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0 pointsKKKKkkkk15y ago0 comments

MIT economists Acemoglu and Robinson wrote a book "Why Nations Fail" that analyzes why countries at similar starting points can have extremely divergent paths in terms of economic development. One example is South and North Korea. Their conclusion is that some countries have established extractive institutions, while others inclusive. The extractive ones exclude the population from the decision making process and seek to divvy up and redistribute the scarce available resources, while the inclusive ones seek to involve the broadest possible strata of the population in the decision making and wealth-producing activities. Looks like Reddit is turning into the North Korea of social websites.

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amelius5y ago

Yes, they used crowd-sourcing to build their empire, yet they seem surprised that the crowd wants to have a say in how things work.

maerF0x05y ago

What does it say about the United States?

dimitar5y ago

The extractive rent-seeking (slavery being the most extractive economic and political institution possible) South was significantly lagging even before the rebellion, which was crushed by the United States whose other regions had more inclusive economic institutions.

In more recent times the authors compare two towns across the US-Mexico border: Nogales, AZ to to Nogales, Mexico. Even thought the language and ethnicity is mostly the same (95% Hispanic), with same climate and what not - Nogales in the United States has three times the GDP per capita of Nogales, Sonora. The difference is more inclusive economic and political institutions in the United States - while Mexico has suffered under one party rule for decades.

monoideism5y ago

> while Mexico has suffered under one party rule for decades

Yet now we suffer under two-party rule.

3 more replies

eirini15y ago

Is this a real book someone wrote? Incredible to me how you can call yourself an economist and just write basic observations and conclude they are the root cause of everything without even taking a cursory look at the history of things.

jrowen5y ago

It's kind of like how you can read a post on the internet that mentions two economists and draw any kind of conclusions about the work they've done without even taking a cursory look at it.

rumanator5y ago

Ouch.

onemiketwelve5y ago

I felt that

leotaku5y ago

I would imagine the book contains a bit more justification for its arguments than what was presented by the person you are responding to.

What makes you believe that the author just "wrote basic observations and concluded they are the root cause of everything"? Most ideas are easy to dismiss when you assume that a blurb posted to HN is all there is to them.

askafriend5y ago

Here's a 1hr talk by the author of the book. Knock yourself out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcUKP1sAto8

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