Day: March 4, 2020

Quick Notes from Tyler Cowen’s Interview of Garett Jones

Ashish1 Comment

We’ll see how this goes, but a very quick introduction before we get started. A friend, Aadisht Khanna, has a blog with a very ambitious aim (and name): Aadisht Logs Everything. Every now and then, I speak to him about some of these posts, and we end up having a lot of fun talking about stuff we get reminded of as a result of he writing these posts and I speaking to him about them. They’re all available here, should you want to check it out.

But why not try and take quick notes on everything I see, read and here? The idea isn’t to write long and detailed posts – that’s happening on the blog, slowly but surely.

But an ongoing repository of my notes on stuff I have read, listened to, viewed, not to mention conversations I’ve been a part of – maybe that’s a good idea too? We’ll see how it goes.

We begin with the thing I read the most recently, which is an episode from what is probably my favorite podcast: Conversations with Tyler.

The episode I read most recently was the one with Garett Jones. Here we go.

  1. The first section was essentially about getting incentives right. The idea is simple, the devil lies in the details is the big takeaway for me, and that applies to practically everything in life.
  2. New Zealand’s contract for its central banker is a form of skin in the game, and that is a gloriously unexplored idea. My own take on this is what if professors were paid a part of their salary on the basis of students who chose to attend their class, and all classes were made optional in terms of enrollment and attendance? Refer to point 1 before you rush to criticize!
  3. The Rajya Sabha elections are staggered in much the same way, of course, and as I understand it, for the same reason as staggered elections in the House of Representatives, and I agree: it is an excellent idea.
  4. About Garett Jones and Tyler Cowen’s discussion re: governance in Europe, does it imply too much centralization, and isn’t that, on balance, a bad thing? Need to read up more about this.
  5. And Scott Sumner’s question about Switzerland is along those lines only, no?
  6. I haven’t read the book in question, but I found it interesting that one of the chapters was titled “The Big Benefits of a Small Increase in Democracy”. Either extreme isn’t desirable, in other words: not too much democracy, but not too little of it either. The Truth Lies Somewhere in the Middle!
  7. This was immensely thought provoking for me, along so many dimensions:

    That’s true, but that’s partly because the rich white elites are acting as the self-appointed representatives of other individuals and groups in society.

  8. Again, thought provoking, and the basis on which the point was made is added to the must-read list:

    Once he pointed out, in sort of the climax of the book, that long-run cooperation focusing on some kind of cultural norm and infusing that throughout the system was crucial to firm success, and that failed firms will be those often that failed to coordinate on a good equilibrium, I decided that was central to seeing not just how firms work, but how societies work as a whole.

  9. If you ask me, Seth Godin and Tyler Cowen should have a conversation, and we should get to listen to it/read it. Here’s one reason, here’s the second, and what follows is my third:

    JONES: Yeah, that’s the thing — figuring out which things within capitalism — what is it about living in a free society with competitive markets where, at least in our youth and middle age, we feel a need to sell ourselves as valuable creators. There’s something about that that probably is what’s most valuable for boosting cognitive skills. It’s a sort of demand-side desire to try to use our minds in socially productive ways. And I think in communism, we can —

    COWEN: So marketing makes us smarter?

    JONES: That’s what I would say, yeah.

  10. Chad Jones, Paul Romer and diminishing returns reminded me of this book, and this TED talk.
  11. Isn’t this one more reason to admire Tyler Cowen more as well?

    Oh, that’s so hard. I’d say Buchanan because he . . . Tullock had more weird ideas. Buchanan took the time to do something that I personally am not that skilled at and not that interested in, which is building an intellectual empire, building an organization and a culture that shares those ideas. And that’s really how you get important ideas into an ecosystem, by taking the time to build an organization, to build a culture, to work with people, and Buchanan did that. That gave him a power that Tullock couldn’t quite have.

  12. And isn’t this a a macro-description of point 11, applied to a nation?

    There is this case that America, at its top 20 percentile of experience — it’s been a nation that’s been built on a hope and vision, not American exceptionalism in that it’s something you’re endowed with, but it’s an American exceptionalism in the sense that it’s something that people create. And a sense of adventure that is central to the American experience. You could think of it as a pioneer. It’s a mixture of a pioneering spirit with an element of strong social capital.So to me, of course, the Mormons then are the embodiment of this. They’ve got this strong social capital, strong enough to stand up to other people, but at the same time, willing to take huge risks and endure great persecution in order to build a new world.And that’s an extreme version of what Americans have done for quite some time. It’s this rare blend of social capital and adventurousness at its best times. And that’s not just a 0.1 percent experience; it’s more like 20 to 30 percent of the US experience. And that’s something that a lot of countries just never get.

