I was digging in the Young Republic archives to get the following for someone's essay. I thought I'd posted this before, but it seems I hadn't, so here goes:

>China is a sprawling country with
>the majority of its people not ready for the political freedoms that come
>with democracy, as they are still struggling to make ends meet. One reason
>why democracy was implemented successfully in Taiwan is because the KMT
>adopted Sun Yat Sen's Three People's Principles (nationalism, democracy,
>people's livelihood) and taught that democracy would have to develop in
>stages as people were taught of their responsibilities as
>citizen-participants. Democracy 'from the bottom up' thus developed as an
>inevitable result of economic well-being, together with democracy 'from the
>top down' as the KMT allowed the DPP to be set up and liberalised its
>political system in the 1980s.

I'm sorry but I find such arguments both unconvincing and offensive. The implication that only rich nations are 'fit for freedom' is not supported by empirical evidence. This mistaken impression comes from the fact that most democracies are rich -- even in Africa, it is the most democratic countries, such as Nigeria, Senegal, Botswana, and South Africa which are the richest. Democracy makes for accountable government, and this in turn makes it likely that the govt will not pursue policies which are directly harmful to the
country's economic health. Sen has pointed out that no famine has ever occured under a democratic govt. (This is not to say that democracies are always richer, but merely that they are unlikely to be disastrously poor. India, for example, had its growth hampered by excessive state intervention in the economy and in trade. But it has fared much better economically under the current democratic govt than under the British Raj.)

The case of India also shows that even in a poor country, democracy can thrive. In fact, India has a lower per capita GDP than China, yet it is a relatively healthy democracy. Politics there suffers from some degree of corruption, yet the govt is still responsive to the ppl, for if not it can expect electoral retribution. Politicians have also generally not exploited the platform offered to them by democracy to stir up sectarian violence.

An even better example is Indonesia. In 1997 the conventional wisdom was that the chaos after Suharto's regime broke down proved that democracy was unworkable in a poor country with low levels of education. 7 years on, Indo has proved the doubters wrong. It has carried out peaceful, free and fair elections with high turnout rates. It is, as the Economist calls it, a 'shining example'.

***

A Guide To What's Wrong With Economics

"From the 1960s onward, neoclassical economists have increasingly managed to block the employment of non-neoclassical economists, narrow the economics curriculum offered by universities to students, and made their theory increasingly irrelevant to understanding economic reality. Now, they are even banishing economic history and the history of economic thought from the curriculum. Why has this tragedy happened? At this time of accelerating momentum for radical change in the study of economics, "A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics" comprehensively examines the shortcomings of neoclassical economics and considers a number of alternative formulations. In it, a distinguished list of non-neoclassical economists provide an examination of some of the many worldly and logical gaps in neoclassical economics, its hidden ideological agendas, disregard for the environment, habitual misuse of mathematics and statistics, inability to address the major issues of economic globalization, its ethical cynicism concerning poverty, racism and sexism, and its misrepresentation of economic history. In clear and engaging prose, "A Guide to What’s Wrong with Economics" shows how interesting, relevant and exciting economics can be when it is pursued, not as the defense of an antiquated and close-minded system of belief, but as a no-holds barred inquiry looking for real-world truths. This book is a must-read for all economists and their graduate students, as well as for the general reader."

***

A Linguistic Big Bang

"When the greek historian herodotus was traveling in Egypt, he heard of a bizarre experiment conducted by a King named Psammetichus. The inquisitive monarch, wrote Herodotus, decided to wall up two baby boys in a secluded compound. Whatever came out of the boys' mouths, reasoned the King, would be the root language of our species -- the key to all others. Herodotus tells us that eventually the children came up with the Phrygian word for bread, bekos. In addition to demonstrating the superiority of the Phrygian tongue, the King's inquiry proved that even if left to their own devices, children wouldn't be without language for long. We are born, Herodotus suggested, with the gift of gab.

Ever since, philosophers have dreamed of repeating Psammetichus's test. If children grew up isolated on a desert island, would they develop a bona fide language? And if so, would it resemble existing tongues? Yet only someone with the conscience of a Josef Mengele would carry out such an experiment. Then, in the mid-1980's, linguists were confronted with an unexpected windfall. Psammetichus's experiment was repeated, but this time it came about unintentionally. And not in Egypt but in Nicaragua...

Nicaraguan Sign Language (known to experts as I.S.N., for Idioma de Signos Nicaragense) has been patiently decoded by outside scholars, who describe an idiom filled with curiosities yet governed by the same "universal grammar" that the linguist Noam Chomsky claims structures all language. Steven Pinker, author of "The Language Instinct," sees what happened in Managua as proof that language acquisition is hard-wired inside the human brain. "The Nicaraguan case is absolutely unique in history," he maintains. "We've been able to see how it is that children -- not adults -- generate language, and we have been able to record it happening in great scientific detail. And it's the first and only time that we've actually seen a language being created out of thin air.""