Worried by the rise of right-wing populists who oppose immigration, Raghuram Rajan champions 'inclusive localism'- in other words, people should run their own local communities in the manner Rajan thinks they should. One could go a step further and suggest that everybody's brains and bodies should only function in the manner Rajan thinks best. However, as I have repeatedly pointed out, it is only once all elementary particles in the multi-universe are nice and sweet and do my bidding that we can have a truly inclusive Cosmos which is free of sexy quantum entanglements and other such naughtiness. To my mind this clears up the problem of 'non-locality' which so vexed Einstein.
Rajan's inclusive localism is like my theory of how elementary particles should behave. The fact is, the real problem with the Universe is that, so as to exist, it has to compete with other possible Universes with different fundamental constants. However, by discouraging 'black holes' and ensuring that the Universe is informationally isometric- which I think would be nice- the Universe could become the sort of place for which I'd leave a positive Yelp review. Sadly, the Universe is not listening to me probably because it is watching porn. Fuck you Universe! Fuck you very much!
DISCOURAGING SORTING OF RESIDENCE AND COMMUNITIES BY INCOME
Is equivalent to discouraging sorting by Income- i.e. people don't take the job which pays best. The problem with changing incentives so as to promote equity or diversity or inclusivity is that it also reduces the incentive to transfer factors of production to their most productive usage. There will be a dead weight loss for the economy. This is cool if there is no international competition. Sadly, China is already eating a portion of our lunch. Why ensure that they overtake us more quickly?
Let us turn from production to residence, specifically the issue of residential sorting, which we encountered earlier. While nations have the right to control the inward flow of people,
Sadly, it costs money to do so. It may be that democratic countries under the Rule of Law have already lost this ability.
communities should not have that right, else that risks perpetuating inequality and segregation within the country.
A right exists iff an effective remedy is available. Countries which can't seal their borders can't control the inward flow of people- more particularly if they are better armed. Communities have various legal methods by which to restrict the influx of people. For example, they can enforce laws against squatters, or homeless people, or the enrollment of students in their Schools if those students live outside the District. In the past, some communities in America had restrictive covenants and other racially biased laws. It may be that such practices continue in an informal manner.
Turning to the country which has grown the most rapidly over the last four decades, we find China thrived despite having a hukou, or household registration system which was effectively a sort of internal passport. This meant there was service provision discrimination which increased rents, and thus incentives to invest, for affluent urban communities. It is not clear that what might be termed a 'guest-worker' system- e.g. that of Singapore or Dubai- is inequitable in itself or that it reduces allocative or dynamic efficiency. Indeed, the reverse is likely to be true. Going forward, we expect to see more and more affluent countries move to this system. Thus, in the UK, the Government has restricted the ability of Care workers to bring their families. This suggest that going forward, the needs of an ageing population will be met by workers from poor countries on fixed term contracts but no right to domicile or path to citizenship. Rajan may disapprove, just as I disapprove of sexy Quantum entanglements, but there is nothing he can do about it. By contrast, my latest book- titled 'The Turd Pillar' pillories quarks which are engaged in perverted behavior. This is causing many elementary particles to rethink their life-choices.
Yet many well-off communities, while ostensibly open, set zoning rules in a way that effectively discriminates against less-well-off people.
Which is why those well-off communities remain well-off.
For example, some communities forbid the construction of apartment buildings, rental occupancies, or single family homes smaller than a certain size, thus keeping out anyone who cannot afford high housing costs.
They may go further by arranging for a low income area in a different district to bus in the gardeners and nannies and cleaners that the wealthy need to maintain their affluent life-style.
Effectively, they keep out lower-income folk through a nontariff barrier. Economic segregation ensures those with lower incomes do not benefit from the institutional, social, and intellectual capital that the more well-to-do create for themselves—such as better schools. The individual’s desire to sort is understandable, but it will exacerbate inequality of opportunity, and increase potential social conflict.
This is a type of Tiebout sorting. At the margin, activists may be able to seize political control of such a district. But what if they kill the golden goose? There are always places to which the wealthy can retreat leaving behind an aspirational middle class which will soon sink to the level of the poor who have taken control.
Indeed, the more that zoning creates moats and battlements that protect the upper classes, the less incentive they have to worry about what happens to the rest.
Ultimately, they can just offshore themselves completely and run things from their super-yachts or tax havens.
A state intent on creating more equal opportunity communities should offset some of these incentives to sort, by ensuring the poor can follow the rich anywhere.
Also the State should ensure that stalkers get to rape their victims. Why are super-models only marrying other handsome and wealthy people? Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity demand that I too get an equal opportunity to contribute semen to their vaginas.
