They have more redundancy at least to the extent that they operate with a greater surplus of wealth above subsistence.
This is obvious; but it seems like little of the surplus is devoted to distributing infrastructure and resources or defending against rare contingencies like a highly specialized and interdependent society must. Let’s say that America is per capita $20,000 higher than subsistence thanks to specialization and interdependence; what fraction of that goes to the previous listed needs? FEMA, for example, is a few billion a year or ~17$ per capita; even adding in all the other disaster-preparedness services such as the strategic petroleum reserves, does it compensate enough?
How do you propose to measure redundancy?
I don’t. That’s far above my pay-grade. It’s an interesting area of thinking and like most interesting areas, doesn’t have all the answers rigorously worked out—any more than SIAI has all the details of AI worked out, and much of which thinking relies on us finding certain propositions plausible.
Both Japan and Germany were more advanced pre-WWII than many poor countries today. Both countries lost a major military conflict which involved extensive destruction of infrastructure and massive civilian and military casualties. Both countries recovered over time and there are few if any examples of countries which started out with less modern economies, suffered comparable levels of damage due to warfare and demonstrated greater resiliency by recovering faster.
Rare examples of nation-building gone right. How’s Haiti working out? Or Argentina? Both used to be among the richest countries in the world. I’ve heard Iran was depressed for centuries after the Mongols destroyed their extremely elaborate agricultural systems. Primitive places like Afghanistan just keep on trucking.
And then there are examples of highly advanced economies sabotaging themselves. The Mayans come to mind, as does the ‘Fertile Crescent’ - thanks to salinization caused by millennia of agriculture, not so fertile any more!
Another possible meaning might be that while no individual primitive economy is more robust than a modern one they are less interconnected and so failure in one does not cause a cascade to others. This sounds plausible in theory but I don’t see strong historical evidence in this direction.
The Great Depression. The Asian currency crisis. Recent events.
FEMA, for example, is a few billion a year or ~17$ per capita; even adding in all the other disaster-preparedness services such as the strategic petroleum reserves, does it compensate enough?
I think we need to clarify a lot of our underlying assumptions and terminology if we are to bridge the yawning epistemic gap that appears to lie between us. Let me try and clarify my interpretation of some of the terms we are using and see if we are on the same page.
You originally said: “I find interesting the general phenomenon that economic development seems to make economies ever more fragile and liable to collapse”. There’s at least three terms we could be disagreeing on here: economic development, fragile and collapse. By economic development I understood ‘a trend towards greater complexity, interdependence and specialization’. By fragile I understood ‘easily broken or destroyed’ rather than merely volatile or erratic. By collapse I understood ‘cease to function due to a sudden breakdown’ rather than merely impaired function. I dispute the strong interpretation of this sentence implied by the definitions I give here but do not necessarily dispute a weaker interpretation.
The other area that needs clarification is covered by your question ‘does it compensate enough?‘. I certainly think that economic development will tend to make societies better off in absolute terms under essentially all disaster situations that we have a historical precedent for. If you measured volatility of wealth by some measures you might find modern economies more volatile but in the context of concern for ‘collapse’ or existential risk it is not volatility in itself that is dangerous but the potential for going ‘below zero’ - being wiped out in investment terms. If you are at subsistent level a 10% drop in wealth (in the broadest sense) could be fatal. In a modern economy losing 50% of your wealth is painful but completely survivable for most people. In other words it is possible for modern economies to be both more volatile from some perspectives and less prone to collapse because of the much greater buffer provided by the extra wealth they create.
How do you propose to measure redundancy?
I don’t. That’s far above my pay-grade.
I feel that if you are going to make the claim and wish to defend it then it is incumbent upon you to at least attempt to propose some measure by which the truth of your claim might be judged. Otherwise you are merely engaging in wordplay and not rationality.
Rare examples of nation-building gone right. How’s Haiti working out? Or Argentina? Both used to be among the richest countries in the world.
Haiti’s problems are deep rooted. It has nothing that can be described as a modern economy and that is part of its problem. Argentina is a very different case. It has had a history of economic mismanagement and financial crises but it is in a completely different league to Haiti (10x GDP per capita and vastly better off by any measure of economic or social development). Argentina is actually something of a success story in Latin America at the moment after its troubles at the turn of the century and Buenos Aires is considered a ‘hot’ destination.
But we could get into a long and involved discussion of history and debate interpretations and how they support or contradict your theory. I’d rather hold off on that until we can establish the exact nature of any disagreement we have.
The Great Depression. The Asian currency crisis. Recent events.
I consider these support for my view in that all were examples of great volatility but not of anything approximating collapse. They in no way canceled out the benefits of the periods of economic growth that preceded them (and followed in the first two cases).
I actually think people tend to underestimate the frequency and severity of crises of various kinds but overestimate the long term impact. I am much more pessimistic than average about the current economic situation (see my New Year’s predictions here for example) but much more optimistic about how things will ultimately turn out than most people would be if they expected the same level of disruption.
I feel that if you are going to make the claim and wish to defend it then it is incumbent upon you to at least attempt to propose some measure by which the truth of your claim might be judged. Otherwise you are merely engaging in wordplay and not rationality.
All I was doing was raising an interesting theory and linking to those who do defend it.
