We bought a camera so hopefully I will have some good pictures to post up here in the near future.

Off to Africa
Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm
South Korea is often cited, generally by aid supporters, as an example of an aid success story. Many, it seems primarily due to their lack of personal knowledge of the subject, are careful not to assert a direct causation between aid received and development made, but nonetheless heavily imply such a link. Most recently Owen Barder, in a very thoughtful article, cited South Korea in just such a manner. He stated that “Some of the most striking examples of growth in the 20th century were in countries such as Korea and Taiwan, which were supported by large amounts of aid.” In response to his article I called such implied assertions “laughable” and “offensive.” Although perhaps a bit harsh, I stand by this criticism. Here is briefly why.
I’ll start with a quote from David Steinberg former USAID official and expert on Korea’s development. Writing in 1982 he said that:
“AID policy now emphasizes the equitable distribution of goods and services, but Korea for almost twenty years paid little attention to the rural sector-the majority of the population at that time. The act stresses the importance of the role of women, but they have essentially been ignored in Korea except as low-cost, light industrial labor receiving wages that are clearly discriminatory. Free labor unions are advocated, but those in Korea are government-controlled; human rights are stressed, but they essentially have been ignored in Korea. Thus, whether nations today could emulate a Korean model with U.S. assistance is questionable.
From reading this quote one might assume that the “Korean model” had been singularly ineffective in promoting development. Knowing that for the twenty years in question Korea had also been ruled by a military dictator, Park Chunghee, might further confirm this assumption. Knowing that prior to the Park dictatorship the Rhee administration was infamous for its corruption and mismanagement of aid money, prompting the US government to threaten suspension of its aid, one might make be even more sure that Korea had been a developmental disaster for 30 years.
And yet you would be deeply mistaken. By 1982 Korea’s economy had grown by an average of nearly 8% per year for roughly 30 years, a feat virtually unmatched in modern human history. Furthermore, contrary to what one might expect from near total dictatorial rule, the fruits of Korea’s economic expansion were more equally distributed across the population than in many Western democracies. Its gini coefficient in the early 80s was in the low 30s and continued to decline throughout most of the 1990s.
And yet Steinberg was/is not alone in his general pessimism about the applicability of this astoundingly successful “Korean model” to other aid-recipient countries. Most Westerners who have studied Korea’s development have been equally pessimistic, especially following Korea’s 1997 market crash and subsequent IMF bailout. Kleptocrats and dictators rarely inspire Western admiration. My personal view is that pessimism for a variety of reasons, none of which is a sympathy for dictators or kleptocrats, is largely misplaced. But that is the topic for another post. The point here is simply to show that even aid supporters who have carefully studied Korea’s development acknowledge that other factors, many of which the international community disapproves of and hence is unwilling to promote internationally, were central to the success of Korea’s development. In summation Steinberg states
“Could the Koreans have accomplished all they did without United States assistance? The answer is probably yes…but at a slower rate… The Koreans attained the economic growth they have achieved basically on their own by formulating their own policy framework and implementation systems.”
Bottom Line: Korea benefited from aid. However many of the fundamental causes of its economic expansion were antithetical to most aid prescriptions that were, and still are, promoted by international development agencies. Therefore citing it as an aid success story, even implicitly, is inappropriate and misleading.
South Korea, and Aid success story, or not?
The not often enough repeated call for civility and distinctions.
A Global Welfare System? I hope not.
As my doctoral studies slowly advance I am beginning to perceive ideological connections between various disciplines that have not, at least from my reading of the literatures, obviously influenced each other very much. I can think of a few reasons why I might be drawing these connections where others have not.
The first, and most unlikely, explanation is that I am a really clever fellow who has managed to stitch together some unified threads that coherently tie all of these seemingly disparate disciplines together.
A more likely explanation is that my relative isolation from academic interactions, (living on an island in the middle of the Yellow Sea) has resulted in a much more random, almost hodgepodge, journey through the major thinkers in academia than is typical for doctoral students. This lack of guidance has allowed me to wander about, so to speak, with greater freedom through the thoughts of academics from diverse disciplines and backgrounds.
The final explanation is that this aimless wandering has caused me to see mirages. Like a man lost in a desert without a guide and water I’ve started seeing connections that aren’t really there.
So as a corrective I thought I would briefly list why I think the above disciplines are connected by common philosophical or ideological sympathies.