One way to get more economically diverse communities is to eliminate some of the most egregious constraints on what can be built, especially when local house prices are high. A bill introduced by a California state senator, for example, would allow all housing being built in California within a half mile of a train station or a quarter-mile of a bus route to be exempt from regulations regarding the height of the building, the number of apartments, the provision of parking spaces, or specific design standards.
Which is great if you are a property developer. If you are merely middle class and paying off a mortgage, it may mean you can never retire or else will never be able to leave any money for your kids or grandkids.
This is a bill that local property owners hate because it will create more housing supply and depress the value of their homes, but it will be tremendously beneficial for economic inclusion.
Very true. Earlier this week, I dined with a friend who had bought a plush riverside apartment some years ago. I suspect he is in trouble with the Enforcement Directorate which is why he is lurking here in London. He complained to me that his apartment complex was virtually empty. The owners lived in far away countries. Still, they were very ethnically diverse. It is important that we are locally inclusive of poor suffering Billionaires from Turd World shitholes.
Every such solution has some downsides since they interfere with community choice but, I repeat, in the trade-off between inclusion and localism, inclusion should be given more weight.
Drug dealers and whores need to be located near major railway stations. Why are they suffering economic exclusion? We need high rise buildings to house this diverse community.
Consider some other possibilities. The state could mandate that some fraction of the residences in any community, say 15 percent, should be affordable for low-income residents.
Plenty of places have such laws. The upside is that the super-rich have some neighbors if, for some legal reason, they think it safer to lurk in an advanced country which might refuse to extradite them on the grounds that their country of origin is a fucking shithole- albeit one where they were able to loot a lot of money.
If the community would like to maintain its aesthetic look and allow only large single-family residences, then a sufficient number of these should be rented or sold to low-income families,
not to mention victims of horrendous sexual self-abuse. I am thinking of myself here.
with the rest of the community bearing the cost of making these affordable.
The struggling middle class should welcome this opportunity to line the pockets of property developers.
Such a solution works most easily for new developments, where “set-asides” can be mandated for low-income housing. The city of Chicago negotiates set-asides for new developments, but certain states in the United States prohibit set-asides, perhaps because developers do not want to be burdened with the cost.
Race based 'set-asides'- e.g. in the granting of contracts to minority owned enterprises- are banned in some States. Developers don't mind their costs rising if they can pass them on with a mark-up to the tax-payer.
Moreover, set-asides will be harder to mandate for established older communities, where there may be little vacant land for development. Another way of encouraging mixing, or at least discouraging sorting, is through the tax code.
Americans love paying taxes. Fuck with their tax code and you are sure to be re-elected.
For instance, high income households whose children are enrolled in public schools in low income districts could be given a tax rebate, essentially because of the positive spillovers that their children are likely to contribute to their classes.
Very true. If your kid was thrown out of Andover because he kept stabbing teachers, you should get a tax rebate if the only school which will take him is a public school in a District where not stabbing people is considered a social faux pas.
Private incentives could also help. For example, top universities could give incentives to students studying in public schools in low-income districts by allocating a fraction of admits to each public school in the state.
Top universities can make money by driving up fees and 'voluntary' donations by restricting supply. This is classic price discrimination.
Not only will this incentivize the less-well-off to apply to the elite universities,
which may be wealth enough to do 'needs blind' admission
it may also be the carrot for some well-to-do parents to stay or even move into those school districts so that their children will have a leg up in admissions.
This is also a good reason to ensure your child is a transgender Eskimo
While this may seem like a violation of the spirit of the plan, the presence of these well-prepared children and their pushy highly educated parents in the schools will be beneficial to all.
How? The kid from the poorer family suddenly finds the rich thicko is doing better than him in the exams. Why? His parents have hired the best tutors for him. Also, he gets in on the sports quota for 'dressage' or some other such elitist shite.
In this vein, some states in the United States are already allocating some places in the state university to the top students in each public school.
Nothing wrong in that. Universities traditionally recruited some poor but bright kids if only so as to have a ready pool of ill paid pedagogues at their disposal.
Much of the incentive to sort comes because students coming from different households are at very different levels of educational and social preparation.
The rich may have some extra polish which is cool in non-STEM subjects. But for mathsy stuff make sure you are getting in plenty of nerdy Asians.
Attempts to mix students with very different preparation—for example through state-mandated busing from poor communities into well-off communities —obviously leads to resentment and dissatisfaction on all sides.
It was a boon to the private, especially Church based, educational sector.
