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Comment by scuppernong | Hacker News Reader

"What if it was just China?" is a reasonable guess for many of the dazzling claims of statistical worldwide improvement made by Steven Pinker/Noah Smith and their ilk

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But even if "it was just China", it doesn't disprove the core fact that the world is getting better. China is almost 20% of the world by population, and its development has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Plus, it might be possible for other countries to emulate China and similarly grow.

Yes, typically what this would disprove is the thesis that neoliberal economics are what have led to the decline in global poverty

Maybe--I'm no expert.

But I'm pretty sure that neoliberal economics--particularly free trade--are what allowed China to rise so spectacularly.

Neoliberal economics is basically new school+Chicago school of economics, i'm not sure what it has to do with free trade. Free market, yes, which China isn't.

[Edit] China's economy is so clearly Keynesian with Marxist characteristics that I have trouble understanding why would anyone even think they're neoliberal. China is the best live example of Friedman models being worse than Keynes (not that Keynes model was perfect, at all)

China grew because it was able to sell into Western markets. Western markets were open because neoliberal boosters believed in free trade; they believed (a) that free trade would benefit both sides, and (b) that free trade with China would encourage it to open up its economy (pushing it toward neoliberalism).

I think it's possible they turned out to be wrong on both counts. But if it had not been for neoliberals in the West pushing for free trade, China would not have developed as quickly.

That's what always surprised me about the whole concept of BRICS nations. Those countries have more interest in competing with each other to get access to other markets than to work/stick together in any way.

> Those countries have more interest in competing with each other to get access to other markets than to work/stick together in any way.

Access to markets isn't an exclusive asset. They don't compete over it, and mostly they can't compete over it, because they already have it.

What I don't understand is the concept of NATO or the EU: why would a group of countries willingly band together as "happy vassals," as the Belgian PM put it.

> What I don't understand is the concept of NATO or the EU: why would a group of countries willingly band together as "happy vassals

NATO: Russia is a threat to both Europe and the US, lets band together to make sure we can fight them.

EU: Europe keeps fighting wars, lets make our economies more inter-dependent so that doesn't happen as much.

For NATO, I can see the happy vassals thing (and that's what the Belgian PM was referring to), but can you explain who is the overlord in the EU example?

Germany, France and formerly the UK

The EU would be very very different if that were the case. Like, since the UK left we'd have a common corporate taxation system. Prior to that, we'd have had a military since the 70s, and only one stock market (in London, obvs) and all data-collection would've been made illegal.

(This is mostly satire, even if I think 2 of the 3 second things were and are great ideas).

The EU as a group really doesn't seem to have a lot of political will / momentum. They make a lot of statements, but that's it. I wish they did, but they don't seem to.

small markets are less interesting/valuable. it makes a difference if i can sell my product to 10 million people vs 100 million. so working together makes the whole area more attractive.

Debunked by Steven Pinker:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2019/01/31/is-the-world-reall...

Debunked by Jason Hickel:

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-...

Hickel's thoughts on this matter were torn to shreds on HN back in 2019, I'm not going to relitigate it now.

I've seen Pinker's arguments dismantled too. The blog whose post we're commenting on even has a piece dismantling the totally made up GDP numbers coming out of Africa.

Pinker tends to cover longer time periods and more countries that the just China stuff.

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