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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38203 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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What do you think about the concept of the Global North and South?

I never payed much attention to this way of looking at global economics. I don't know anyone from South America or Africa and only a handful of folks from Asia. My only economic reference comes from Fukuyama's "The End of History", where he spent a few pages describing dependency theory and then refuting it by showing how poor Asian countries were able to grow while South American countries, despite being in a similar situation, were not.

A few days ago, I had a chance to meet some people from South America. I believe they were from Brazil and Venezuela. Both worked for NGOs. They quickly turned the topic to colonization, blaming it for all the problems in their countries. I know their countries are not doing too well, both in terms of civic freedom and economics, but I was surprised by how strong their views were--they basically said the Europe and the US are to blame for the bad situation their countries are in. Europe, for colonization and "mass rape", and the USA for the Monroe Doctrine (and the associated string of interference) as well as extracting wealth from South America.

I didn't have time to query them for more details. I'm ambivalent on the question of colonization. I haven't studied it much nor thought about it. I can easily imagine that US interventions have had a destabilizing effect on SA, but I can't imagine how big of an effect that would be. I remember reading Noah Smith's piece on Cuba and how its failure is not the fault of the American embargo, but rather of obviously bad economic policy. I can't help but think that this is the case for other South American countries as well.

How much merit do you think there is in accusing US and Europe for inflicting poverty on the global south? What should I search for if I wanted to know more--thinkers, articles, etc.?

I was just thinking today that when checking Twitter for what people in some Global South country are saying about colonialism, you often see quite a few ones that do blame colonialism... for putting the wrong tribe in charge of their country. For instance, Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project. Or, as a variation, black South Africans blaming white South Africans not as much for apartheid but for facilitating illegal immigration from Nigeria and Zimbabwe to South Africa, taking away native black South African jobs by employing illegal immigrants. And so on.

Just recently I saw some United Nations organ make a basic "colonialism was bad" post Tweet related to Africa and pretty much all comments were people from various African countries bashing some other tribe or ethnic group in their own country.

Biafran independence activists in Nigeria blaming British colonialism for putting Muslisms (or non-Igbo in general) in charge of Nigeria, or making it an unwieldy artificial state project

I think those complaints are much more legitimate. Direct material exploitation is, speaking long-term, easy to recover from, but wrecked geopolitics in already-fragile regions can lead to long-term stability issues and consistent human capital flight. And that's far worse.

https://freaktakes.substack.com/p/bombs-brains-and-science?s=r

In total, Allied bombings completely destroyed about 18.5% of German homes. Inner-city homes represented an inordinately high chunk of these homes since inner-cities were the very rough target of these campaigns. Coincidentally, inner-cities also are where a high share of universities are located.

All of that is to say: there was a large sample of university research buildings that were partially or fully destroyed by Allied bombs without much rhyme or reason.

Would you rather lose 10% of your researchers or 10% of your labs?

Now, getting your academic building partially blown to shreds is obviously bad for departmental productivity. But, so is having up to 15% of your professors fired for something as arbitrary as having a Jewish grandparent or attending a communist party meeting. And, while it’s obvious that both of these will at least temporarily decrease departmental output, it is not clear at all which is worse, either in the short run or in the long run.

In the short run, a 10% shock to human capital—dismissing 10% of a department’s scientists—reduced departmental output by .2 standard deviations. A 10% shock to physical capital—the destruction of 10% of a department’s buildings—lowered output by .05 standard deviations. The effects of losing 10% of your researchers was 4X that of losing 10% of your buildings in the short-run.

In the long-run, the effects of dismissing researchers persisted. Departments continued to underperform up through 1980, when the data for the study stops. Meanwhile, by 1970, departments that were bombed were experiencing increased productivity, meaning that bombed departments may have benefited from upgrading during postwar reconstruction.

the dismissal of scientists in Nazi Germany contributed NINE TIMES MORE to the decrease in scientific output in Germany than did the destruction of a large percentage of its research buildings.

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