Australian Politics Forum - Why Nations Fail

freediver

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #165 - Apr 6^th, 2014 at 9:47pm

LTYC, those criticisms of GDP are hardly revolutionary. They are part of any half decent macroeconomics 101 course.

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What I said right at the beginning: The wealth of a nation is reflected in the standard of living of the average person.

Ah, so they are rich because they are rich?

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It matters nothing if the ruling elite of China, India, Saudi Arabia or the US have access to all the wealth while the great bulk of the population is on Struggle Street.

Perhaps you should have said median rather than average. The wealthy elite in China in no way make up for the rest of them being poor. The current economic boom is a genuine one and is being felt by the average Chinese person. I think Saudi Arabia is also doing pretty well.

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Lord Herbert

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #166 - Apr 7^th, 2014 at 8:00am

freediver wrote on Apr 6^th, 2014 at 9:47pm:

Ah, so they are rich because they are rich?

Huh? I'll let gandalf field that one. Metaphysics isn't my strong suit.

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It matters nothing if the ruling elite of China, India, Saudi Arabia or the US have access to all the wealth while the great bulk of the population is on Struggle Street.

freediver wrote on Apr 6^th, 2014 at 9:47pm:

Perhaps you should have said median rather than average.

I should have said the majority of the ordinary people.

freediver wrote on Apr 6^th, 2014 at 9:47pm:

The wealthy elite in China in no way make up for the rest of them being poor.

Wages are poor in China by State decree, not because there isn't enough wealth to pay good wages, but because China is the world's warehouse for only as long as millions receive only a slave-wage.

It was exactly the same during the British Industrial Revolution. Nations build up their capital on the backs of millions of drones working for a pittance.

freediver wrote on Apr 6^th, 2014 at 9:47pm:

The current economic boom is a genuine one and is being felt by the average Chinese person.

Correct. But the ordinary Chinese worker gets his reward mainly through government services, benefits, and free housing for life ~ not disposable cash in the bank as we know it.

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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 49029 At my desk.	Re: Why Nations Fail Reply #167 - Apr 7^th, 2014 at 10:19pm A German friend of mine lives in China now, running a few night clubs, raves etc. He is not living off handouts. He runs his own businesses. I'm sure it's not as free or fair as here, but the reality is that this is why China is booming. If they continue to loosen the reigns, the boom will continue.
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Lord Herbert

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #168 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 7:35am

freediver wrote on Apr 7^th, 2014 at 10:19pm:

A German friend of mine lives in China now, running a few night clubs, raves etc. He is not living off handouts. He runs his own businesses. I'm sure it's not as free or fair as here, but the reality is that this is why China is booming. If they continue to loosen the reigns, the boom will continue.

At heart the Chinese are the world's most ardent capitalists. They love money for the status it brings and the toys it can buy.

Unfortunately (for them) they are also the world's most keen gamblers.

One of the most pathetically obscene images one can think of is James Packer's Casino Express flying Jumbo Jets full of multi-millionaire South East Asian gambling addicts to Australia to unload their fortunes at the high-stakes gambling tables in the High-Rollers Room where the cheapest chips are thousands of dollars each.

It really is an obscene image. The barrel of these planes stuffed with serried rows of Asian faces all sitting quietly like the condemned being trucked to an execution ground.

There's something horribly surreal and nightmarish about it.

Asia's best on their way to being fleeced by James Packer's shearers.

There's also status in being able to lose fortunes at the table. If you can lose a King's ransom at the tables it all the more demonstrates just how rich (successful) you are, and how lofty your social status.

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« Last Edit: Apr 8^th, 2014 at 7:41am by Lord Herbert »

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NorthOfNorth

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #169 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 8:16am

Lord Herbert wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 7:35am:

There's also status in being able to lose fortunes at the table. If you can lose a King's ransom at the tables it all the more demonstrates just how rich (successful) you are, and how lofty your social status.

