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From the title, and skimming over this article, I notice an irony: the analysis is "short" by Eastern standards They're only talking about the last 100-200 yea

by chubot 2y ago

From the title, and skimming over this article, I notice an irony: the analysis is "short" by Eastern standards They're only talking about the last 100-200 years. That's significant on the American time scale, but insignificant on a Chinese one. It's interesting to me that older cultures like the Chinese, Japanese, and the Maya view history as cyclical, while Americans tend to have more a narrative of "linear progress", or even "manifest destiny" (a term I heard in grade school but probably didn't really understand until being an adult) --- I think Ray Dalio's explanation is the most concise and takes into account the cyclical nature of history (and wow this video has 55 M views now) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8 Roughly speaking, [edited] China and India likely had most of the world GDP for more than 1000 years [1] ... you can think of it as a miracle for them to rise again, or just part of a cycle. And there are absolutely cycles in history, just ones that are longer than any "news" article tends to talk about I also think Americans are now waking up to a cyclical view. Everyone is talking about how this is the "first" generation to make less money than their parents, or the "first" to have shorter life span But it's only "first" if you don't recognize the cycles! That's understandable because of America's history, but it is a limited analysis --- [1] edit: I looked deeper into this, and I agree it's flimsy, as mentioned below. But I think the larger point still stands -- it's a only a "miracle" if you're looking at a certain time frame, and n=1

dyauspitr 2y ago
That’s not true, India had the largest GDP for the vast majority of human civilization.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
avmich 2y ago
The problem with cyclical view appears as soon as one tries to review the underlying causes why this movement happens. You can have rises, prosperity, overshoots, bad habits, slowdowns and depressions coming one after another in a mostly closed system. Or you may consider a system which can be affected by externalities, those which can be so powerful as to cause opium depression or technology copying rise. It's a little like pendulum with external forces, which dictate what's the actual behavior of the pendulum is - disregarding its own internal properties.
- chubot 2y ago
  It's true, but really it's both ... there is "progress" and there are also cycles. Dalio explicitly superimposes them on each other I don't think I believed this until 2017 or 2020 or so, but it seems clear that the USA is on a natural downcycle and probably will be for several decades I think the causes are pretty well laid out in the book - basically having the global reserve currency is kind of an unfair advantage, and it leads the population to become decadent and unproductive, it leads to institutional decay, etc. --- That brought to mind the tweet/slogan "what if your whole personality depends on low interest rates?", and now I see that something similar was discussed on Hacker News too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946342 Basically people live in a particular part of a cycle, which lasts longer than their lifetimes (but there are also non-cyclical changes / progress, and yeah there are big flaws with trying to go back 1000 years)
achow 2y ago
> Roughly speaking, China had the largest GDP in the world for more than 1000 years For a continuous duration of nearly 1700 years from the year 1 CE, India was the world's largest economy, constituting 35 to 40% of the world GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India
- RandomThoughts3 2y ago
  Yes, yes, we know that China and India are becoming extremely nationalistic and like to use their tendencies for historical revionism to find justifications for their new found imperialism. Still I’m not convinced we actually need a fight of propagandists here.
- chubot 2y ago
  OK I tracked down that claim to Michael Cembalest of JP Morgan, in a 2012 article https://archive.is/kQNT4#selection-1577.155-1581.525 https://archive.is/kQNT4#selection-1577.155-1581.525 https://archive.is/Z2qEu https://archive.is/Z2qEu Although there are problems with the analysis that are mentioned in both articles: A major caveat: If you looked at the chart in any depth, you probably noticed a big problem with it. The time periods between data points aren't equal -- in fact they are not close at all --- So, one way to read the graph, very broadly speaking, is that everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world and everything to the right of 1800 is a demonstration of productivity divergences around the world But the analysis for China is equally flimsy, so I edited my comment to say "China and India" and "likely" --- TBH now that I see this data, I think both claims are a little flimsy. I was more referring to Dalio's analysis, which covers the last 500 years only, and probably got a few claims mixed up. For some reason Dalio does not include India much in his analysis -- it is mostly focused on China, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the USA. That could be his bias, or perhaps a definitional issue with what counts as "India" (and similarly what counts as "China"), which is a difficult question over 500-1000 year time frames
- namaria 2y ago
  Estimating economy sizes and growth before a couple hundred years ago is at best an exercise in educated guessing.

by chubot 2y ago

dyauspitr 2y ago

That’s not true, India had the largest GDP for the vast majority of human civilization.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

avmich 2y ago

The problem with cyclical view appears as soon as one tries to review the underlying causes why this movement happens. You can have rises, prosperity, overshoots, bad habits, slowdowns and depressions coming one after another in a mostly closed system. Or you may consider a system which can be affected by externalities, those which can be so powerful as to cause opium depression or technology copying rise. It's a little like pendulum with external forces, which dictate what's the actual behavior of the pendulum is - disregarding its own internal properties.

chubot 2y ago
It's true, but really it's both ... there is "progress" and there are also cycles. Dalio explicitly superimposes them on each other I don't think I believed this until 2017 or 2020 or so, but it seems clear that the USA is on a natural downcycle and probably will be for several decades I think the causes are pretty well laid out in the book - basically having the global reserve currency is kind of an unfair advantage, and it leads the population to become decadent and unproductive, it leads to institutional decay, etc. --- That brought to mind the tweet/slogan "what if your whole personality depends on low interest rates?", and now I see that something similar was discussed on Hacker News too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946342 Basically people live in a particular part of a cycle, which lasts longer than their lifetimes (but there are also non-cyclical changes / progress, and yeah there are big flaws with trying to go back 1000 years)

achow 2y ago

> Roughly speaking, China had the largest GDP in the world for more than 1000 years For a continuous duration of nearly 1700 years from the year 1 CE, India was the world's largest economy, constituting 35 to 40% of the world GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India

RandomThoughts3 2y ago
Yes, yes, we know that China and India are becoming extremely nationalistic and like to use their tendencies for historical revionism to find justifications for their new found imperialism. Still I’m not convinced we actually need a fight of propagandists here.
chubot 2y ago
OK I tracked down that claim to Michael Cembalest of JP Morgan, in a 2012 article https://archive.is/kQNT4#selection-1577.155-1581.525 https://archive.is/kQNT4#selection-1577.155-1581.525 https://archive.is/Z2qEu https://archive.is/Z2qEu Although there are problems with the analysis that are mentioned in both articles: A major caveat: If you looked at the chart in any depth, you probably noticed a big problem with it. The time periods between data points aren't equal -- in fact they are not close at all --- So, one way to read the graph, very broadly speaking, is that everything to the left of 1800 is an approximation of population distribution around the world and everything to the right of 1800 is a demonstration of productivity divergences around the world But the analysis for China is equally flimsy, so I edited my comment to say "China and India" and "likely" --- TBH now that I see this data, I think both claims are a little flimsy. I was more referring to Dalio's analysis, which covers the last 500 years only, and probably got a few claims mixed up. For some reason Dalio does not include India much in his analysis -- it is mostly focused on China, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the USA. That could be his bias, or perhaps a definitional issue with what counts as "India" (and similarly what counts as "China"), which is a difficult question over 500-1000 year time frames
namaria 2y ago
Estimating economy sizes and growth before a couple hundred years ago is at best an exercise in educated guessing.