I feel as if I had mentioned that the sky looked kind of blue today and wasn’t that kind of interesting, and the person standing next to me immediately said, ‘oh, blue—physiologically or by wave-length? Are you taking into account Rayleigh scattering? For that matter, is it blue by absorption or reflection? Let’s see your numbers, chap, I think you may be having me on.’
You ask some interesting questions, but I see now that any reply is just going to lead to an in-depth argument/discussion which I am not equipped for and don’t really feel like having now. If you want to argue about, I’ve already pointed to a relevant forum.
EDIT: To the downvoters: consider what you’re saying by downvoting - ‘I disapprove of someone explicitly withdrawing from a conversation, and would rather that one side simply never reply and leave the other person hanging.’ Is that really what you would prefer?
This is obvious; but it seems like little of the surplus is devoted to distributing infrastructure and resources or defending against rare contingencies like a highly specialized and interdependent society must. Let’s say that America is per capita $20,000 higher than subsistence thanks to specialization and interdependence; what fraction of that goes to the previous listed needs? FEMA, for example, is a few billion a year or ~17$ per capita; even adding in all the other disaster-preparedness services such as the strategic petroleum reserves, does it compensate enough?
I don’t. That’s far above my pay-grade. It’s an interesting area of thinking and like most interesting areas, doesn’t have all the answers rigorously worked out—any more than SIAI has all the details of AI worked out, and much of which thinking relies on us finding certain propositions plausible.
Rare examples of nation-building gone right. How’s Haiti working out? Or Argentina? Both used to be among the richest countries in the world. I’ve heard Iran was depressed for centuries after the Mongols destroyed their extremely elaborate agricultural systems. Primitive places like Afghanistan just keep on trucking.
And then there are examples of highly advanced economies sabotaging themselves. The Mayans come to mind, as does the ‘Fertile Crescent’ - thanks to salinization caused by millennia of agriculture, not so fertile any more!
The Great Depression. The Asian currency crisis. Recent events.
I think we need to clarify a lot of our underlying assumptions and terminology if we are to bridge the yawning epistemic gap that appears to lie between us. Let me try and clarify my interpretation of some of the terms we are using and see if we are on the same page.
You originally said: “I find interesting the general phenomenon that economic development seems to make economies ever more fragile and liable to collapse”. There’s at least three terms we could be disagreeing on here: economic development, fragile and collapse. By economic development I understood ‘a trend towards greater complexity, interdependence and specialization’. By fragile I understood ‘easily broken or destroyed’ rather than merely volatile or erratic. By collapse I understood ‘cease to function due to a sudden breakdown’ rather than merely impaired function. I dispute the strong interpretation of this sentence implied by the definitions I give here but do not necessarily dispute a weaker interpretation.
The other area that needs clarification is covered by your question ‘does it compensate enough?‘. I certainly think that economic development will tend to make societies better off in absolute terms under essentially all disaster situations that we have a historical precedent for. If you measured volatility of wealth by some measures you might find modern economies more volatile but in the context of concern for ‘collapse’ or existential risk it is not volatility in itself that is dangerous but the potential for going ‘below zero’ - being wiped out in investment terms. If you are at subsistent level a 10% drop in wealth (in the broadest sense) could be fatal. In a modern economy losing 50% of your wealth is painful but completely survivable for most people. In other words it is possible for modern economies to be both more volatile from some perspectives and less prone to collapse because of the much greater buffer provided by the extra wealth they create.
I feel that if you are going to make the claim and wish to defend it then it is incumbent upon you to at least attempt to propose some measure by which the truth of your claim might be judged. Otherwise you are merely engaging in wordplay and not rationality.
Haiti’s problems are deep rooted. It has nothing that can be described as a modern economy and that is part of its problem. Argentina is a very different case. It has had a history of economic mismanagement and financial crises but it is in a completely different league to Haiti (10x GDP per capita and vastly better off by any measure of economic or social development). Argentina is actually something of a success story in Latin America at the moment after its troubles at the turn of the century and Buenos Aires is considered a ‘hot’ destination.
But we could get into a long and involved discussion of history and debate interpretations and how they support or contradict your theory. I’d rather hold off on that until we can establish the exact nature of any disagreement we have.
I consider these support for my view in that all were examples of great volatility but not of anything approximating collapse. They in no way canceled out the benefits of the periods of economic growth that preceded them (and followed in the first two cases).
I actually think people tend to underestimate the frequency and severity of crises of various kinds but overestimate the long term impact. I am much more pessimistic than average about the current economic situation (see my New Year’s predictions here for example) but much more optimistic about how things will ultimately turn out than most people would be if they expected the same level of disruption.
All I was doing was raising an interesting theory and linking to those who do defend it.
I feel as if I had mentioned that the sky looked kind of blue today and wasn’t that kind of interesting, and the person standing next to me immediately said, ‘oh, blue—physiologically or by wave-length? Are you taking into account Rayleigh scattering? For that matter, is it blue by absorption or reflection? Let’s see your numbers, chap, I think you may be having me on.’
You ask some interesting questions, but I see now that any reply is just going to lead to an in-depth argument/discussion which I am not equipped for and don’t really feel like having now. If you want to argue about, I’ve already pointed to a relevant forum.
EDIT: To the downvoters: consider what you’re saying by downvoting - ‘I disapprove of someone explicitly withdrawing from a conversation, and would rather that one side simply never reply and leave the other person hanging.’ Is that really what you would prefer?