Poor India
Western businessmen are not the only ones making unfavourable comparisons. Indians themselves are haunted by success of their Chinese neighbour. In the 1960s they fretted about not being as good at socialism, now they fear they aren’t as good at capitalism either.
Though perhaps I shouldn’t feel sorry for them. They could have been spending that time working on capitalism from the beginning. Did you know that India has more children living in poverty* than the whole of Africa? They don’t like to talk about that.
* real poverty, not American poverty
August 14th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Having had some contact with Indians and Chinese in my limited field of engineering I would say that the Chinese are, hands down, the likely winners in this sort of area of endeavour. It’s practical Confuscianism versus head-in-the-clouds Hinduism. (Even in engineering, the influence of these underlying philosophies is apparent).
Of course just because one is “the” winner, doesn’t mean that the other isn’t also a winner. We’re not talking zero-sum games, here. The rise of China is great for us, also, economically speaking.
However, neither India nor China have the philsophical background (of Classical Greece) to enable them to lead development. That will still be the province of the US for a long time. Asians are plenty smart enough, and win plenty of Nobel prizes, but the ones who do are almost exclusively those working in, and imbued with the spirit of, western (mostly US) facilities. It is a very different spirit to that of Asian universities.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Do you think a likelihood of corruption can be extrapolated from any of those things, or do you think it just happens? I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately, how you get past that in all these places that seem so hopeless because of it…
August 15th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
That’s an interesting topic. Of course the Middle East is the world centre for corruption. That in Asia is not as bad (but still bad).
A culture of corruption would seem to be a stable state. What are the examples of corrupt states braking out of that rut and becoming an open commercial culture?
When did the British culture turn its back on corruption (if there ever was serious corruption)? A Pork-Busters campaign is all very well, but it relies on the fact that the populace does not accept the idea of corruption. That would seem to be the case in all British-based cultures, so it must have happened a fair while ago – before The Great Disaster.
August 15th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
When did the British culture turn its back on corruption (if there ever was serious corruption)?
Hmmmmm…. Not certain about the when, but I can guess about the why. Corruption is an efficient income producer only at the tribal/clan level. Any higher and it tends to slow up income growth by grossly misallocating capital.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Colonialism & imperialism look better and better to me.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Same here, RC2. Maybe the best system is to be a remote, semi-forgotten outpost of a colonial power with other priorities. Like Hong Kong pre China takeover. It also helps to have a British style legal system. (You Americans have managed to muck it up a bit, I must say).
Spot on, Half.
August 16th, 2007 at 6:10 am
There was rampant government corruption in England until the Northcote/Trevelyan civil service reforms during the 19th century, which introduced competitive examinations. On the other hand, there was never a wider culture of corruption like that of, say, West Africa – perhaps the common law had something to do with this, government for centuries being based on precedent, not statute.
Though I could of course be talking a load of old rubbish.
August 16th, 2007 at 8:42 am
But the thing is that England never had a very large government, so even if the entire government was corrupt, it’s nothing like the Middle East or Communist China where the majority of the working population have government jobs or have a normal job because their cousin has a government job. Who’s the one with the story about sending supplies through Egypt… Well at any rate, I guess someone with a chip on his shoulder would say that feudalism and the aristocratic regime that followed was legalized corruption in an ermine cape but if it was then there wasn’t any room for the sorts of petty niggling distasteful stuff you get now. There was lots of smuggling, and things like that, but that’s a very healthy anti-corruption it would seem to me. But then lots of other European countries with similar religious and aristocratic set-ups were corrupt and didn’t go anywhere, so maybe it’s just the climate. Except it’s cold in Russia, too. Too cold? If it’s too hot and too cold, you end up with corruption? I like it. Somebody write their thesis on it.
August 16th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
We could do a joint paper: “Corruption and Climate Change”.
Shouldn’t have any trouble getting funding.
August 16th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Corruption and Climate Change!
Damn why didn’t I think of that.
August 17th, 2007 at 4:12 am
“Corruption and Climate Change” – a positive feedback system?