1. All of the disciplines understand the world to be a deeply complex place about which we can have only partial and imperfect knowledge.
2. None of the disciplines think that this complexity can be made unproblematic, mastered, or overcome.
3. All of these disciplines are skeptical of centralized and distanced authority and hierarchy.
4. All of these disciplines recognize and value diversity and believe it to be very deeply seated. Believing the world to be ontologically one thing, while admitting the existence of multiple epistemologies, is not sufficient. Rather they all argue, without necessarily retreating into relativism, that one should have a very humble opinion of one’s own opinions.
Interdisciplinary Connections, Complexity Theory, Classical Liberalism, Integrated Coastal Management, Sociology of Science, and Symbolic Anthropology
I’ve finally gotten around to reading some Hayek. He is something of a founding father of Libertarianism. Although I find his writing stylistically questionable, run-on sentences abound, the content of those sentences is much more appealing. The Road to Serfdom provides a convincing account of why Socialism is inimical to freedom. Therefore my love of freedom makes me skeptical of Socialism. I particularly like this excerpt in which he discusses the foundations of the opposite of Socialism, namely Individualism.
“This is the fundamental fact on which the whole philosophy
of individualism is based. It does not assume, as is often asserted,
that man is egoistic or selfish, or ought to be. It merely starts
from the indisputable fact that the limits of our powers of
imagination make it impossible to include in our scale of values
more than a sector of the needs of the whole society, and that,
since, strictly speaking, scales of value can exist only in individual
minds, nothing but partial scales of values exist, scales
which are inevitably different and often inconsistent with each
other. From this the individualist concludes that the individuals
should be allowed, within defined limits, to follow their own
values and preferences rather than somebody else's, that within
these spheres the individual's system of ends should be supreme
and not subject to any dictation by others. It is this recognition
of the individual as the ultimate judge of his ends, the belief that
as far as possible his own views ought to govern his actions, that
forms the essence of the individualist position.”
However Hayek, at least in this book, does not lay out a how those who are skeptical of Socialism, like me, should go about organizing a government, or seek to reform the one that they are a part of.
For as even Hayek admits everyone needs a plan, not just Socialists. He does say that such a plan’s main goal should be to promote fair competition. But he doesn't say how you do that. Perhaps his later book, The Constitution of Liberty will be more forthcoming on this topic.
Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, more thoughts on Libertarianism
Beware the of 아주머들 (Ajummas)
Maybe a year or so ago I remember watching a press meeting in which the then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, chided the Chinese for not spending enough. This week David Brooks, who I often like, repeats this sentiment saying that the “Chinese consume too little.”
I have several problems with this. First, these statements are simply arrogant. Who are we (I’m American) to tell the Chinese people what they should do with their money?
Second, these statements are perverse because they are simply bad counsel. Since when was American-style profligate consumerism something to be promoted internationally? Our economy is in shambles partly because people recklessly spent too much by taking easy credit that they couldn’t reasonably expect to pay off.
Third, such statements are plainly driven by naked American self-interest. We need the Chinese to spend more to help us, not because of some impartial need to, as Brooks puts it, “address global imbalances.”
America has sunk pretty low if it has to try and pull other countries down (like China) in order to pull itself up.
Go shopping China!
Orthopraxis vs. Orthodoxy, more from Baker's Korean Spirituality
I’ve written before about how Western culture seems to be unique in the world in its promotion of individuality and independent thought. There is much literature on how Asian societies are much more sensitive to context and relationships than Western Ones. Don Baker’s book on Korean Spirituality (see book list for link) is an easy read and helped me immensely to clarify some of the spiritual reasons why this might be.
He talks about how the Korean concept of evil is better translated as a feeling or state of “disharmony.” Begging the question of disharmony with what, Baker replies, disharmony with other people and spirits. So at a very fundamental level Koreans traditionally have believed that avoiding evil requires one to be aware of, and get along with, those around them. Being in harmony with a group, rather than with a God or with some religious book, is the ultimate goal.
Though certainly only one piece of the puzzle, it is a good insight.
The anti-individualism of Korean Spirituality
Page 295 "The Absence of Evaluative Data on ICM Programs." Page 297 "Successful Practices Related to ICM Processes" Cognitive dissonance anyone?
The Power of Property Rights
Coporations, Big, Mean, and UnGreen? Think again.
Liberalism, Krugman style
Amazing video of a very 'clear-headed' fish
The Worldly Fisherman