How Development happens and why Sen got so retarded

Development happens through mimicry which itself either gets reinforced by a reward or discouraged by a penalty. Economic development happens through mimicry for an economic purpose. An Academic, however, develops by mimicking the successful Academics around her. Thus the career of a 'Development Economics' can develop very well though the views she expresses represent an extreme of mental retardation. But this only happened to the extent that Development Economics was not itself financed by Economic Development as opposed to Bureaucratic Empire building of a wasteful and stupid type.

Amartya Sen gave a talk entitled 'How does Economic Development happen' some 15 years ago. He asked-

what have we learned from discussion about how development happens? What makes the critical difference: resources, institutions, or attitudes?

The answer is now clear. Resources don't matter- what matters is mimicking what smart people do with them. Institutions don't matter. What matters is that such mimetics occurs. Attitudes don't matter. You can have a shitty attitude but still do well if your mimetic target is doing something smart.

Development happens by imitating those similar to yourself who are doing better than you economically. A change in Resources, Institutions or Attitudes may lead to an innovation which raises output. But that's the sort of stuff that happens in places like Israel- not the shit-hole countries Development Economists get paid to drone on about. Let us admit that South Korea- once as poor as India- was basically an Israel type country- i.e. all dem Chinki types are basically as brainy as kikes and, let's face it, like kikes, what they are good at imitating is the best and brightest. As Chesterton pointed out, at the root of Edwardian anti-semitism was not a stiff-necked Ashkenazi refusal to conform but rather the fact that Moscovich and Rabinovitz were scarcely in the country 5 minutes before they'd changed their names to Montague and Reading and been raised to the peerage while holding high offices of State. What is interesting is the 'imitative' Jew, Jap, but soon enough Koreans and Chinese and so forth, have 'developed' tremendously with very little fundamental change in 'resources, institutions or attitudes'. If anything their ancestral ethos has strengthened and become variegated in an evolutionarily robust manner.

The problem with speaking of 'resources' is nobody knows for sure what resources really are. Britain's coal seemed a great resource. Now, the British would not greatly care if no more of it were ever dug out of the ground. I have frequently pointed out that the true wealth of a country consists in the quality and quantity of its dedicated anti-masturbation activists. By this I don't mean prostitutes. I mean trained Socioproctologists like myself who write learned articles exposing leading Academics as wankers. Sadly, Society at large has chosen to take a different view. I would make more money as a P.Chidambaram look-alike gigolo than as a P.Chidambaram look-alike Professor of Socioproctology at the Institute of Anti-Modi Studies.

There is a similar problem with talking of Institutions. Their effect depends on their mimetic target.
Consider the following-

from 1979 through the late 1980s, the Chinese economic reforms were massively successful in raising incomes, and the engine of that success was, to a great extent, the impact of incentives produced by the so-called responsibility system in Chinese agriculture and the rural economy.

The suggestion is that there was a change in 'Institutions' and 'attitudes'. But what caused that change? The answer is- a different mimetic target. China wanted to be like other countries in the region which enjoyed a superior standard of living. The shift from work teams to 'household responsibility' occurred between 1979 and 1982. What drove it was mimetics. But, similarly, mimetics had driven what went before. But one mimetic target yielded Economic Development while the other had been designed to yield a change in ideological consciousness across the breadth of the land. But, it turned out, 'Institutions' and 'Attitudes' did not matter. People fled either if they could eat better and get to buy nice shiny things. In other words, one type of mimetics was self reinforcing. The other was costly and counter-productive to enforce. One can fake ideological commitment. One can't fake stuff you bring to market to sell.

Later, however, the focus shifted to a great extent away from domestic trade toward international trade, which, of course, has also been radically productive.

Why did the focus shift? China wanted to imitate other countries in the region which had embraced export led growth based on cheap labor. That those countries were authoritarian helped.

Indeed, if China has grown faster than any other country in history, international trade has certainly played a big part in that wonderful achievement.

But only because China was imitating a well tried development path which everybody was familiar with. The West believed that this would inevitably mean that China would move to a Liberal Democracy because of some supposed necessary connection between Capitalism and multi party Democracy.

And yet the shift in emphasis from domestic to international trade has also meant a slowing down of the growth of rural income and a deceleration of the reduction of poverty in China.

Which is why every Chinese peasant is not now wealthier than Bill Gates.  But this isn't because of any 'shift in emphasis'. The fact is you can't grow an exponentially increasing quantity of vegetables on your smallholding. Why is Sen pretending otherwise? The answer is that he is merely virtue signaling. Naughty people go in for International Trade which causes poverty. Nice people allow very poor farmers to grow, first thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions, then billlions and trillions of metric tons of vegetables on their half an acre of land.

Income inequalities have also jumped as China has focused beyond its borders rather than within them.

Hilarious! The fact that some Chinese people doing smart things have got richer is actually very naughty because it increases Income inequality. Incidentally, having a baby or retiring from your job is also very naughty because it increases Income inequality.

For example, the Gini coefficient for income inequality in China (as estimated by Ravi Kanbur and Xiaobo Zhang) went up from 0.217 in 1985 to 0.303 in 1999—something of a record-breaking jump.

Which is why China was so much better off. The official Gini coefficient is now 0.474. If it falls, poor people in China will be worse off.

Even as China’s participation in global trade has grown dramatically, the emphasis on incentives for production for the domestic market has considerably slackened. As it happens, there is concern in China today also about falling output of food grains, and that too links with the focus of public policy, in which its relative neglect of production for domestic use and within-border trade has played a substantial part—even as China has climbed altogether new heights in international trade.

Fifteen years later we can all agree that Sen was barking up the wrong tree. 'Producing for domestic consumption' is not more virtuous than 'producing for the international market'. What matters is whether more can be purchased by this means. Food grains don't matter. Being able to substitute meat and fish and fresh vegetables for carbohydrates is a good thing- not a sign of perversion and vice. Incidentally, the share of International Trade in China's GDP has fallen.

Sen ends by speaking of the

 The Chinese cultivator, left somewhat behind in the rush for modern industrial prosperity, and the Bangladeshi rural housewife, seeking a foothold in the market economy,

Fifteen years later, we can see that moving rural females into big factory dormitories is what has helped Bangladesh overtake Pakistan just as it helped China greatly overtake India. Microcredit couldn't achieve much. As for 'the Chinese cultivator', many are supplementing their Income through e-commerce. What drove this? Mimetics. Not changes in Resources, Institutions or Attitudes. People want nice stuff and imitate those who are getting nice stuff. Some ways of doing so are scalable. Not everybody can be a Professor of a shite subject. The only path forward for most people is to imitate those similar to themselves who are producing useful goods and services which they can sell on more or less open markets.  Sen and his ilk weren't selling on an open market. Rather there were high barriers to entry to what is essentially a Credentialist Ponzi scheme. That is why getting more and more mentally retarded has been a great asset to Sen. Rahul Baba, it may be mentioned, did an MPhil in 'Development Studies' at Cambridge. Unlike his Dad or Granny, he actually showed up for lectures and sat the exams. This is what permanently disabled him from holding high political office. How different his fate had he attended a Van Wilder type Party School!