Economic Development: From the Roof, or From the Foundations?

An interesting thread by Kamil Galeev:

Why the USSR failed? There are two ways for a poor, underdeveloped country to industrialise: Soviet vs Chinese way. Soviet way is to build the edifice of industrial economy from the foundations. Chinese way is to build it from the roof. 1st way sounds good, 2nd actually works.

To proceed further, I need to introduce a new concept. Let’s divide the manufacturing industry into two unequal sectors, Front End vs Back End: Front End – they make whatever you see on the supermarket shelf Back End – they make whatever that stands behind, that you don’t see
Front End industries are making consumer goods. That is, whatever you buy, as an individual. Toys, clothes, furniture, appliances all falls under this category. The list of top selling amazon products gives a not bad idea what the front end sector is, and how it looks like.
Still, the production of ready consumer goods comprises only the final, ultimate element of manufacturing chain. The rear part of the chain remains hidden from our sight. We call it the Back End Back end products are not recognisable. You never bought an SMX 700 radial forge.

Read the whole thing.

I’m reminded of something Peter Drucker wrote in 1969:

In any aid program, the economist, especially the development economist employed by government, tends to impose his own values on the choice of priorities and projects. Understandably he likes things that look big, impressive, and “advanced”: a petrochemical plant, for instance. He likes the things he knows the poor “ought” to have. He has nothing but contempt for the “frivolous,” e.g., small luxuries. In this respect there is amazingly little difference between the Russian planners and the economists in the governments of the most “capitalist” nation.

The factory girl or the salesgirl in Lima or Bombay (or the Harlem ghetto) wants a lipstick. She lives in a horrible slum and knows perfectly well that she cannot, in her lifetime, afford the kind of house she would like to live in—the kind of house her counterpart in the rich countries (or the white suburbs) can afford. She knows perfectly well that neither she nor her brothers can get the kind of education they would like to have. She probably knows perfectly well that—if lucky—she will marry some boy as poor as herself and as little educated who, within a few years, \vill start beating her out of sheer despair. But at least she can, for a few short years, try to look like the kind of human being she wants to be, respects, and knows she ought to be. There is no purchase that gives her as much true value for a few cents as cheap cosmetics.

A cosmetics plant gives more employment per dollar of investment than a petrochemical plant. It trains more people capable of developing and running a modem economy. It generates managers, technicians, and salesmen. Yet the economist despises it. And the reliance on aid makes it possible for his moralism to prevail over economics and for his desire for control to prevent development.

(The Age of Discontinuity)

Of course Drucker understood the importance of the petrochemical plant; his argument is that things work better when the petrochemical plants are called forth by the cosmetics factories and other consumer-facing businesses, rather than planned from the top.

I don’t think the above points just apply to poor & undeveloped nations.  In the US, the development of the computer and semiconductor industries benefited greatly from the sales volumes and technical challenges created by the computer game field…which is not the kind of thing that a central planner would be likely to earmark as a critical industry for the future.

In a market economy, ‘industrial policy’ intended to spur vital industries via subsidies and tax incentives will often seem to make sense–the US certainly does need it own ability to produce high-end chips, for example–but carries the danger of starving other industries of investment dollars and talent. And some of those industries may turn out to have been just as critical, or more critical, than the ones focused on by the industrial policymakers.

The Inconvenient Man

Anybody here remember the name Nicholas Roske?

Probably not.

If you don’t that’s okay because there are a lot of people, especially right now, who wish you didn’t.

However, you do know the name of the killer of Brian Thompson.

I am not going to use that murdering sc*mbag’s name here. You can find it easily enough. There are millions of people treating him as a modern-day Robin Hood or (if they weren’t so ignorant of their cultural patrimony) an avenging angel. I shouldn’t say that about ignorance because you can actually purchase merchandise depicting the man as a saint. Just in time for Christmas…. or the Holidays…. or WinterFest or whatever they are calling it this year

Well, for now, regarding the merchandise because it seems Etsy is pulling this stuff down off their site as fast as it goes up. The other day there were multiple pages of stuff there for sale so maybe there is still hope for decency. Then again, there is always the possibility of our friends at places like Target stepping up — they haven’t forsaken the high holies of DEI yet, and open enrollment does run through Jan. 15.

So back to Nicholas Roske.

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Unintended Consequences

I have enjoyed history for much of my life. Particularly when such profound consequences occur on the actions of one individual or act.  From watching the Netflix miniseries The Crown and knowing that Edward VIII was a Nazi sympathizer, I have suggested that Wallis Simpson, the woman who he chose over being King, was just as important as Winston Churchill in saving Britain during those dark days.

After Dunkirk, Churchill was under tremendous pressure to seek an accommodation with Hitler. Could he have persevered with a King also urging him to seek that accommodation?