The students who are bused in feel inadequately prepared and fall behind, while the students in the receiving schools feel they are being held behind.
But the Schools basketball team wins the State championship. Also, African Americans are as cool as fuck. Nerdy Asians, not so much.
The problem is the differential preparedness, which needs to be addressed before mixed classes can work. Early childhood programs that attempt to equalize preparation could be enormously beneficial, especially if they are then followed by mixed classes in public schools which ensure differences in educational capabilities do not build.
What is even more beneficial is not going to a school where you will be knifed if you don't join a gang and start selling drugs at the street corner.
Accelerated remedial education programs could also help, though the later they are in a child’s life the less effective they will be.
If we don't want to bother with keeping inner-city kids safe from gangs, we can always futz around with this sort of shite.
New technologies that can allow teachers to address students with different levels of preparedness (see later) can also help the process of equalization.
Somali parents in London started sending their sons back to their war-torn country because they were safer there. Why not admit that killing gangsters is what stops 'disadvantaged' communities from being so fucking disadvantaged? The answer is that there's money in being a virtue signaling libtard. There is none in stating the fucking obvious.
Countries that have a severe sorting problem could build in stronger tax incentives to mix, including residential congestion taxes that require rich households to pay higher taxes if they stay in communities with other rich households, and lower taxes if they stay in low-income communities.
Rajan hasn't noticed that rich peeps can employ clever accountants to reduce their rate of tax to below what the struggling middle class has to pay. On the other hand, you can have some level of redistribution of property taxes. The devil, sadly, is in the detail. Whatever mechanism the bien pensant can come up with will be quickly 'gamed' so that we end up with perverse outcomes.
There are plenty of ideas, some more problematic than others, but we have to be open to experimentation if we want to avert the hereditary meritocracy emerging in many countries.
It emerged long ago in every affluent country. True, conscription during World Wars could trigger social mobility as the business of warfare became more managerial and technological. But there has been a reversion to the mean.
Are there practical ways to promote an egalitarian meritocracy? Sure. Reduce the requirement for expensive, time-consuming, educational credentials. Working class boys need to start earning as soon as possible after puberty or else they can go down a bad path. Let them 'Earn and Learn' by all means. They need to build up some financial capital by the time they are in their mid Twenties. Young people will postpone marriage if they can see a clear path to, if not affluence, then solid middle class respectability.
What about competition policy? One might expect Rajan to focus on the manner in which wealth can get concentrated in a narrow hereditary caste.
Antitrust authorities should examine mergers for the possibility of industry dominance, not just from the perspective of whether the customer is better served today, but also whether competition will be irretrievably altered.
Very true. Before deciding what to do today, we should first discover what will happen in the future. It isn't the case that your guess is as good as mine.
For instance, acquisitions that have the primary objective of closing an innovative competitor, or absorbing a rival who might prove a competitive threat, should be prohibited.
So should every action, including farting. How are we to know if the fart of the CEO of a company might not result in an innovative competitor closing down his business in protest? Things like that happen all the time. I wrote to Mahuaji explaining how Adani's fart, in 1984, so disgusted me that I decided not to start an enterprise which would have been much more innovative than his because all my employees would be cats. Sadly, since I didn't offer her any money, Mahua did not raise this matter in the Lok Sabha. Yet, there are people who say India is a democracy!
Preserving competition today may also be essential so that the stock market does not give a dominant incumbent the resources with which to shut out competition tomorrow.
Very true. It isn't the case that doing stupid shit won't cause the Chinese to eat our fucking lunch.
The pragmatic solution is to adopt once again the clear and defensible rules of thumb of the past, whereby antitrust authorities opposed corporate actions that increased a single corporation’s dominance of any market beyond a preset specified point, no matter what the claims about greater efficiency and consumer welfare were.
Cool! That way there would have been no Apple or Microsoft or Amazon. Also, smart peeps like Rajan would be writing books in Chinese.
Antitrust authorities must be broadminded about what constitutes the relevant market and competition, recognizing that technology can bring product and geographic markets together that were separated in the past.
They should also recognize that Bill Gates farted in 1977, thus causing me to quit the software industry in disgust. This was clearly a per se illegal anti-competitive action.
However, arguments that innovation or entry by rivals will make the market more competitive in the future should be met with some skepticism—today’s dominance can allow the incumbent to alter conditions so as to make it much harder for rivals to get their foot in the door in the future.
Which is why it is a big deal if China continues to overtake us in vital high-tech sectors. Rajan could learn a thing or two from fellow Tambram, Vivek Ramaswami.
