2 thoughts on “African development and mismeasuring economies (two separate topics)”

1. There are many good quotes from the first essay. Here are a couple of good ones:

   ‘Development’ thus refers first to this hectic dash of humanity from the countryside to the city. The engine driving economic growth is assumed to be ‘capitalism’. Development then means trying to understand how capitalist growth is generated and how to make good the damage it causes in repeated cycles of creation and destruction. A third meaning refers to the developmental state of the mid-twentieth century, the idea that governments are best placed to engineer sustained economic growth with redistribution. Pioneered by Fascist and Communist states, this model took root in the colonial empires around the Second World War, was adopted after it by the leading Western industrial societies and then became the norm for developing and newly independent countries until the 1970s.

   and

   The socialist revolutions of the 20th century – and the ideologies that sustained them – are less relevant to Africa’s current circumstances than classical liberalism. The energies generated by Africa’s urban revolution are already manifested as endogenous developments in economy, technology, religion and the arts; and they could be harnessed to radical change if freed from constraining ideologies.

   Any new movement would soon run up against entrenched privilege of course. It is notable, however, that world society itself today resembles the Old Regime of agrarian civilization, with isolated elites enjoying a lifestyle beyond the reach of masses who have almost nothing. Rousseau’s condemnation of 18th century France rings as true for our world as for then: “It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined… that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry multitude goes in want of necessities”. The institutions of agrarian civilization are alive and well, not just in post-colonial Africa. Since the millennium, the United States, whose own liberal revolution threw out the Old Regime of King George and the East India Company, is now a rent-seeking plutocracy that regressed under George W. Bush to monarchical politics in the service of corporations like Halliburton. The greatest riches are no longer acquired through selling products cheaper than ones competitors; rents secured by political privilege — such as Big Pharma’s income from patents, Hollywood’s monopoly revenues from DVDs or tax revenues used to bail out the Wall Street banks – keep the superrich afloat today.

   I don’t link to crappy article or essays. Just sayin’…

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2. One more:

   Africa currently consists of a labyrinthine confusion of regional associations which do little to strengthen their members’ bargaining power in world markets. On the ground, however, African peoples maintain patterns of long-distance movement and exchange developed over centuries despite their rulers’ attempts to force economy and society into national cages. This is one major reason why so much of the African economy is held to be ‘informal’: state regulations are routinely ignored, with the result that half the population and most economic activity are criminalized and an absurd public effort is wasted on trying to apply unenforceable rules. Classical liberalism offers an answer to this chaos — the widest area possible of free trade and movement with minimal regulation by the authorities. Paradoxically, three decades of neoliberal globalization have done much to discredit this recipe, since political initiatives, even in pursuit of free trade, are anathema. Yet the policy conclusion is inescapable: the boundaries of free commerce and of state intervention should be pushed beyond the limits of existing sovereignties.

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