least all those that it could.
Think of it in terms of 1990s Microsoft gobbling up promising/successful companies like dinner snacks. Microsoft didn't make them successful. Microsoft had the wit and muscle to swallow up those that already were -- accumulating more wit and muscle in that very process. An upward spiral.
The Microsoft comparison is flawed only inasmuch as Microsoft had *competition* in that process. Whereas the US had no competition post-WWII. Japan had gutted China and Korea, US had gutted Japan, and Europe had gutted itself. This left the US in a station way above anyone else, and way above what it had been pre-WWII. US then promptly threw its Monroe Doctrine into the dustbin, and started competently leveraging that new reality.
Your perspective on China also seems slightly outdated. There sure is dire poverty remaining in China - as there is in US - but their standards are not lagging behind the west's any longer. Furthermore, Africa is barely under the western sphere of influence any more; Africa is mostly China's now, with the occasional spot of India.
The US sphere of influence does continue to comprise Latin America (with the occasional pocket of resistance such as Venezuela). It has established an iron grip on Europe east of the Iron Curtain as well _except_ for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. When the current war there ends - and Russia is not nearly strong enough to win it - Ukraine will be another notch in the bedpost.
Meaning that what you laid out there seems mostly correct to me, except for China and Africa.
Those are certainly some challenging arguments for my position. I can feel my brain overheating a bit trying to formulate a response, but my best answers would be:
"Africa is mostly China's now"
My understanding is that China has financed lots of economic development in parts of Africa, in a way the US never did, which, yes, must surely buy China some influence in the region. But I still think the US's potential military reach (the thing that ultimately matters most in the Great Power game) hugely exceeds China's almost everywhere in the world, including Africa (South China Sea is the only real exception).
If an African country posed a serious threat to US economic interests, I'm fairly sure the US would have no trouble thwarting that challenge, wither through sanctions or direct invasion. When Gadhafi began selling non-dollar dominated oil (i.e. undermining the petro-dollar) the US's response was a swift and crushing military intervention.
I can't imagine China is capable of launching its own version of the Libyan war unchallenged, the US wouldn't permit it and would block the move by escalating the conflict into a proxy war (like in Ukraine). So, I'd still argue Africa, and most of the Third World, is in the US sphere of influence in the relevant sense.
"There sure is dire poverty remaining in China - as there is in US - but their standards are not lagging behind the west's any longer."
China's gdp per capita is <1/5 of the US's. My impression is that, some of the coastal cities look a bit like poorer version of South Korea and Japan, but I'm not sure how you could argue China is "not lagging behind the west's any longer."
The main point about whether countries are rich because they're aligned with the US or whether the US deliberately aligns itself with rich countries (or countries with the potential to get rich) is a lot harder to address. Obviously the two theories make the same predictions about what the world should look like.
The "align" theory does require foreign policy makers in 1945 to predict, fairly exactly, who will be wealthy in 2023. Which makes it less parsimonious in my eyes.
Also, now that China is showing signs of potentially becoming wealthy, do you expect that America will invite it into the alliance? That seems unlikely. To me, the emerging cold-war lends support to the idea that they're competing over mutually exclusive geo-economic interests.
Feel like I could say a lot more on that issue. I'm not sure how much of a contender the "align" theory is in this debate though (did you hear it from Peter Ziehan?), I'd be interested to know, is anyone else reads this, if they support anything like an align theory.
"some of the coastal cities look a bit like poorer version of South Korea and Japan." Yes, I am talking about a "few coastal cities" - whereas China has a staggering 1400 million people. Capital being concentrated on the coast is fairly common, for historical/trade reasons. (the US is no exception, and hardly anyone excludes the US from first-world countries based on what happened to its "flyover territory" post-globalization)
Those "few coastal cities" comprise more population than Japan and South Korea together, and they have first-world standards. Averaged across the whole mainland territory and population, Chinese GDP does turn out lower "per capita" (about 2/5 of Japan or Korea), but Japan and Korea /together/ don't have 1/8 of China's population. Focusing on the "averaged per capita" angle can make one lose sight of the overall scale of things, and their internal distribution.
"Obviously the two theories make the same predictions about what the world should look like." No they don't, and the crux of that difference is precisely China. If one falsely files China under "third world", then that falsely upholds "1 && (2 || 3)" as opposed to "2 || 3".
China had been trying to get into the WTO for 15 years until Clinton (effectively) let them join in 2001. The lack of related trading opportunities (whom Japan had since 1955 and South Korea since 1967) had been a significant relative disadvantage. China had been catching up to them with an impressive speed ever since that relative disadvantage got lifted. And there isn't all that much difference China has left to catch up with, in spite of the significant differences in how the "institutions are organized". It's still about the #2, the population that makes up the country, more than a particular set of institutions or political paradigms.
When the WTO gatekeepers (i.e. US) decided to let China in, they were deeply convinced that this will make China fall into the US sphere of influence.
Which very evidently has not happened. It just eliminated China's remaining relative disadvantage (after the "self-inflicted" disadvantage of Mao Tse Tung had been eliminated by him passing away). The US had gotten Japan and South Korea by military means, *not* by mercantile means: Japan was invaded (surrendering only after ~300k civilians were killed by firebombing and another ~160k were nuked), and South Korea exists only thanks to US military intervention (otherwise there'd be "just Korea" -- the "north" one).
For Africa, the US would indisputably have the upper hand on the military side, but that means little when a US military invasion there is unconceivable in the current century. There's a mercantile war for Africa, and the Chinese are winning it; calling it "development in a few parts of Africa" vastly understates what is happening; the extent to which China is taking control of African key infrastructure and natural resource exploitation. (which is a matter for a /long/ post)