There was a time when it was thought that mathematical economists could help a country grow rapidly. Sadly, they turned out to be as stupid as shit. Thus, they were sent back to the Academy where they could gain intellectual affirmative action if they were brown and came from a starving shithole. By working on models without 'Knightian Uncertainty', they neither had to use their brain nor admit that Command Economies are crap. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some were obliged to pretend to have been Liberal bleeding hearts, rather than Red 'fellow travellers', all along.
One way to do so was to go in for 'normative economics'- i.e. virtue signalling. The idea here is to suggest you cared so deeply about the poor that you had inadvertently turned a blind eye to horrible things that were happening in countries which claimed to be anti-rich. Suddenly, these gaseous vertebrates started talking about Freedom, though of course they didn't mean actual Freedom. They meant the Marxian sort where somebody else decides what you should be free to choose to do.
One result of seeing Development as Freedom is to kill your enthusiasm for both items. What you need is to say 'Development makes your dick bigger'- if what you are selling is Development. Alternatively, if Freedom is your bag, then you say it intensifies orgasms. But if you bundle both together everybody knows you are lying. Why? Because we only develop when we sacrifice some freedom which we currently have in order to have a bigger choice menu- and thus more freedom- later on. Development happens when we sacrifice present satisfaction and bind ourselves to an arduous path which, we hope, will leave us better off.
Often this involves trading individual autonomy to be a heteronomous unit of a collective of some type. Thus, you give up your freedom to read what you like to go to a College and get a credential in some particular subject so as to be able to earn more money.
Later, instead of setting up on your own, you may join a big firm and work your ass off so as to be able to start a business in ten years time which will make you very rich.
The 'collective' you join may be an institution or an enterprise but it may also be informal or inchoate. Consider a freelance journalist who is part of an ideological movement. Outwardly, it may appear that this agent is wholly free and autonomous. But, in order to secure a steady market, the journalist is under great pressure to conform to a particular set of ideas,
At a social level, the 'collective' we belong to can easily be discerned. We are identified as a 'type'. Often, there is a 'mimetic target' we imitate or else there is an ideal we are trying to live up to. Some may indeed develop into the thing they aspire to be. Others may have freely chosen to end up bitter and disappointed.
Tardean mimetics- imitation of the superior- is what drives Development as 'catch-up' growth. What about 'endogenous' growth- i.e. one which is self-propelled and 'autonomous'?
We can imagine a Society of autonomous agents who freely pursue their highest good and all of whom do so well that they would reject antidosis- i.e. they wouldn't want to exchange positions with anyone.
But such a Society must be the most advanced and affluent in the world. It may 'develop' in a harmonious manner but this is because there is equal natural and acquired endowments. For any other Society, mimetic effects create collectives where outcomes will be unequal or regulated by a power law.
Thus my freedom to develop into the greatest Beyonce impersonator ever- which is gonna happen any day now- is predicated on my peer group of elderly losers remaining the prisoner of their sad delusions in this respect. Note that Freedom can certainly be treated on the basis of methodological individualism- all are free to try to twerk like Beyonce. Justiciable freedoms for one agent are indeed predicated on similar freedoms for all. However, in cases like this- i.e. where there is a mimetic target on the basis of manifest superiority- Development must refer, not to an individual, but to a collective within which outcomes will be radically unequal in the same way that Beyonce's success is predicated on a lot of other wannabes having to keep their day job though, no doubt, the general quality of twerking goes up.
Development is essentially a mimetic process. But mimetic desire is based on emulation of a Tardean superior who appears more 'free'. Since this emulation is essentially 'heteronomous', it is likely to feature binding commitments which limit freedom. Of course, for the 'most developed', there may appear to be nothing but freedom with everybody doing their own thing yet nevertheless maintaining a commanding lead by reason of absolute or acquired advantage. But this is an illusion of privilege.
What happens when Development is treated as if it is similar to Freedom? Amartya Sen's 'Development as Freedom' published some 22 years ago answers this question. What happens is that you get a stinky pile of shite.
Sen's book begins thus-
Development can be seen, it is argued here, as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy.
Sadly, the real freedoms people enjoy can be most quickly and substantially increased by reversing economic development. Thus, instead of investing in plant and machinery, financial transfers to the population can be increased so that people enjoy the real freedom of leisure and the opportunity to take part in social and political debate.
By contrast, more rapid development would require a sacrifice of real freedoms- in particular the freedom to pursue one's own interests in a leisurely manner.
