The China pre-2004 example is wild becuase it forces us to confront how much property functions through convention rather than law. I worked with supply chains operating in grey markets and the reputation networks functioned almost identically to formal contracts, sometimes more reliably since breach meant getting cut off from the entire network rather than just legal consequences. The corruption-collectivism correlation at 0.91 is uncomfortably high and explains alot about why institutional transplants keep failing.
That is a fascinating example of fear of being kicked out of the network, ta. (Part of the story with China is a process of graduated change, but the full deal does not kick in until the 2004 Constitutional amendments.)
Yes, cultural incompatibility does explain so much of why institutional transplants do not work as expected. For instance, much of the East Asia story is how to make corruption work for reform, instead of against it.
You probably didn't intend this but such analysis is very relevant to the newly emerging "fintech" such as cryptocurrencies. On a conceptual level they exist in the same gray area that is ostensibly outside govt control, but parallel to the formal economy.
I've had a lot of arguments with techno-utopians countering the claim that its possible to have a currency genuinely outside of govt control, even if this were technically producible. My main argument line is that money carries value largely because the state is capable of enforcing debt obligations. (If not the state then at least hired goons). Without such a guarantee whatever financial object used to trade (blockchain or beads) cannot carry value.
Fintech implications had not occurred to me, but are absolutely relevant.
You can have money, in the form of exchange goods, pre state, but not at a very high level of economic activity. Immediate swaps are relatively easily managed. The more exchanges operate across time, the more enforcement mechanisms are needed, hence your point about debt.
Some of the tech utopians clearly have very naive ideas of social order. Pre-state societies are typically either very isolated or very violent (occasionally both). If an aggressive culture met a non-aggressive one, the results were often bad for the latter.
The level of civility tech utopians are taking for granted began with systematic killing of alpha males across hundreds of millennia and then a post-medieval, becoming-civil process that took centuries, has not remotely touched all cultures, and occurred interactively with states becoming better at enforcing social order.
The Weberian definition of the state as having some monopoly of violence leads to eye-rolling by medievalists. But the process by which that becomes a plausible definition is not “natural” or automatic.
"states becoming better at enforcing social order."
Just as a matter of curiosity, this goes a long way to explain why there are so many atheists in the West today. Where once we had an all seeing God, we now have a surveillance state. Where once we had a God who punished in the afterlife we now have judiciary system that can punish in the here and now.
Why did you use - coin? - the terms "the Dynasts War" and "the Dictator's War"? If you already wrote a substack about it, Substack search is not being helpful, sorry.
The China pre-2004 example is wild becuase it forces us to confront how much property functions through convention rather than law. I worked with supply chains operating in grey markets and the reputation networks functioned almost identically to formal contracts, sometimes more reliably since breach meant getting cut off from the entire network rather than just legal consequences. The corruption-collectivism correlation at 0.91 is uncomfortably high and explains alot about why institutional transplants keep failing.
That is a fascinating example of fear of being kicked out of the network, ta. (Part of the story with China is a process of graduated change, but the full deal does not kick in until the 2004 Constitutional amendments.)
Yes, cultural incompatibility does explain so much of why institutional transplants do not work as expected. For instance, much of the East Asia story is how to make corruption work for reform, instead of against it.
You probably didn't intend this but such analysis is very relevant to the newly emerging "fintech" such as cryptocurrencies. On a conceptual level they exist in the same gray area that is ostensibly outside govt control, but parallel to the formal economy.
I've had a lot of arguments with techno-utopians countering the claim that its possible to have a currency genuinely outside of govt control, even if this were technically producible. My main argument line is that money carries value largely because the state is capable of enforcing debt obligations. (If not the state then at least hired goons). Without such a guarantee whatever financial object used to trade (blockchain or beads) cannot carry value.
Fintech implications had not occurred to me, but are absolutely relevant.
You can have money, in the form of exchange goods, pre state, but not at a very high level of economic activity. Immediate swaps are relatively easily managed. The more exchanges operate across time, the more enforcement mechanisms are needed, hence your point about debt.
Some of the tech utopians clearly have very naive ideas of social order. Pre-state societies are typically either very isolated or very violent (occasionally both). If an aggressive culture met a non-aggressive one, the results were often bad for the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Islands#M%C4%81ori_settlement
The level of civility tech utopians are taking for granted began with systematic killing of alpha males across hundreds of millennia and then a post-medieval, becoming-civil process that took centuries, has not remotely touched all cultures, and occurred interactively with states becoming better at enforcing social order.
The Weberian definition of the state as having some monopoly of violence leads to eye-rolling by medievalists. But the process by which that becomes a plausible definition is not “natural” or automatic.
"states becoming better at enforcing social order."
Just as a matter of curiosity, this goes a long way to explain why there are so many atheists in the West today. Where once we had an all seeing God, we now have a surveillance state. Where once we had a God who punished in the afterlife we now have judiciary system that can punish in the here and now.
Why did you use - coin? - the terms "the Dynasts War" and "the Dictator's War"? If you already wrote a substack about it, Substack search is not being helpful, sorry.