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If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

from - IF - British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling.

Seems the Chinese aren't the only ones who see honour in high stakes gambling.

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Lord Herbert

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #170 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 8:46am

NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 8:16am:

Quote:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

from - IF - British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling.

Seems the Chinese aren't the only ones who see honour in high stakes gambling.

Kipling was referring to penny-ante stuff compared to what these sickos from China drop on the table each trip to Australia and Macau.

Tit-bit: I used to live in the building where Kipling trained as a journalist.

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NorthOfNorth

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #171 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:18am

Lord Herbert wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 8:46am:

NorthOfNorth wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 8:16am:

Quote:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

from - IF - British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling.

Seems the Chinese aren't the only ones who see honour in high stakes gambling.

Kipling was referring to penny-ante stuff compared to what these sickos from China drop on the table each trip to Australia and Macau.

Tit-bit: I used to live in the building where Kipling trained as a journalist.

Oh, OK thanks for that! I thought he meant make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, as a metaphor for courage of spirit over flesh (which, I guess, is honorable).

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Soren

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #172 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:56am

On common law (ie English) and continental (French) notions on freedom:

Chelsea, in London, now sounds like an arrondissement of Paris. According to the BBC, London is the sixth-biggest French city in the world.

The bureaucratic French are fearful of entrepreneurialism. They dare not take chances—they dare not risk their precious culture; their lunches; their months-long summer breaks; their endless public holidays that slop over into the weekend; their right to relax, to shrug their shoulders, to not work to the same strictures as everyone else.

How did it come to this? Well, there is a difference between the French vision of liberté (as in their revolutionary égalité and fraternité) and our freedom. It’s the liberty to be, and the freedom to do. Freedom you are born with—it comes from the bottom up—but you are given your liberty. It is handed from the top down. So the French system, with its huge state—its committees, academies, and conventions of wise men—is prescriptive for your own good, to protect all the things it deems most important. While we tend to think you should leave freedom alone. Indeed, if you don’t leave it alone, it’s not really freedom. It creates two apparently similar but fundamentally very different systems. In France, they look to their lives and culture to be protected. For the rest of us, we want to be allowed to get on and remake our lives and our culture.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2014/04/francois-hollande-affair-french-cultu...

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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 49029 At my desk.	Re: Why Nations Fail Reply #173 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 6:50pm Can you give some examples of how the french concept of liberty is prescriptive? Other than vague parallels about top-down and bottom-up, you didn't actually make a link with common law.
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Soren Gold Member Offline Posts: 25654 Gender:	Re: Why Nations Fail Reply #174 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 8:04pm freediver wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 6:50pm: Can you give some examples of how the french concept of liberty is prescriptive? Other than vague parallels about top-down and bottom-up, you didn't actually make a link with common law. http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1388035852/153#153
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freediver

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #175 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:54pm

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The common law does not impose order but grows from it. If government is necessary, in the conservative view, it is in order to resolve the conflicts that arise when things are, for whatever reason, unsettled.

Greedy reductionism. Common law is merely a different way of imposing order. It is more responsive in the sense that it is quicker, but it is also less accountable to the people. Not that I am criticising it. I just don't see your point.

The French vs British thing is interesting. The book credits France with spreading pluralism throughout the rest of western Europe via Napolean. I appreciate the two different models. But you are not making the relevance of common law stick. You are just playing word association games. Bottom up = good.

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Soren

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #176 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 10:25pm

freediver wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:54pm:

Quote:

The common law does not impose order but grows from it. If government is necessary, in the conservative view, it is in order to resolve the conflicts that arise when things are, for whatever reason, unsettled.

Greedy reductionism. Common law is merely a different way of imposing order. It is more responsive in the sense that it is quicker, but it is also less accountable to the people. Not that I am criticising it. I just don't see your point.

