I initially took your questions to be rhetorical/trolling in nature but your subsequent comments point toward sincerity. I’d suggest writing up your thoughts more systematically in a top level post. I’d be interested in seeing a more detailed argument.
By design or by contingent circumstantial factors which they may not understand very well?
Their track record is so much more amazing than anybody else’s that it seems like a good idea to support them even if nobody in the world knows why.
I doubt we’ll know why CPC is so good at it. We still haven’t figured out why Industrial Revolution happened by more or less sudden take-off, or why demographic transition happened, or why Flynn Effect happened, or why Neolithic transition happened nearly simultaneously in so many places after such a long time of not happening, or why language and intelligence took so long to evolve. Yes, there’s plenty of theories for all of these, but as far as I can tell they’re all total garbage with no predictive power. Our knowledge of causes of such processes that happened only once or a few times is nearly non-existent.
My idea is—why not just follow the track record, wherever it takes us? And right now, there’s a very clear winner. Does it matter that we don’t know why?
I like and upvoted this comment, and agree with most of the points that you make therein but feel that it does not support your (implicit) suggestion that donating to the CPC is one of the best uses of charitable funds.
Again, you have not address NancyLebovitz’s questions. If we don’t have a model for how the CPC is promoting poverty reduction by economic development then we can’t conclude that donating to the CPC is likely to promote economic development.
Now, it could be that according to a reasonable Bayesian prior the expected value of donating to the CPC is sufficiently high so that it would be a good charitable investment, but my knowledge of the situation is too poor for me to be convinced; I’d need to hear more about your implicit reasoning (your thinking about unintended negative consequences, unintended positive consequences, counterfactuals) to understand where you’re coming from.
Yes. “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.” Presumably we are not discussing the CPC in a charity context solely out of a historical interest, but to guide our future actions.
“The leaders of those [frighteningly fast growing] nations did not share our faith in free markets or unlimited civil liberties. They asserted with increasing self confidence that their system was superior: societies that accepted strong, even authoritarian governments and were willing to limit individual liberties in the interest of the common good, take charge of their economics, and sacrifice short-run consumer interests for the sake of long-run growth would eventually outperform the increasingly chaotic societies of the West. And a growing minority of Western intellectuals agreed.”
He is speaking of Russia, of course. Krugman then goes on to say that the growth was perfectly explicable by normal industrialization and not by any special governing factors (no ‘your legal kung fu is best’):
“Communist growth rates were certainly impressive, but not magical. The rapid growth in output could be fully explained by rapid growth in inputs: expansion of employment, increases in education levels, and, above all, massive investment in physical capital. Once those inputs were taken into account, the growth in output was unsurprising—or, to put it differently, the big surprise about Soviet growth was that when closely examined it posed no mystery.”
So. I think no one here would suggest that donating to the CCCP (rather than CPC) would have been very effective, nor did the CCCP government offer much worth imitating.
If the CCCP didn’t, the Outside View asks, what makes the CPC different?
I have extremely low opinion of Krugman’s writings so I won’t address his vague claims. If he has some numbers or some actual predictions, I might take a second look.
“Communist” countries on average did about as well as world average, so Soviet Union is no counterargument to anything. The big failures were definitely non-Communist countries of Latin America, Africa, India, Indonesia etc. The paper uses 1937 baseline, which is about the most unfriendly baseline towards “Communist” countries possible.
Outside view says country being “Communist” or not is pretty much irrelevant.
What do you mean? CPC is the single most successful government in history.
Lack of correlation between “Communism” and economic growth matters as much as lack of correlation between country’s position in alphabet and economic growth.
Their track record is so much more amazing than anybody else’s that it seems like a good idea to support them even if nobody in the world knows why.
I doubt we’ll know why CPC is so good at it. We still haven’t figured out why Industrial Revolution happened by more or less sudden take-off, or why demographic transition happened, or why Flynn Effect happened, or why Neolithic transition happened nearly simultaneously in so many places after such a long time of not happening, or why language and intelligence took so long to evolve. Yes, there’s plenty of theories for all of these, but as far as I can tell they’re all total garbage with no predictive power. Our knowledge of causes of such processes that happened only once or a few times is nearly non-existent.
My idea is—why not just follow the track record, wherever it takes us? And right now, there’s a very clear winner. Does it matter that we don’t know why?
I like and upvoted this comment, and agree with most of the points that you make therein but feel that it does not support your (implicit) suggestion that donating to the CPC is one of the best uses of charitable funds.
Again, you have not address NancyLebovitz’s questions. If we don’t have a model for how the CPC is promoting poverty reduction by economic development then we can’t conclude that donating to the CPC is likely to promote economic development.
Now, it could be that according to a reasonable Bayesian prior the expected value of donating to the CPC is sufficiently high so that it would be a good charitable investment, but my knowledge of the situation is too poor for me to be convinced; I’d need to hear more about your implicit reasoning (your thinking about unintended negative consequences, unintended positive consequences, counterfactuals) to understand where you’re coming from.
Yes. “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging the future but by the past.” Presumably we are not discussing the CPC in a charity context solely out of a historical interest, but to guide our future actions.
Paul Krugman writes:
He is speaking of Russia, of course. Krugman then goes on to say that the growth was perfectly explicable by normal industrialization and not by any special governing factors (no ‘your legal kung fu is best’):
So. I think no one here would suggest that donating to the CCCP (rather than CPC) would have been very effective, nor did the CCCP government offer much worth imitating.
If the CCCP didn’t, the Outside View asks, what makes the CPC different?
I have extremely low opinion of Krugman’s writings so I won’t address his vague claims. If he has some numbers or some actual predictions, I might take a second look.
“Communist” countries on average did about as well as world average, so Soviet Union is no counterargument to anything. The big failures were definitely non-Communist countries of Latin America, Africa, India, Indonesia etc. The paper uses 1937 baseline, which is about the most unfriendly baseline towards “Communist” countries possible.
Outside view says country being “Communist” or not is pretty much irrelevant.
OK, in that case—why are we assuming the CPC has anything to do with the success and so donating to it could have any effect to begin with?
What do you mean? CPC is the single most successful government in history.
Lack of correlation between “Communism” and economic growth matters as much as lack of correlation between country’s position in alphabet and economic growth.