The economic costs of rule-of-thumb antitrust enforcement may not be large as information technology improves,
Sadly, IT is 'footloose'. It can relocate to a better jurisdiction and thus escape the dead hand of rules based competition policy.
and as contracting and monitoring costs fall. Instead of a company owning the entire supply chain, we could get a more nimble, competitive supply chain consisting of many corporations contracting with one another.
You will have that anyway because of Trade Unions and higher compliance costs for bigger employers.
Instead of a company merging with all competitors who produce a product, ostensibly to obtain economies of scale, we could instead retain many competitors who cooperate on specific projects through alliances whenever the economies of scale of doing so are really significant.
This is also a great way to offshore the profits so as to escape the Tax-man's greedy mitts.
Put differently, corporations will adapt to effective antitrust enforcement,
by making it ineffective or a profitable barrier to entry for themselves, through 'Agency Capture'
and given the improvements in contracting and communications, we will likely get both competition and productive efficiency at the same time.
We may do. The trouble is that if China is quicker to develop Quantum Computer based AI or stuff weirder or more wonderful yet, then our whole Intellectual Property regime will collapse. The terms of trade will move against us. It will be China which has the 'exorbitant privilege' of, if not providing the global currency, then writing the rule-book and practicing price and service provision discrimination in a manner adverse to us.
Rajan does not understand that Econ is about choice under scarcity. We can, like Condorcet, dream of a more inclusive community where sexy Quantum entanglements are strictly forbidden, but as Malthus pointed out, scarcity will cause that paradise to be invaded. The State is needed to seal the frontiers. The Market, it turns out, is better than the feudal system, in providing the resources the State needs to fight wars. Thus, both are essential for communities even if the members of those communities don't give a shit about their neighbors.
Rajan concludes his vapid book thus-
The three pillars that support society—the state, markets, and the community—are in constant flux, buffeted by economic and technological shocks.
Nonsense! The State in India, US or UK has not been in constant flux for centuries. This is because these countries were able to defeat invaders and put down insurrections. Markets have evolved on rational lines. There is no great discontinuity, or flux, in its functioning save under conditions of Total War. Communities which have risen in material terms have seen a lot of geographical and occupational mobility but, once again, there has been no 'flux' save during the Civil War or during India's partition.
Society does need two things to survive. One is the ability to kill invaders or insurrectionists. The other is economic productivity. There is a close link between the two. If your productivity stagnates, it is likely that you will become the subject of a more economically productive, and correspondingly powerful, nation or (in the case of India) enterprise.
Society perpetually strives for a new equilibrium, through a rebalancing of the pillars.
No. Society does not want an equilibrium. Like other things which evolved on an uncertain fitness landscape if thrives when 'far from equilibrium'. Otherwise there is stagnation, involution (which is very inclusively localist), and- sooner or later- subjugation to an alien race.
The ICT revolution, accompanied by the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008, has once again highlighted the need for rebalancing.
No it hasn't. The virtue signalers of the West needed to pipe down because the rest of the world was ceasing to be a 'Rules taker'. Talk of DIE can kill off good quality research in Universities while turning innovative Corporations into lazy rent-seekers. That may be cool, but as Vivek Ramaswamy well understands, it means our grandkids need to start learning Chinese in nursery skool. After all, if Tambrams like us are now writing in English, not Tamil or Sanskrit or Persian, it is because a bunch of British merchants decided they could run our country at a profit. They created the 'steel frame' which supported our Society- till, that is, we were able to emigrate to a place where Anglos still ruled.
Recent elections across the developed world suggest people are deeply dissatisfied with the current state of affairs.
They are furious that local communities are not being more inclusive of Jihadi terrorists and transgender prostitutes of diverse ethnicities. Trump and Orban and Modi only won elections by promising- quite falsely!- to arrange for vast quantities of such people to be delivered to your doorstep.
The ICT revolution has created a meritocracy, which is close to hereditary in some developed countries.
Nonsense! The kids of IT billionaires don't need to bother with coding and other such boring shite.
Moreover, in reaction to the competition generated by global markets, those who can, such as large corporations and professionals, have created protected enclaves for themselves,
This began to happen about ten thousand years ago. Wealthy peeps in the Fertile Crescent began putting walls around their palaces and pleasure grounds. Indeed, the word 'Paradise' is derived from the Persian word for a 'protected enclave' of this sort. Rajan is under the impression that Maharajas and Dukes and Pittsburgh millionaires lived in shanty towns. They sent their kids to public schools. Indeed, Harvard and Yale were originally leper colonies rather than a place where rich kids were sent so as to acquire a bit of polish.
further enhancing the benefits of being part of the higher meritocracy.