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The Jackal and a Quarter Pounder with Cheese

For the past week, the brutal murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City street has been a media spectacle dominating the pages and airwaves of about every legacy outlet out there. The killer had waited for Thompson to appear, used a suppressed pistol, and then during the shooting, when it appeared the weapon misfired, calmly cleared it and resumed firing. It was like something out of a movie. You can understand why the attention, especially when the shooter disappears until he is caught on Monday.

A few observations.

No one disappears without a trace. One of the first rules of investigations is that everyone, everywhere, leaves evidence of their passing in their wake. It is a matter of doing the detective work to dig up the clues. That process is enhanced, as Chinese surveillance networks demonstrate, by the massive amount of digital exhaust everyone in the developed world leaves.

As a kid, one of the first books I read after “The Magic Tree House” was the “The Day of the Jackal.” The author brilliantly leads the reader to expect that through meticulous preparation, the killer would escape detection. Of course he didn’t escape detection, even in pre-digital France. The twist was that he assumed he would not and planned accordingly.

Thompson’s killer worked hard to cover his tracks, digital and otherwise. He used burner phones to defeat geo-fencing, and otherwise took care to minimize his digital exhaust. He deployed a distinctive looking backpack as a “contra-indicator” that would provide a dead-end once abandoned, and he wore a common COVID-19 mask to defeat surveillance cameras and any witnesses. The guy even took the bus to prevent having to use an ID or have his license plate scanned.

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Thoughts on J6 Pardons and Investigations

I am in favor of a pardon for J6 protesters, but not all of them. Which ones? Those who posed no threat. Those not convicted or charged with assault or other violent offenses (with one possible exception – see next paragraph), or for inciting violent behavior (like John Earle Sullivan). Ray Epps still hasn’t been thoroughly investigated, so he should not receive a pardon.

The case of Rachel Powell must be reviewed carefully. She claims she broke a window to flee a dangerous situation created by an attack by Capitol defenders that had protesters pressed in a confined area. If there is a strong case for her self-defense argument, pardon her.

The pardon decision must reflect zero tolerance of violence other than justifiable self-defense. The pardon announcement must call attention to prosecutorial abuse, excessively lengthy pretrial detention, and pretrial prison conditions.

Now, on to J6 investigations. Here’s my not-necessarily-comprehensive to-do list.

A highly detailed sequence of events. If military history buffs can put together detailed videos of major battles pinpointing the positions of individual units at specific times, the same can be accomplished here. I want a series of maps in print or video format that show time and location of every single violent incident, whether fomented by the public- or private-sector, and other incidents of note (e.g. pipe bomb discoveries, Senate recess, the moment Capitol security started allowing entry into the building, Trump’s “go home” tweet, Jacob Chansley announcing said tweet), and that also show the location of key persons of interest at those times. This exercise should be valuable to various investigations, and will give the public a better sense of when and where rioting and other violence occurred. I suspect that many people imagine four solid hours of rioting, far more violence than actually occurred. I’m also curious to know how many people who heard the end of Trump’s speech entered the building. Given the walking distance, they would not have arrived yet when windows were being bashed in.

A request for private citizens to submit videos that have not yet been submitted. There may still be some videos out there that haven’t been tuned in out of fear of being railroaded by Biden’s DoJ.

The pipe bombs. Who planted them, and were they subjected to forensic analysis after the Feds exploded the devices? Since they were fitted with one-hour kitchen timers and placed many hours prior to discovery, the bombs either had a different trigger mechanism that wasn’t visible, or no trigger mechanism at all. The latter alternative calls into question whether the bombs even had explosives. They could have been filled with Clairol for all we know.

The use of tear gas and its possible role in inciting violence. Some tear gas rounds were fired deep into the peaceable section of the crowd, as witnessed by J. Michael Waller and documented in this video (first round visible at 1:02).

The decision to allow entry into the building. Who authorized it? At which entrances was entry allowed? I am vaguely aware of a claim that the rioting was mostly on one side of the building and allowed entry was on the other. I’d like some confirmation on that.

The shooting death of Ashli Babbitt.

The death of Rosanne Boyland.

The origins of the hoax that Brian Sicknick was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.

The gallows prop. Who built it, and who decided it should not be torn down once it was up? People need to be fired over this.

All other conduct of Capitol defenders.

Prison conditions for J6 protesters in pretrial detention. Inspection teams should be ready to descend on the prison(s) two seconds after Trump takes the oath of office.

Prosecution of J6 defendants. One special concern is the decision to charge about 250 J6 defendants under an evidence tampering provision under Sarbanes-Oxley. How was this decision made? Did anyone in the loop doubt that the statute was genuinely relevant to those cases? Those convictions have since been shot down by SCOTUS. One has to imagine how someone could get the idea that a law concerned with addressing accounting shenanigans could be applied to protesters.

The J6 committee and Jack Smith. Obligatory mention. One issue I’d like to see settled: since the full committee never met, did it have subpoena authority? If not, the cases of those convicted of defying subpoenas should be appealed, not pardoned.