Focusing on human freedoms contrasts with narrower views of development, such as identifying development with the growth of gross national product,
GNP growth correlates positively with economic development. Human freedom correlates negatively with economic development. However, economic freedom may correlate with economic development. But economic freedom is not human freedom.
or with the rise in personal incomes,
which correlates with rising productivity which is the fruit of economic development. However 'human freedom' may decline as personal income increases because leisure has fallen, life has become more regimented.
or with industrialization,
which correlates with rising productivity and is a visible marker of economic development
or with technological advance, or with social modernization.
Technological advance could increase human freedom for many, as could 'modernization'. However both processes may spell the extinction of older or pre-modern ways of life. Arguably, life will seem more mechanized and impersonal and less natural or less on a human scale. Thus the smartphone may enable us to connect with people in far countries but it may also cut us off from our neighbours- or even our own families.
Growth of GNP or of individual incomes can, of coure, be very important as means to expanding the freedoms enjoyed by the members of the society.
No. Growth of income can improve standard of living. However the price may be less leisure and a more regimented, less free, life. The peasant farmer or pastoralist has considerable autonomy in his daily life. Becoming a factory worker, he loses this autonomy. He may not even be permitted to urinate or dine when he wishes to.
But freedoms depend also on other determinants, such as social and economic arrangements (for example, facilities for education and health care)
Compulsory education greatly reduces freedom for both children and parents who may be responsible for making sure children attend school punctually. One motivation for compulsory education was to indoctrinate children in the prevailing religious sect. Literacy was itself an instrument of social control.
Like education, health care may benefit people. However, it reduces their freedom- e.g. forcible quarantine or isolation of infected people.
as well as political and civil rights (for example, the liberty to participate in public discussion and scrutiny).
Freedoms are political and civil rights. They don't depend on them. It has been suggested that economic development was more rapid in countries which had some political and civil rights rather than autocratic despotisms. However, it must be admitted that totalitarian states have grown very rapidly at different times from 1930 onward.
Similarly, industrialization or technological progress or social modernization can substantially contribute to expanding human freedom,
though ordinary people may feel their freedom has decreased because their working life is regimented and their leisure has decreased. Here the economic freedom of entrepreneurs may increase while that of the proletariat decreases. But entrepreneurs will be few, the workers will be many.
but freedom depends on other influences as well.
No. Freedoms are political, civil, property, and economic rights which are justiciable. The extent to which they exist depends on whether legal remedies are available and effective.
If freedom is what development advances, then there is a major argument for concentrating on that overarching objective, rather than some particular means, or some specially chosen list of instruments.
Sen is speaking of 'policy makers'. However, in a free Society, policy objectives must be dictated by the Public. Only if voters say 'we want the highest possible rate of economic growth' should that be the objective. But voters have never said anything of that sort.
By viewing development as something which savants make decisions about, Sen shows himself to be an enemy of freedom.
Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms
suggests that the viewer does not believe in freedom. She thinks of herself as a benevolent despot or 'Philosopher King'.
Of course, in reality, she is just a pedagogue or bureaucrat or jumped up journalist playing 'let's pretend'.
directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that, inter alia, play a prominent part in the process.
This is nonsense. Either you want to expand 'substantive freedom' or you want to do 'development'. An academic or a bureaucrat or jumped up journalist who is getting paid to talk about X, but who finds that subject boring, may pretend that talking about whatever bee they have in their bonnet is actually part of X. Thus, if I were obliged to give a lecture on Mochizuki's proof of the abc conjecture, I might say 'Viewing the abc conjecture in terms of watching Buffy the Vampire slayer re-runs, directs attention to the ends that make the abc conjecture important- which is that after it is proved, you can put your feet up and watch Buffy- rather than merely to some of the means that Mochizuki says plays a prominent part in the process. Proving the abc conjecture requires the removal of major sources of not being able to prove it : ignorance of Maths, the fact that I am as poor as fuck which is why I am pretending to know shit about Maths, Racism- especially by Iyengars against Iyers- Fascism, which is like totally not cool, and Global Warming and those nasty people who go around raping street dogs. Not till we stop libtards from incessantly raping street dogs can our unfreedom to decide on the validity of the Mochizuki proof be sustainably and morally removed by bow-wows whose arses are not buggered to buggery by libtards.'
Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity of repressive states. Despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers-perhaps even the majority of people.
So, Sen agrees that Development hasn't got shit to do with Freedom.
Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger,
only in the sense that this lack relates directly to my inability to grasp the Mochizuki proof and Mankind's failure to develop a cheap and effective Time machine.
Man was born free. But that freedom was not freedom from hunger anymore than it was an unfreedom to prove the abc conjecture. Sen is pretending otherwise for a virtue signalling purpose.
A better approach would be to honestly admit that Development goes hand in hand with a reduction in human freedom. There may be things we can do as a Society which make us happier and more free which we would prefer to economic development. This was the appeal of Gandhi's ashram or Tagore's Shantiniketan or, indeed, Bhutan's claim to be 'the Happiest Nation' on the planet precisely because it has rejected modernization. It also expelled the Nepalese minority. The King is an autocrat. Bhutan may be happy but it isn't free in the way we understand that word. Perhaps that is a good thing- at least for the Bhutanese.
Economic development requires the reallocation of factors of production. But the freedom to achieve this reallocation has nothing to do with the freedom of individuals.
Sen pretends this is not the case. Similarly I may say 'Watching Buffy the Vampire slayer is central to the process of proving the abc theorem for two distinct reasons
1) assessment of progress in finding the solution has to be done by watching Buffy because after proving or disproving Mochizuki's proof, that's what all right minded people would do- right?
2) achieving shit in Higher Mathematics is thoroughly dependent on watching Buffy the Vampire killer because I say so.
Freedom is central to the process of development for two distinct reasons
1) The evaluative reason : assessment of progress has to be done primarily in terms of whether the freedoms that people have are enhanced
This is utterly false. Consider the question 'Did Stalin's Soviet Union really grow rapidly in the Thirties?' The fact is 'freedoms' hadn't been enhanced. They had worsened. Yet, when Hitler invaded, the Soviet Union was able to rally. By 1942 it was producing more planes than Germany.
Military strategists need to know whether Economic Development has or hasn't occurred. Why? Wars are decided by who can produce more and better weapons. North Korea has very little freedom. But fighting it would be a bad idea. Those guys have developed a powerful military-industrial complex. That's why, though South Korea is much richer and has twice the population, American troops are on South Korean soil to defend it from its poorer, less populous, neighbour.
2) The effectiveness reason : achievement of development is thoroughly dependent on the free agency of people.
coz Sen says so. Bengalis do love ipse dixit reasoning. But the thing simply isn't true. Sen may know that Britain is quite developed. But at least a portion of that development was dependent on Sen's own people losing 'free agency'. Sen may have believed, when he wrote this, that China would go in the direction of 'free agency'. It hasn't. Yet we believe the country will continue to develop. Biden is saying 'China won't overtake us on my watch'. But how long can that watch last?
It is now two decades since Sen wrote the following-
To take a different type of example, the point is often made that African Americans in the United States are relatively poor compared with American whites, though much richer than people in the third world.
Which is why they keel over from 'diseases of affluence' to which us darker colored people appear more prone. However, as African Americans adopted healthy lifestyles their longevity increased.
It is, however important to recognize that African Americans have an absolutely lower chance of reaching mature ages than do people of many third world societies, such as China, or Sri Lanka, or parts of India (with different arrangements of health care, education, and community relations).
Increasing affluence in such areas equalized this in so far as people adopted a tastier but unhealthier diet.
If development analysis is relevant even for richer countries (it is argued in this work that this is indeed so), the presence of such intergroup contrasts within the richer countries can be seen to be an important aspect of the understanding of development and underdevelopment.
If watching Buffy the Vampire slayer is relevant for solving problems in Higher Maths then the presence of such intergroup contrasts as that at least one Iyer appeared on Buffy whereas not even one person with the surname Mochizuki appeared on that show, can be seen to be an important aspect of the understanding of the fact that nobody has questioned my own proof of the abc conjecture.
The fact is everybody recognized that 'development analysis' was utterly useless some fifty years ago. Only where Development Economists were ignored completely did Development really take off. However, some retards could still study and teach that rubbish because virtue signalling about starving kids in the ghettos and the Turd World and so forth was accepted as part of a wider program of credentializing 'Grievance Studies'. The sad truth is, people who set out to help the poor ended up taking a slice of the charity cake to maintain their upper middle class lifestyle. How did they live with themselves? The answer is that they pretended they were standing up for Freedom. After all, during the Cold War, being for Freedom and Human Rights was quite well paid. Why not glom on to that gravy train?