It took great merit for Akshata to be born as the daughter of a billionaire. As for Anant Ambani, whose pre-wedding was attended by Bill Gates and many a former head of State, did you know that he worked so hard as a fetus and got such outstanding grades that, a bare nine months later, he was born as a billionaire?
For the rest, outside the walled and moated enclaves, competition from man and machine from across the globe has been fierce.
But competition from beasts has decreased. Still, it is true that I lost a pissing competition with a photocopier machine. I still don't understand how it happened. I suppose, since the machine in question was Japanese, there was a little Japanese guy inside it who had a very large bladder. The truth is, my memory of my days as an Auditor is rather hazy.
For the unprotected, new opportunities, preserved for the privileged by walls of credentials and licenses, have been hard to access, in part because educational ladders have been too short and rickety.
No. They have been too fucking long and have led nowhere. Take a degree in Econ and, provided you stayed drunk through the entire course, you can go on to actually economize on the use of scarce resources and thus end up wealthy. Even taking an MA doesn't turn you into a cretin. But a PhD is a step too far. Look at Rajan. He could have been a billionaire like Purnendu Chatterjee if he had stuck with OR or something useful of that sort.
In part, they also have been inaccessible because the greatest opportunities have emerged in global cities, where limited space and zoning laws have made residence unaffordable for most.
Actually, having to live like a fucking battery chicken for the first few years of your professional life gives you an incentive to stay late at the office and thus get fast tracked for promotion.
As economic activity has moved away from rural and semi-urban communities, despair and social disintegration has moved in.
What's wrong with that? Surely increased diversity is a good thing? Why is Rajan turning his nose up at his new neighbors? Is it coz he thinks Despair didn't go to the right School or disapproves of the fact that Social Disintegration wears a MAGA cap and chews baccy?
With the establishment discredited, there is widespread desire for new answers.
Sadly, this isn't true. I keep giving new answers to my neighbors who ask why I can't turn down my music. They show no desire to hear them.
The demagogues of the left and right propose answers people want to hear, not what they should hear.
They should hear Rajan explaining to them that he is not an animal. He is a human being.
All too often, there is someone else or something else to blame, which then imposes the burden of change elsewhere.
Very true. Zelensky keeps blaming Putin when the truth is he should inclusively localize his own rectum so that more Wagner Group mercenaries have access to it.
I am reminded of what Mahatma Gandhi said when people asked him why he didn't change his diaper. 'You should yourself become the change you want to see in the world'. Admittedly, this happened in the Eighties and it might not have been Gandhi but some other baby who said this. The truth is, I was very drunk throughout that decade.
That is comforting to their audiences but dangerously misleading. The reality is that we all are part of the problem, and we all can be part of the solution.
By emigrating.
In the last five chapters, I have laid out a possible path to a new balance, a way to resist the seemingly inexorable diminution of the community, even while preserving the open access that markets provide us.
That possible path consisted of doing stupid shit of a type which has already been tried and which has already failed.
The intent is to build the pillars up, rather than reduce them to the lowest common denominator.
My intent is to get elementary particles to give up sexy quantum entanglements. They should think pure thoughts and take cold showers.
The essence of this new balance is inclusive localism.
It is one thing to invite all your neighbors to a barbecue. It is another to watch them have an orgy with your wife. 'Good fences make good neighbors'. A community which keeps trying to include you in its orgies- more particularly if the only female invited is your wife- is one you may wish to be less fucking inclusive.
We can use the tools we have obtained through the ICT revolution to empower communities more,
No. The guys who are in the vanguard of that revolution may have those tools. We don't. I did offer to borrow Bill Gates tools but he called me a tool and told me to fuck off. Mahatma Gandhi reproved him for this unkind suggestion.
to give people more of a sense of control over their futures,
Why not over their pasts? Why discriminate in this matter? Let people control their present, their past, their future or, at the very least, let them have a sense that they have these super-powers.
in the process creating and distributing economic and political power.
Rajan's Daddy and Mummy created economic and political power. 'Chellame', they said to him, 'be nice and distribute these powers. Don't be mean and hog them all for yourself.'
At the same time, I argue for a national framework that is inclusive, in that all ethnicities are seen as part of the nation, and the nation does not entrench differences in economic opportunity between ethnicities or classes.
Why should the 'Nation' bother to do something which happens anyway?
Inclusive localism breaks down gigantic walls protecting privilege,
by farting loudly at those walls. This is the reason Amrika does not have a 'Great Wall' unlike China. Trump said he'd build one, but Rajan's farts broke them down. Sadly, people in his locality did not want to be included when it came to smelling his farts. True, I don't know if this actually happened but had I been Rajan, it is what I would have done.
while encouraging tiny walls to preserve community character.
