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