I suppose, if Sen properly studied the four Hohfeldian incidents which a right can be decomposed into, then he wouldn't have written arrant nonsense like this
Five distinct types of freedom, seen in an "instrumental" perspective, are particularly investigated in the empirical studies that follow. These include (1) political freedoms
which exist because they have Hohfeldian incidents and are justiciable
(2) economic facilities
which are not freedoms. Indeed such facilities may be greatly superior where there is no freedom.
(3) transparency guarantees
which may not be justiciable. Either a right exists such that 'transparency' can be achieved by some juristic process or else there is no right. There is just a promise which may turn out to be 'mere puffery'.
(4) Social opportunities
which are not freedoms. Arguably, revolutionary regimes of a totalitarian nature secure greater social opportunities for previously oppressed classes. On the other hand, they may spend a lot of time killing or torturing the previously privileged.
(5) Protective security
which may exist where there is no freedom whatsoever.
Each of these distinct types of rights and opportunities helps to advance the general capability of a person.
Only one right has been mentioned. Opportunities are not rights. Cuddles and kisses may advance the general capability of a person. Why not mention them? The answer is that the stupid people whom Sen is writing for may not call him on fraudulently claiming that an opportunity or a facility is actually a right. But they would twig to Sen's imbecility if he mentioned cuddles and kisses. This is because we all know that our freedom decreases once we are showered with that type of affection and a little baby turns up who then ensures we get a job and start saving money for College tuition. On the other hand, watching Buffy the Vampire slayer definitely advances the general capability of a person- in particular your ability to predict who will turn into a werewolf- without compromising freedom- worse luck.
Sen's entire oeuvre has been based on taking one word and giving it a completely different meaning. What follows is an ex falso quodlibet explosion of nonsense.
Why has Sen dedicated himself to being such a useless tosser? Perhaps, the answer is to be found in his childhood in Tagore's Shantiniketan. Essentially, the Tagores had taken to pretending to be Vedic Rishis with some special insight into the Brahman- or Godhead.
Thus Sen begins his next chapter thus-
It is not unusual for couples to discuss the possibility of earning more money, but a conversation on this subject from around the eighth century B.C. is of some special interest.
Only if you are a Hindu and claim descent from one of the speakers or else earned your living by expounding that particular Upanishad.
As that conversation is recounted in the Sanskit of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, a woman Maitreyee and her husband, Yajnavalkya,
who weren't discussing how to earn more money at all
proceed rapidly to a bigger issue than the ways and means of becoming more wealthy:
Sen is lying. The couple weren't talking about how to get richer at all. Wifey says would wealth make me immortal. Hubby says, no- don't be silly. This is aint exactly a big discovery. People knew that the rich die for the same reasons that ordinary folk do- viz disease, accident, old age etc.
Maitreyee's rhetorical question has been cited again and again
in Indian religious philosophy to illustrate both the nature of the
human predicament and the limitations of the material world.
This is nonsense. Indian religious philosophy accepts that there are some 'chiranjeevis' who attained immortality simply by not dying. They are still around. God controls the material world. There are no limitations at all to his power on the material, or any other, plane. If he decides to give you bodily immortality then that's what you get.
I have too much skepticism of otherworldly matters to be led there by
Maitreyee's worldly frustration, but there is another aspect of this exchange that is of rather immediate interest to economics and to understanding the nature of development.
Sen is a cretin. The fact is Hindu religious literature supports the idea that with enough wealth you can perform a sacrifice such that you gain bodily immortality. However, the Upanishads counsel a better course- Moksha is an outcome better than any which can be realized tied to the fetters of a human body.
Suppose some machine (yantra) were posited which granted immortality. Hinduism would have no a priori reason to object to its feasibility. But it would say that the goal was inferior to that of achieving spiritual liberation.
This concerns the relation between incomes and achievements, between commodities and capabilities, between our economic wealth and our ability to live as we would like.
We all understand, by the time we are about 15 years old, that if we want to live as we would like at some future date then we have stop living as we would like right now.
While there is a connection between opulence and achievements, the linkage may or may not be very strong and may well be extremely contingent on other circumstances.
No. Provided 'opulence' is transferrable, the linkage with 'achievements' is direct because opulence, or wealth, is defined as that which can generate utility or 'achievement' under all contingencies. One reason people start giving away their money before they die is because they realize that a corpse aint wealthy- it's just a corpse.
Suppose Sen had developed a habit of using words with the sort of precision and truthfulness we would expect from an academic. Would he have managed to write anything at all? Perhaps. But it wouldn't have been this shite like 'Development as Freedom'.
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