Why not encourage cats to say miaow instead? How can we achieve inclusive localism when the State is not letting local cats perform CAT scans?
The hope is that such a path helps us hold on to the best aspects of a system that has contributed to global prosperity —primarily the open access and competition stemming from global markets—while dealing with the inequality and fear generated by technological change.
My hope is that my path will enable multiverse to become truly nice by persuading elementary particles to give up sexy quantum entanglements. Did you know that millions of quarks are looking at Porn? Army should take action.
Specifically, for some of us, inclusive localism fulfills at the community level the natural human instinct to congregate with others similar to us.
Americans are more similar to Rajan than Tambrams like me. To be fair, my relatives have an instinct to escape by the back door if they hear me banging on the door, demanding to be fed thair shadam.
It thus heads off more divisive and artificial attempts in diverse nations to fulfill that tribal instinct at the national level through populist nationalism.
Mahatma Gandhi's tribal instincts caused him to demand the Brits 'quit India'. True, this would have meant that the Japanese would have conquered the country but, since the Japs were much more horrible than the Brits, this was what 'Ahimsa' required.
Also, by enhancing the local infrastructure, the means of building capabilities, and the safety net at the community level, inclusive localism attempts to broaden and equalize opportunities.
Why not just kill gangsters and sack teachers who are shit at their jobs and find ways for the majority of boys to start 'Earning and Learning' from around the age of 15?
It allows each community’s members to participate in, and benefit from, global markets.
Previously they were not allowed to buy or sell stuff on Ebay by Exclusive Non-Localism. Thankfully, Inclusive Localism kicked its head in.
The proposed path builds on what we have. I do not advocate dispensing with any of the pillars—I neither recommend eliminating markets and private property
very good of you I'm sure.
nor do I suggest putting everything, including governance, for sale.
Rajan is also not suggesting that everybody should stick their heads up their own rectums. As I have said before, Rajan is one of the smartest of the Congi intellectuals.
The state is necessary, but has to cede power to the community and can be much more effective.
This happens anyway through the political process in democratic countries.
The community is essential for us to express our humanity,
only in the sense that expressing our humanity to the Pacific Ocean isn't particularly rewarding.
but it needs to carve out space from both markets and the state to flourish.
It already has that. There is such a thing as Local Government.
Even if seemingly moderate, the reform path is ambitious
No. It is stupid.
for it eschews easy but often wrong solutions.
in favor of stupid if not meaningless verbiage.
We also need to recognize realities. Deep down, the vast majority of us recognize the human in one another.
A small minority recognizes the camel in one another.
Yet we need to come close enough to do that,
Rajan was walking with his Mummy and Daddy. 'Look!' he said suddenly 'that camel is wearing a sari!' His parents said 'that is not a camel. It is an elderly Tamil lady- your granny in point of fact. The took the young PhD scholar closer to the supposed camel. That was when Rajan recognized the human in his granny. Strangely, insights like this haven't procured Rajan a Nobel despite the fact that he is darker than either Amartya or Abhijit. Give him time. His next book may be even more vacuous than this one.
and all too often, we label at a distance. Understanding and tolerance of other cultures is not a weakness, not a sign of inadequate patriotism, not an indication that we are rootless “citizens of nowhere.”
It may be all these things.
In reality, it reflects our preparation for the world of tomorrow, where we will become ever more mixed as peoples, even as we study, value, and preserve our collective cultural heritage.
We will also inter-breed with various types of animals and plants.
The world is not there yet.
Which is why Sandra Bullock is not actually a bullock.
Therefore, we need to take smaller, easier steps, where there is room for all as we develop a better understanding of one another.
One small and easy step is to write an utterly vacuous virtue signaling book. Still, Rajan is right. Inclusive localism requires that his neighbor's stop thinking of him as a camel. He is a human being! Americans should come close to Rajan to satisfy themselves that this is indeed the case.
The strengthening of proximate communities
which is what happens when Rajan farts and blows down Trump's Great Wall
will not just allow a diversity of views, including the most tribal and the most cosmopolitan, to exist.
They already exist without anybody permitting or allowing them to do so.
It will also allow us to preserve direct social interaction, which may well be where more of the jobs of the future lie,
Rajan will give blowjobs to local hobos
as automation depletes jobs in sectors that produce commercial goods and services.
Prostitution is a commercial service.
It may be that the changes that are about to hit us will be more extraordinary than anything we have seen.