The French vs British thing is interesting. The book credits France with spreading pluralism throughout the rest of western Europe via Napolean. I appreciate the two different models. But you are not making the relevance of common law stick. You are just playing word association games. Bottom up = good.

1. Self-determination - bottom up - good.

2. Top down:
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
(Bertold Brecht, The Solution)

You say you understand the different models but do not understand the role of common law in the one and lack of it in the other as a reason for the difference. Is this what you are saying?

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Soren

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #177 - Apr 8^th, 2014 at 10:56pm

freediver wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:54pm:

Common law is merely a different way of imposing order.

Of course. ANy law's function is to impose or create or maintain order.

freediver wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:54pm:

It is more responsive in the sense that it is quicker, but it is also less accountable to the people.

That is my central point - if you read David Hume and Jacques Rousseau, you will see just how different even Enlightenment can be. So the difference common law makes is the point.

freediver wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:54pm:

It is more responsive in the sense that it is quicker, but it is also less accountable to the people. Not that I am criticising it. I just don't see your point.

How is it less responsive to the people? It is discovered/made in open court, drawing on past cases and the way they were resolved before other open courts. The common, shared life and experience of the people IS the central feature of common law.

freediver wrote on Apr 8^th, 2014 at 9:54pm:

The French vs British thing is interesting. The book credits France with spreading pluralism throughout the rest of western Europe via Napolean.

Napoleon crowned himself emperor - he ended up as unpluralistic as pre-1789 France. Not even Louis XVI was an Emperor.

Quote:

I appreciate the two different models. But you are not making the relevance of common law stick. You are just playing word association games. Bottom up = good.

If you appreciate the different models of English and French Enlightenment, political and legal systems - to what do you attribute the difference if not to the way the English and the French organise themselves into a society, the way they relate to each other, the bonds they recognise etc?
Common law is possible in a society like the English and Danish societies (the two oldest common law countries) and their similarity to each other and difference to France and the French style social organisation is remarkable and obvious even after a cursory look.

The legal system is a daily expression of how people relate to each other and to their countries and communities and how they regard the nature of their bonds to each other. If this is not a determining factor shaping a society - what is?

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True Colours

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #178 - Apr 9^th, 2014 at 12:52am

Nations tend to fail because they deserve to. Greed, laziness, arrogance, hedonism...the reasons are many and nowadays you can apply most of them, if not all, to the failing state of the US. China has not quite reached that point yet, but seems that they are fast learners, and I doubt that they will be great for long.

Sometimes a nation can be humbled back into greatness. Many nations were reenergised by giving up their sins in the face of some disaster such as we saw after WWII. Sometimes the nation is too far gone and is destroyed completely like the Roman Empire was.

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freediver

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Re: Why Nations Fail
Reply #179 - Apr 13^th, 2014 at 10:56am

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That is my central point

So why didn't you say it?

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if you read David Hume and Jacques Rousseau, you will see just how different even Enlightenment can be. So the difference common law makes is the point.

Are you capable of communicating the argument they make?

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How is it less responsive to the people?

So it is your central point, yet you get it backwards? How about you state your central point in your own words.

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The common, shared life and experience of the people IS the central feature of common law.

The central feature is that it is generated by the court system.

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Napoleon crowned himself emperor - he ended up as unpluralistic as pre-1789 France. Not even Louis XVI was an Emperor.

Yet he dismantled the extractive institutions of society and replaced them with more inclusive ones - not just in France, but in the lands he conquered. It was a different path, but it went to the same place.

Quote:

Common law is possible in a society like the English and Danish societies (the two oldest common law countries) and their similarity to each other and difference to France and the French style social organisation is remarkable and obvious even after a cursory look.

The legal implications are significant. But you seem to be implying they have far greater reach.

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Nations tend to fail because they deserve to. Greed, laziness, arrogance, hedonism...

Thanks TC. Does this mean the Muslims must start slaughtering the infidel again if they are to become great nations once more?

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