Afghanistan Today

Ashish3 Comments

After Poland and Germany, let’s pick an Asian country to understand better for the month of March. And given the recent deal that has been signed, about which more below, let’s begin with Afghanistan.

As always, begin with the basics. The gift that is Wikipedia, on Afghanistan:

“Afghanistan is a unitary presidential Islamic republic. The country has high levels of terrorism, poverty, child malnutrition, and corruption. It is a member of the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Group of 77, the Economic Cooperation Organization, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Afghanistan’s economy is the world’s 96th largest, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $72.9 billion by purchasing power parity; the country fares much worse in terms of per-capita GDP (PPP), ranking 169th out of 186 countries as of 2018.”

And from the same article…

The country has three rail links: one, a 75-kilometer (47 mi) line from Mazar-i-Sharif to the Uzbekistan border; a 10-kilometer (6.2 mi) long line from Toraghundi to the Turkmenistan border (where it continues as part of Turkmen Railways); and a short link from Aqina across the Turkmen border to Kerki, which is planned to be extended further across Afghanistan. These lines are used for freight only and there is no passenger service.

Now, as opposed to how I structured the essays on Poland and Germany, I intent to begin with the now and work my way backwards. This is primarily because of what Afghanistan is in the news for:

The joint declaration is a symbolic commitment to the Afghanistan government that the US is not abandoning it. The Taliban have got what they wanted: troops withdrawal, removal of sanctions, release of prisoners. This has also strengthened Pakistan, Taliban’s benefactor, and the Pakistan Army and the ISI’s influence appears to be on the rise. It has made it unambiguous that it wants an Islamic regime.

The Afghan government has been completely sidelined during the talks between the US and Taliban. The future for the people of Afghanistan is uncertain, and will depend on how Taliban honours its commitments and whether it goes back to the mediaeval practices of its 1996-2001 regime.

Doesn’t bode well for India, obviously, but doesn’t bode well for the United States of America either, says Pranay Kotasthane.

And the New York Times says a complete withdrawal of troops, even over the period currently specified, may not be a great idea. Ongoing support is, according to that newspaper, necessary:

More important than troops, potentially, is the willingness of the international community to continue to finance the Afghan government after a peace deal.

“The real key to whether Afghanistan avoids falling into an even longer civil war is the degree to which the United States and NATO are willing to fund and train the Afghan security forces over the long term,” Mr. Stavridis said. “When Vietnam collapsed and the helicopters were lifting off the roof of the U.S. Embassy, it was the result of funding being stopped.”

But it’s not just military funding! Afghanistan needs a lot of the world’s support in the years to come. Water, for example, will be a contentious issue in the years to come, and that’s putting it mildly.

Afghanistan doesn’t face a water shortage – it’s unable to get water to where it’s needed. The nation loses about two thirds of its water to Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and other neighbors because doesn’t harness its rivers. The government estimates that more than $2 billion is needed to rehabilitate the country’s most important irrigation systems.

And water, of course, is just one of many issues. Health, education, reforming agriculture, roads – it’s an endless list, and it will need all kinds of ongoing and sustained help.

So, amid all of this, what should India be doing?

Meanwhile, India’s interests in Afghanistan haven’t changed. India hopes to build up Afghanistan’s state capacity so that Pakistan’s desires of extending control can be thwarted. Given this core interest in a changed political situation, what’s needed in the long-term in the security domain is to build the strength of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Without a strong ANDSF — which comprises the army, police, air force, and special security forces — peace and stability in Afghanistan will remain elusive. India’s aim should be to help the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and ANDSF claim monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force.

But, the article presciently warns us of the same what/how problem we first encountered in studying the Indian budget:

In short, the budget might itself not be the biggest issue. The US has pumped nearly $3.6bn on average every year for the last 19 years solely on reconstruction of the ANDSF, a support that is likely to continue even if the US withdraws its soldiers. The bigger problems are insufficient processes to plan and execute budgets resulting in unused funds and lack of infrastructure leading to pay shortfalls.

Now, to unpack all of this, we need to study the following: the Soviet invasion and its aftermath, American involvement in the region, the rise of the Taliban, leading up to Operation Enduring Freedom, 2002. That’s next Wednesday!