They may hit Rajan. Since I eat and drink too much I will be safely dead before Biden has gene therapy and turns into a transgender camel so as to appease Hamas.
Maybe most of us will be unemployed in a decade, rendered redundant by robots and generalized artificial superintelligence. I doubt it— ever since the 1950s, experts have been predicting that generalized artificial intelligence, that is algorithms that can replace humans fully, is less than a couple of decades away—but I also do not fear that outcome, so long as we preserve the balance.
Sadly, the West has been unable to preserve a balance of economic, military and 'soft' power which was greatly in its favor. Going forward, it is a case of doing what your smartest rivals are doing but trying to do it better and cheaper.
That we are unemployed will mean that machines are doing our work more cheaply, that the cost of goods and services will fall, and their quality increase, to reflect the greater productivity of machines. As Keynes argued nearly a hundred years ago, we will be freed to contemplate the finer elements of our existence, to create and cherish great art and beauty, to value goodness rather than just commercial success.
Keynes was a racist with a dim view of working class people of his own color. He didn't understand that 'great art and beauty' has been produced by poor people throughout the ages.
Many of us fear that we will not have the incomes for such a fine life, since the machines will be owned by a few, and all income will flow to them.
What we should be worried about is that when the next 'gain of function' Virus starts killing millions, the Chinese will refuse to give us the necessary vaccine unless we do what they tell us to do.
Yet as our excursion through history suggests, social values change.
Often because of conquest or relative economic decline.
We glorified the victorious warrior,
we still do.
we then turned to praise merchants and bankers,
not unless we were paid to do so.
today we place successful entrepreneurs on a pedestal,
more particularly if they tell the woke nutters to fuck the fuck off
and we may exalt community workers tomorrow.
Just as medieval Pope exalted lepers and washed their feet.
If the distribution of wealth becomes skewed towards a very few, the few may decide their accumulation of wealth unseemly and find ways to give it back.
Or pretend to do so.
Society will aid that process by muting its applause for the captains of industry who only accumulate, while increasing it for those who distribute wisely.
Rajan has noticed that the good folk who go the Opera don't applaud the prima donna. They cheer only for the captain of industry more particularly if he is drunk and insists on singing along.
Indeed, this already seems underway with the Giving Pledge, where billionaires across the world have pledged to give away at least half their wealth.
If a rich man makes a promise, he always keeps it- right?
Even if values do not change, the feared outcome of mass poverty amid productive plenty will not come to pass if we
insist on 'workfare' rather than 'welfare'. Poor people produce poverty by having babies who are bound to be poor. If they find some more productive way to occupy themselves they will choose a more entertaining type of recreation as an alternative to procreation.
maintain our democracy, and the separation between behemoth corporations and the leviathan state.
No Common Law jurisdiction has ever had a 'leviathan state'. I suppose Tatas, which Rajan joined after getting his MBA, was a behemoth corporation. But since the Eighties, there are many other such giants.
For property rights are a social construct, created and enforced only with the tolerance of the people.
Not in India. The East India Company enforced its property rights by killing those who did not tolerate their depredations. Yet it was John Company and, its successor, the British Raj, which set India on the road to being a Democracy under the Rule of Law.
If incomes and wealth do get more skewed toward a few owners, democracy will turn from protecting the property of the few to preserving opportunity for the many, as it has done before.
Not if the income and wealth are off-shored. Democracy may find it can't bite the hand that feeds it for fear of getting punched in the face.
Only the coalition of the behemoth and the leviathan, subverting democracy to enforce the property rights of the few and the poverty of the many, can stand in the way.
Nonsense! Control rights may be off-shored as may working Capital. States will have to play 'beggar my neighbor' to retain investment and higher value adding economic activities.
This possibility is still in the future, and we need to ensure we never get there by keeping our democracy strong and vigilant,
Strength requires money. Sleepless vigilance can swiftly turn into paranoia.
and the realm of the market and government separate. The path I propose will help us do this.
Whereas my proposal- viz. that elementary particles give up sexy quantum entanglements- would help us do things we are already doing even more inclusively and locally while keeping the dick of the Leviathan out of the mouth of the Behemoth because that is like totes gross.
A more immediate problem many countries face is population aging. In the near future, some countries will have a surfeit of jobs they need to fill, rather than too few jobs. They will have excess physical capital—infrastructure, plant and machinery, buildings and houses— that will go waste.
Nope. They will crumble away because of depreciation. Rajan must have heard of the 'Rust belt'. But this happens even if there is a normal population distribution.
For countries like Japan that have largely homogenous populations, the temptation will be to use more machines, thus avoiding the problems of coping with the diversity that stems from immigration.
