James Robinson | 'Why Nations Fail' - 2024 Nobel Prize Winner In Economics

James Robinson is winning the Nobel Prize for Economics this year alongside his co-author Daron Acemoglu and fellow economist, Simon Johnson.

This is obviously extremely exciting for him, but as well selfishly, rather exciting for me… because in episode 24, James Robinson was one of the first people I ever interviewed for this podcast. 

James co-wrote an outrageously successful book in 2012 called - ‘Why Nations Fail’ - which is the work for which James has won the Nobel Prize and as well, was the subject of this interview. 

Why Nations Fail introduces an extractive versus inclusive institutions framework that does an unreasonable amount of heavy lifting to explain the distributed economic prosperity between countries.

And just fair warning, it is one of the first interviews I ever did, so it may feel quite a bit different to those more recently - but bare with me and endure my enthusiasm as James reveals where the catalyst for the inclusive/extractive framework comes from, a very hot take on corruption, James’s work as a developmental economist and a whole lot more. 

It’s also been a while since Ive made a general appeal for pumping that good juice. But if a Nobel Prize winner isn’t a reason why, then there aren't any left. The ability for me to get the guests I want, and grow the show as I ambition, is all downstream of how many followers on Apple and Spotify I have, but as well, how many reviews on Apple and Spotify I have. So I ask, hat in hand, to please bring that Christmas cheer and pump a 5 star review into whichever platform it is that you listen on.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

James Robinson is winning the Nobel Prize for Economics this year, alongside his co-author, Darren Accamoglu, and fellow economist Simon Johnson. This is obviously extremely exciting for him, but as well, selfishly, rather exciting for me, because in episode 24, James Robinson was one of the first people I ever interviewed for this podcast. James co-wrote an outrageously successful book in 2012 called Why Nations Fail, which is the work for which James has won the Nobel Prize and as well was the subject of this interview. Why Nations Fail introduces an extractive versus inclusive institutions framework that does an unreasonable amount of heavy lifting to explain the distributed economic prosperity between countries. And just fair warning, it is one of the first interviews I ever did, so it may feel quite a bit different to those more recently, but bear with me and endure my enthusiasm as James reveals where the catalyst for the inclusive extractive framework comes from, a very hot take on corruption, James's work as a developmental economist, and a whole lot more. It's also been a while since I made a general appeal for pumping that good juice, but if a Nobel Prize winner isn't a reason why, then there just aren't any left. The ability for me to get the guests I want and grow the show as I ambition is all downstream of how many followers on Apple and Spotify I have, but as well how many reviews on Apple and Spotify I have. So I ask, hat in hand, to please bring that Christmas cheer and pump a five-star review into whichever platform it is that you listen on. And now with absolutely no further ado, here is Nobel Prize winner, James Robinson. What I wanted to open with is a sort of anecdote you gave in your presentation uh to Google. Um so obviously you're an economist, um, and a big part of your work in your life is sort of conducting research in developing nations. You made a comment uh that you work in the DRC a lot, the Democratic Republic of Congo. I just want to ask you specifically, what is the work that you're doing there and what's your relationship been with that country?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Uh well, I I we I we I have many projects, many different projects in the DRC. I um I think there's something for anyone who studies Africa and the history of Africa, there's something sort of fascinating about the DRC. And I think, especially for someone who's interested in African development, you know, because there's been such a perverse interaction between the DRC and the rest of the world, you know, in some sense that's where, you know, in the early 15th century, that's where the the the early 16th century, that's where the sort of transatlantic slave trade started, you know, when the Portuguese started getting the Kingdom of the Congo to sell them slaves, and it's where the most egregious colonial exploitation took place. And it's been, you know, one of the most traumatic post-colonial experiences. You know, President Mabutu became the epitome of the of this sort of predatory uh African dictator. So I think there's something fascinating about the country. It's wildly under-researched uh by social scientists. And I got I I got very fascinated by it through the work of Jan Van Sina, who's a great historian of the political history of Central Africa, and he wrote a book called The Children of Woot, which was about the history of the Kuba Kingdom, which was a pre-colonial state in the south of the DRC. And I read that book and it just blew me away. And I I just thought to myself, I I need to research, I need to research this. So I went and I went and I I went to to to to to the Kuba Kingdom and uh Shenge, which is the capital of the old Kuba state, was inspired by Vancina's book and trying to study the impact of this pre-colonial state formation on Congolese society. But but since then it's spread into many other topics and areas. Um, and what year was that when you first went? That was uh about 11 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Oh, okay. So I suppose in on a big time scale, it's still relatively recent.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, I mean, compared to you know, where I've been working in Colombia for 27 years. So yeah, compared to that, uh working in that the work that I did in Africa, I'd say the first work I really did in Africa was actually in Botswana, which was 22 years ago. It's when I first went to Botswana trying to understand why had Botswana been such an incredibly successful country politically and economically since independence, such an anomaly in Africa.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

