[FRIAM] unrest in SoAm & Global ideological/sociopolitical/economic alignment...
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Fri Jan 13 13:21:03 EST 2023
List -
BTW, I offered the paper on the "Latin American Growth Paradox" because
it gave a fair thumbnail sketch of what I was referring to as "the
Golden Age of Latin America" and upon reading it in more depth (beyond
the abstract/introduction/conclusion) I find it more detailed
mathematically (statistically) than I choose to dive into, so I can't
fully support or question it's rigor. Some here probably can do that
with a fairly simple scan of the methods and results. It was not
unexpected, but the "things we can measure", and most appropriately in
an "economics" paper tend toward widely measured economic variables
(e.g. GDP) but does give a nod to "polity" and "religion".
I don't know how close these two variables (as explored here, or in our
imaginations) qualify for the ongoing discussions with EricC on
categorical variables under the subject "Idendifying 'types' within
data", but it appears this paper punted on that by sticking to things
which are directly/obviously quantifiable (percent population Roman
Catholic) or developed specifically (polity score) to support
quantitative analysis: http://www.systemicpeace.org/polityproject.html
The Polity Project linked above introduced me to a term I was unfamiliar
with which I found fascinating, at least on the surface:
Anocracy: mixed, or incoherent, authority regimes
and from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anocracy#Human_rights
</BTW, for those to whom it is not obvious, the image I "linked"
below is not included in the mail, but rather linked back to
Wikipedia's image database and downloaded/rendered by (most)
mailtools on demand... I do wish it were more common in our
threads for folks to include (relevant) graphics that help to
orient/illustrate the topic at hand.../>
I was *expecting* Russia to show as a "closed anocracy", and more of
Latin America as "open anocracies" but that probably just demonstrates
how unfamiliar I am with the term... maybe "defective Democracy" fits
better?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defective_democracy#Types_of_defective_democracies
On 1/13/23 10:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>
> Gary -
>
> Thanks for the on-the-ground response from the "middle of the world".
> I realize(d) you (like all of us) live in a bubble and I appreciate
> your acknowledging the two impinging bubbles you recognize yourself to
> be circumscribed by: 1) retired folk who avoid deep political
> thought; 2) locals without the education or experience to see much
> beyond the local community.
>
> In some ways this feels like a template for many of our own
> bubbles... sort of a 1) personal/professional/socioeconomic bubble;
> 2) geolocal bubble . There are probably more and they may or may not
> overlap significantly. I use FriAM to try to force some of my own
> bubbles to impinge on one another, or perhaps to explore the
> interstices between the otherwise natural impingements...
>
> I'm not a regular (only dropped in once or twice) vFriam participant,
> and I don't know about Merle, I think she may make a better effort
> than I and could probably be drawn into making an appearance for a
> topic *like* this if you were interested. I'll ping her offline as
> well to see if she might be interested/available to vFriAM up on this
> (or some vaguely related) topic next week?
>
> - Steve
>
> Regarding "the Golden Age of Latin America", I found this (working)
> paper which moderately reflects what I think of as "the Golden Age".
> I think they acknowledge (and maybe even explain) what you have
> experienced/observed/believe about "keeping Latin America dirt poor":
>
> On the Latin American Growth Paradox: A Hindsight into the Golden Age
> Giorgia Barboni∗and Tania Treibich† November 12, 2010
> https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/89360/1/64049434X.pdf
>
>
> /In 1950, Latin American countries’ capabilities were promising:
> however, some other countries starting at the same level, or even
> below, made a better use of their initial endowments. At the time,
> countries like Argentina and Venezuela had a higher GDP per capita
> than other European countries belonging to the developed world
> today (Italy, Spain...) and many East Asian countries that have
> managed to catch up with the Western World in the last decades
> (see Figure 1 below). Indeed, the data on GDP per capita over the
> last 60 years reveals that since 1950, Latin American countries
> have diverged from the Western World. With a GDP growth rate
> between 4 and 5 percent, they have fallen behind Europe which
> economy has reached a 20,000 dollars per capita level today. The
> Latin American countries grew slowly until 1980 and, from then,
> their GDP per capita growth has been stationary. The only
> exception would be Chile which after a period of slow growth
> started an expansion period in 1980s, converging to the highest
> levels. Asian countries in comparison followed a convergence path,
> starting way lower and reaching the European levels of GDP per
> capita after fifty years of catching up. Castaldi et al.
