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Is it against the rules to say that most of the comments here (at least right now) are drastically missing the point? "Rich countries exploit poor ones!!" - ok,

Is it against the rules to say that most of the comments here (at least right now) are drastically missing the point? "Rich countries exploit poor ones!!" - ok, fine, you could argue that's been happening since the beginning of time, doesn't change anything about the conclusions of the article. "The article obsesses over GDP convergence!!" - you can argue GDP is not the perfect metric but the fact is a lot of these poor countries have not been converging on lots of quality of life metrics that matter. The fundamental thrust of the article is that poor countries only "converged" for a short while due to the Chinese-driven commodity boom, and I think this argument is very compelling. Worse, as history has shown tons of times, commodity booms often end up being bad for a country in the long term because they don't lead to meaningful investments in other productivity-improving endeavors (e.g. Dutch disease that the article mentions). And I think a subtext of this article is that the economic profession in general has a ton of soul searching to do. Too often economics has depicted rosy outcomes for a host of activities where it has just been flat out wrong. This article goes into detail about how "convergence" almost never happened except for a short "sugar high" driven my Chinese commodity demand. Similarly, I've seen a few mea culpas over the years arguing that the once orthodox view that globalization would be great for everyone failed to take into account how it could contribute to destabilizing democracies as the "economic losers" in rich countries started to demand more political power, one aspect in the rise of populism and some of its dangerous effects.

bibimsz 9mo ago
[flagged]
- manphone 9mo ago
  Here, you dropped your dog whistle.
  - bibimsz 9mo ago
    are we allowed to speak plainly about these matters?
    - hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago
      Fine, I'll speak plainly, because your original post was exactly backwards. "Economic losers" in rich countries are those who did not benefit from globalization - think of all the hollowed out Rust Belt towns in the US, smaller villages in France that aren't on major train lines, etc. If anything, immigrants are largely economic winners because they are able to change their situation and go where there is more abundant opportunity.
marcosdumay 9mo ago
> the fact is a lot of these poor countries have not been converging on lots of quality of life metrics that matter What kinds of measurements are you referring to? Because poor countries are absurdly clearly converging since the end of WWII, but only if you don't ignore things like political independence, lack of civil wars, lack of state sponsored terror, or food security. Those things contribute less to the GDP than fridges that break every 4 years. Anyway, yes, there is some serious discussion on whether that process has stopped. This article isn't very good, the source it's extending from isn't trying to compare actual wealth, but still something may have happened recently. And yes, it's probably the culprit everybody suspects, and economists should be louder in recognizing that some of their schools are in fact fraudulent.
shermantanktop 9mo ago
Economists do a lot of soul searching, it seems, but quite enough to quit being economists. I wonder if anyone has calculated the economic impact of diverting smart, math-capable thinkers from some other useful pursuit into economics. Surely they’d be more productive as accountants, or car mechanics, or as people who throw bricks through windows in the dead of night. From the outside it looks like the field is an intellectual circular firing squad that produces little of tangible value.
- kjshsh123 9mo ago
  Are you purposefully committing the broken window fallacy?
  - shermantanktop 9mo ago
    Very purposefully.
- disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
  > From the outside it looks like the field is an intellectual circular firing squad that produces little of tangible value. The biggest value of economists is that they provide stories around the accumulation and destruction of capital. It's always been odd to me that we took just one social science (with a massive case of physics envy) and use it to explain the world. Like, what would the world look like if we'd picked sociology instead?
  - constantius 9mo ago
    Arguably, we'd have fared worse: we'd be starting our days by taking a power stance while listening to the TV broadcast of lists of positive words to prime ourselves into greatness, then we'd go out and salute people with "Most people in your neighbourhood are having a great day". All exams would be not-eating-marshmallows exams. Only upshot I can think of is HN would be called PHackerNews. No, if there's one social science we should have picked, it's anthropology I tell you.
constantius 9mo ago
> how it could contribute to destabilizing democracies as the "economic losers" in rich countries started to demand more political power Far from me to defend globalisation, but what would have been the alternative here? Is the idea that authoritarian governments have less hurdles in a more globalised world?

bibimsz 9mo ago

[flagged]

manphone 9mo ago
Here, you dropped your dog whistle.
- bibimsz 9mo ago
  are we allowed to speak plainly about these matters?
  - hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago
    Fine, I'll speak plainly, because your original post was exactly backwards. "Economic losers" in rich countries are those who did not benefit from globalization - think of all the hollowed out Rust Belt towns in the US, smaller villages in France that aren't on major train lines, etc. If anything, immigrants are largely economic winners because they are able to change their situation and go where there is more abundant opportunity.

marcosdumay 9mo ago

> the fact is a lot of these poor countries have not been converging on lots of quality of life metrics that matter What kinds of measurements are you referring to? Because poor countries are absurdly clearly converging since the end of WWII, but only if you don't ignore things like political independence, lack of civil wars, lack of state sponsored terror, or food security. Those things contribute less to the GDP than fridges that break every 4 years. Anyway, yes, there is some serious discussion on whether that process has stopped. This article isn't very good, the source it's extending from isn't trying to compare actual wealth, but still something may have happened recently. And yes, it's probably the culprit everybody suspects, and economists should be louder in recognizing that some of their schools are in fact fraudulent.

shermantanktop 9mo ago

Economists do a lot of soul searching, it seems, but quite enough to quit being economists. I wonder if anyone has calculated the economic impact of diverting smart, math-capable thinkers from some other useful pursuit into economics. Surely they’d be more productive as accountants, or car mechanics, or as people who throw bricks through windows in the dead of night. From the outside it looks like the field is an intellectual circular firing squad that produces little of tangible value.

kjshsh123 9mo ago
Are you purposefully committing the broken window fallacy?
- shermantanktop 9mo ago
  Very purposefully.
disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
> From the outside it looks like the field is an intellectual circular firing squad that produces little of tangible value. The biggest value of economists is that they provide stories around the accumulation and destruction of capital. It's always been odd to me that we took just one social science (with a massive case of physics envy) and use it to explain the world. Like, what would the world look like if we'd picked sociology instead?
- constantius 9mo ago
  Arguably, we'd have fared worse: we'd be starting our days by taking a power stance while listening to the TV broadcast of lists of positive words to prime ourselves into greatness, then we'd go out and salute people with "Most people in your neighbourhood are having a great day". All exams would be not-eating-marshmallows exams. Only upshot I can think of is HN would be called PHackerNews. No, if there's one social science we should have picked, it's anthropology I tell you.

constantius 9mo ago

> how it could contribute to destabilizing democracies as the "economic losers" in rich countries started to demand more political power Far from me to defend globalisation, but what would have been the alternative here? Is the idea that authoritarian governments have less hurdles in a more globalised world?