RE: Taiwan (was: RE: SPACE: Loss of the Saturn V)

From: matus (matus@matus1976.com)
Date: Sat Sep 06 2003 - 07:21:41 MDT

  • Next message: matus: "RE: SPACE: Loss of the Saturn V"

    >>> one controls all that land and all
    >>> those people, but is all screwed up. The other is
    >>> free and prosperous. It's a lesson a six year old
    >>> child couldn't miss.
    >
    >>Only if he had no access to g**gle. Otherwise the little enquirer
    >>would find out that Taiwan was under martial law for the first 80% of
    >>its independent history and that its first general elections were in
    >>1996, by which time it was already prosperous relative to its
    >mainland
    >>neighbour. You could always censor those pages, to reinforce the
    >>democratic message.
    >
    >Yes, another beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact.
    >

    Lets not forget the separation of political and economic systems.
    Democracy is the political structure, communism refers to both a
    political one *and* an economic one, democracy has no implications of
    economic structure. You can have free market democracies or heavily
    socialized ones. Tawain may have been under martial law, but it was
    also a market based economy with a rule of law not present in China, and
    history clearly shows that whether democratic or totalitarian, market
    based economies clearly produce higher standards of living for the
    people that live under them, providing adequate rule of law.

    Article on the subject -
    www.worldbank.org/research/growth/pdfiles/dollarkraay2.pdf

    Subject: David Dollar and Aart Kraay - Property Rights, Political
    Rights, and the development of Poor countries

    David Dollar and Aart Kraay - Property Rights, Political Rights, and the
    development of Poor countries
    This is An interesting paper relating economic growth and world policy.
    Specifically relating to finding out what behavior objectively leads to
    a better standard of living for the worlds population and the world's
    poor.

    The Author first designates two main criteria to the paper, defining
    government structures in 'voice' and 'rule of law' Voice refers to the
    say the populace has in the government, and the 'rule of law' refers to
    the general trust and abidence in law of the people of the nation.
    Similiar to two catagories I have often used as democratic vs non
    democratic and despotic vs non despotic. The Author points out that all
    developed nations rank high in both 'rule of law' and 'voice',yet poor
    countries (especially the sixty poorest) rank very low in both
    catagories (The ranking is based on a series of quantifiable and
    qualifiable variables and averaged out, defined in the paper) Notably,
    the author points out that the rule of law has a very powerful effect on
    the income of the poor, that is, the more the populace and the
    governance respects the laws the better off the people are, especially
    the poorest. The author notes that (not surprisingly to me) that
    democracy does not have as strong of a correlation to helping the poor
    as the non-despotic vs. despotic 'rule of law' catagorization does.
    Nations can not prosper if laws are not in place or enforced. The good
    voice poor law countries do not fare well, while the good law poor voice
    did fare much better for the poor. Of course the good law good voice was
    at the top, (on average) while poor voice poor law was at the bottom.
    Unfortunately, as the author notes, the good voice poor law gets about
    twice as much aid as the good law poor voice countries, something that
    is not as conducive to ending poverty as the reverse situation. The
    author suggests that more aide should be given to countries that have
    reasonably good economic practices and respect of law.

    Furthermore, the author notes that countries with relatively good rule
    of law, even in the absence of good voice (such as China, Uganda, Ghana,
    and Vietnam) which are well known market oriented reformers in the past
    15 years, are seeing income rise rapidly and education and literacy
    expanding . The Author notes that these trends may lead to greater
    political liberalization (good voice) much like Chile, Taiwan, or South
    Korea.

    The author qualitatively defines 'Rule of Law' as the measure of the
    extent to which people have confidence in and abide by the rules of
    society. He quantitatively defines it with a series of measurable
    variables in the paper. This concept definately is an excellent
    description of what exactly is lacking in post communist russia and the
    reason for its current conditions.

    Interestingly, the Author notes that as we move from the poles to the
    tropics, both good voice and rule of law decline. An enrvironmental /
    social reason for this is releayed in Jared Diamonds "Guns, Germs and
    Steel" A quick summary for the pattern is given in this paper.

    The author argues that when we ask what countries have good governments
    when handing out foriegn aide, the most important factor is whether the
    country and its people support a rule of law, and second to that is a
    good political voice.

    The author also notes that there is a tight link between income of the
    poor and per capita income and there is a relationship between the
    growth rate of income of the poor and median income. Obvious for persons
    familiar with averages (mean, mode, median) He also states that the
    evidence is clear that openness to foriegn trade and investment will
    accelerate growth and poverty reduction.



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