> (2008(16)) point out that this divergence can also be measured by
> the widening productivity gap between Latin America and the
> international frontier in the last decades. Other indicators of
> education and science may also support the hypothesis that back
> then, Latin American countries had a big potential for
> convergence. Argentina, for example, was thought to be so
> promising that it could join the innovators’ club (Castaldi et
> al., 2008(16)). Then, what happened during the Golden Age
> (1950-1975) that prevented South American countries to exploit
> this potential for growth?/
>
> Which is naturally just one perspective, but provides the basic idea
> of what said "Golden Age" was/is/might-be.
>
>
> On 1/13/23 9:33 AM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>> Despite living here in the middle of the world, I'm afraid I don't
>> give these ideas enogh serious thought these days. I interact mostly
>> with people who are retired and avoid deep political thought, and with
>> locals who don't have the education or experience to see much beyond
>> the local community. I REALLY MUST make myself make it a priority to
>> start attending the VFriam meetings on Thursday. It might be valuable.
>> I wonder, does Merle ever tune in? She seems the most socially
>> concerned (maybe even hopeful?) person on the list.
>>
>> By the way, I wasn't aware that there ever was a "Golden Age of Latin
>> America". Care to elaborate? My view (shaped perhaps too much by
>> reading "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" in the early 2000s) is
>> that Latin America has always been dirt poor, just like the more
>> developed world wants it to be. First under the thumb of the USA and
>> USSR/Russia, and now China. No wonder dictators thrive here.
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 1:31 PM Steve Smith<sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>> GaryS, et al -
>>>
>>> I was recently trying to make a little more sense of the larger sociopolitical situation across central/south America and realized that your location in Ecuador might provide some useful parallax.
>>>
>>> https://www.as-coa.org/articles/2023-elections-latin-america-preview
>>>
>>> I was (not?) surprised to read that there was a renewed interest in "regional integration". This article references Lula and Obrador and several other Latin American leaders who might be attempting a broader ideological (and economic) alignment/cooperation across the region.
>>>
>>> https://www.bloomberglinea.com/english/will-lula-achieve-regional-integration-in-latin-america/
>>>
>>> With the unrest of the summer triggered? by energy/fossil-fuel prices it seems like Ecuador has become (temporarily, modestly) unbalanced which seems like an opportunity for change, whether for better or worse. I see in the first article (Elections Preview) that Lasso has a very low approval rating and the upcoming (February) elections might include/yield a recall for him?
>>>
>>> I lived on the border of AZ/MX as a teen in the early 70s and the recent memory/residue of the Golden Age of Latin America was still evident. The Mexican border town (Agua Prieta) still had moderately grand facilities and institutions (e.g. A huge library with elaborate fountains on the grounds, etc) even though they were not able to support them in that grandeur... So I think I still have an ideation that Latin America has many of the resources or (hidden) momentum to achieve a resurgence of some sort.
>>>
>>> These reflections are partly triggered by this interview/article produced by WBUR/Boston and distributed via NPR:
>>>
>>> https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/01/11/8-billion-earth-population-rise-human
>>>
>>> Which reminded me that while we *do* have a total-population problem with our 8B and rising numbers (and 90+ % of land animal by mass being human or human domesticates), the *distribution* of people, and more to the point the demographic fecundity/fertility distribution is very uneven and in fact seems to be inversely proportional to various features of human civilization ranging from GDP to education to technological development. Some (like DJT) turn this into a judgement and a reason for resentment/fear (e.g. S*hole country labels) but others have a more progressive view. An excerpt from the WBUR interview/article:
>>>
>>> Jennifer Sciubba: "We're moving toward this aging and shrinking world, and we are worried because we can't sustain that same huge level of economic growth in the past. And we do need to think about what that might look like, so we can look relook at concepts like retirement. We can look at concepts like what is work life. We also, though, have to start thinking about family and marriage. And, you know, we're talking about a paradigmatic shift.
>>>
>>> "That means we have to look at the world through a completely different lens than we've looked at the world in the past. But all of our theories about the good life, our economic theories, our political theories, those were all developed under conditions of population growth and economic growth, as William said. So it's really hard to get a paradigmatic shift and say, what if we try to look at the world in a different way? Can we look at an aging and shrinking society as a good thing? Can we look at growing older individually as a good thing? We've not been good at that. And so we're kind of taking that negativity and applying it at the societal level."
>>>
>>> This passage specifically references aging (individual and population) but there are other references to economic/technological disparities.
>>>
>>> I also defer here to others who have an international POV (e.g. Pieter in South Africa, Sarbajit in India, Jochen in Germany, and I believe we have someone from Cuba, I think we lost (off the list) Mohammed from Egypt a few years ago, etc.) as well. We are not a very demographicly representative group here but still offer a somewhat broad samplying by some measures.
>>>
>>> I realize this is yet another of my rambly maunderings but I'd be curious to hear what others are observing/thinking about these issues in this current time of global flux.
>>>
>>> - Steve
>>>
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