Elderly Japanese farmers using robots are helping sustain a market that will soon be global. Apparently there are already some big AI equipped robot farms.
That is a choice aging countries with homogenous populations will have to make—to choose loneliness for their elderly or to accept initial culture shock and then adaptation.
But this can be done with fixed term guest workers. There is no need to change the demography if the problem is self-eliminating.
For aging countries with already diverse populations, the responsible choice ought to be steady and controlled immigration, with the objective of integrating immigrants and making them full and active citizens.
But what will actually happen is lots of guest workers for the shitty jobs while smart and entrepreneurial people find legal channels of immigration.
Once again, the path I propose offers ways to attract and integrate immigrants, while maintaining the support of the native-born population.
But, guest-workers represent a superior path.
I have said little about one of our most pressing problems, climate change and associated problems like water scarcity.
This is because economists are too stupid to understand sciencey stuff.
It may well be that technological change will allow us to address this more easily in the future. For instance, cheap renewable energy like solar or wind power, storable in large batteries and powering our cars, trucks, and factories, can help us reduce carbon emissions significantly. If it also powers reverse osmosis plants generating fresh water from sea water, and helps pipe that water inland, we can solve problems of water scarcity, and transform many a desert into lush farmland.
We can't do shit without money and smart peeps. That is why we ought not to listen to stupid economists. Just look around and see what smarter countries are doing. Imitate them. That's it. If Singapore's workforce consists of 38 percent guest-workers, that's probably the smart way to go.
We must also be prepared, though, for the possibility that technology develops too slowly, and we do have to deal with climate change through more painful collective measures. We cannot afford selfinterested, zero-sum nationalism if the fate of the world is in question.
We can't afford shit if we have no fucking money. It is all very well advising a rich dude how to spend his money. Try doing that to a poor as fuck cretin like me and see what you get.
Instead, we need responsible internationalism.
Because irresponsible internationalism can lead to a rise in the number of unwanted pregnancies.
By weakening our propensity for jingoistic nationalism,
Rajan has a propensity for shouting 'Remember the Alamo!' and burning down Mexican restaurants. To be fair, he also burns down Indian restaurants and merely wanted to show inclusivity to local eateries serving similar, burn-your-arse-off, cuisine.
inclusive localism will allow us to embrace responsibility as a nation.
Whereas previously we were cuddling it as a species.
Finally, the historical excursions in this book suggest hope.
The hope this fucker would finally say something interesting. It was a forlorn hope.
Our values are not static—they change.
More particularly, if we are paid to pretend to have values.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”
This is because the dude was a Minister of the Christian Religion. The arc of the moral universe ends in Paradise for the good Christian. The bad Pickaninny goes to the other place.
When seen over short stretches, it seems that history repeats, that racism and militant nationalism erupt periodically in the world to sow hatred and spawn conflict.
There is only one 'short stretch' where that was true- viz. the interwar period.
Yet the society that experiences these movements is not the same, it trends toward being more tolerant, more respectful, and more just.
When Biden was born, almost 90 percent of the American population was pure white. Now, the number identifying as White might be about 70 percent. However, as boomers start to die off, this figure will shrink. Realistically, non-Hispanic Whites may become a minority within a decade as the incentive to seal the border decreases.
Around that trend line, we do go up and down. We may be down today, and we have a long way to go, but the distance we have come should give us hope.
Rajan wrote this in 2019. Five years later we in the West have less hope. On the other hand, because Modi seems set to win big later this year, India has more of that commodity.
Let us not let the future surprise us.
Rajan wrote this before COVID or Ukraine or the Hamas atrocities.
Instead, let us shape it.
By doing gain of function research in poorly run Chinese laboratories.
There is much to do. We have to, we must, choose wisely if we want to live together well and in peace. I am confident we can,
Rajan may also have been confident that his book wasn't shit. Still, those he lives with didn't tell him he was was wrong because they preferred a peaceful existence. The rest of us, very wisely, refused to read his book or only did so so as to laugh at him. It is all very well trying to be the next Amartya Sen. But Sen peppers his books with highly arousing material of a sexual nature. Obviously, you have to read between the lines but the one benefit I gained from studying at the LSE was the correct manner in which to decode every theorem in mathematical economics as a delineation of highly perverted sexual activity. Sadly, when I tried to take up the study of Quantum theory, I encountered the same problem. This is why I am so insistent that elementary particles give up sexy quantum entanglements and other such ungoldliness. Just take cold shower and think pure thoughts. This is the only sane way to deal with the problem of non-locality in an inclusive and equitable manner.
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