I absolutely loved the um yeah, the chapters and the paragraphs that were devoted to Botswana. One of my favorite uh university professors back at UTS in Sydney was uh Botswanan. And he was the first man I'd met who was a super proud African who wanted to tell people about the beauties of his continent, but also his country, and spark a little bit of interest about this sort of land that we in Australia just knew that we played cricket against South Africa and rugby against South Africa, but that's kind of where the the knowledge or the interest in the in the continent stopped. Um in the Congo, you said it's uh wildly underresearched. Is this a is this a consequence of it just being like a like a geographical consequence? I mean it's just a dense jungle, right? And then also the political instability, it just makes it a hard place for research to be conducted.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, I think it's it's a lot has to do with the political instability and the fact that the government doesn't collect data, and so so you know, you have to go, you can't download anything from a web page, you have to go and collect data yourself, and there's just a lot of logistical challenges, and there's no roads, and you know, to get around, you have to get around on dodgy Congolese L. You know, so I think there's a lot of logistical barriers that make it very difficult, like people put they put people off, you know, even though you know, culturally, and it's just an absolutely fascinating place. But but yes, it there's some entry barriers, we'd say, in economics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Um, what has the changes been that you've just seen in 11 years alone? Have there been any significant changes?

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Oh gosh, that's a that's a complicated. I I I I think that I think I think there have been changes, you know. Uh uh, but it's complicated to put your finger on it. You know, the the it depends on where you are. You know, the Congo is like a sort of archipelago. You know, the east, you know, the east is very unstable, it's full of tens of, I don't know how many different armed groups there are, but close to a hundred maybe. Uh the government, you know, in the Kasai's, the government doesn't really control the east of the country. Uh there's some there's some progress. I mean, I think Congo, since it became independence, it's been struggling to find a sort of social contract. It's been struggling to find some consensus about how to organize things and how to allocate power. And I'm not sure it's really there yet, but but I think you know, there's still this gosh, you know, I think there is there is progress. You know, the roads are a little bit better, and but there's just so many challenges still.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Uh because they are they are more or less sort of like the archetypal extractive economy, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, I think it's a it's a struggle. I mean, the way I you know the way I think about this probably changed a lot uh from having been there, you know, over 10 years and sort of having talked to people and tried to sort of understand in a deeper way. I think a lot of the social science literature, which perhaps influenced the way I thought about this 15 years ago, is pretty superficial uh in terms of understanding what went on and why it went on. I mean, the way I think about President Mabutu nowadays, for example, is probably very different from the way I thought about him 15 years ago and the way he's portrayed. I would say empathetic or more judgmental? I I I no no, I I I'm not sure empathetic is the right word, but I think one can understand better why he did what he did. You know, when you get into the details of it, what's interesting is the extent to which he, in some sense, he took a very traditional model of how African political authority was supposed to work, you know, right the way down to the leopard skin hat and the witchcraft and everything, the praise or and and he sort of tried to scale it up to this massive, you know, and it was just sort of incoherent. I mean, it just didn't work at that level. But but you you sort of understood why he I I understood, I understand much better why he did it. I think if you look around Africa in the 1960s, you see very different models of how to construct sort of legitimate authority in these newly independent countries. You know, suddenly there's this thing called Nigeria, and there's hundreds of different people with different cultures and political traditions and languages, and they're all in this thing together, and they have to somehow build institutions to make the society cohere. And that that turns out to be a very difficult problem. So I think it's easy to be judgmental from the outside, but but but but but on the inside, you get more of a sense of how complicated a problem that was to solve, you know, with no obvious models of how you do that.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

So um you you say Nigeria, like a collection of hundreds of different cultures and even maybe thousands of languages, and sounds like the Congo is quite similar. Is having huge cultural diversity from the get-go and one of the biggest barriers to creating those inclusive institutions, which by the way, a definition for inclusive institutions, uh, for those listening, we'll we'll definitely get to that, but it's kind of like the the thesis of why nations fail, but nonetheless.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, I mean, by yeah, by I mean, I could give it now if you like, you know, by inclusive, hold on. I reckon we can do another. You know, my general view of diversity is that uh divert, you know, diversity is a great thing. You know, diversity is what creates innovation, it creates new ideas, it creates new perspectives, and you know, so yeah, I think diversity is a good is is a good thing. And I I think you know, if you look at the history of Africa, what's interesting is probably compared to any other part of the world, Africans are so used to dealing with diversity, and they created all sorts of you know mechanisms for doing that. You know, here's a here's a here's an interesting fact for you, which is that in most Africans, the word for guest, stranger, and foreigner are the same. So if I say you're a foreigner or a stranger, it's the same word for guest. There's only there's only one other language in the world in which that's true outside of Africa, which is Hawaiian, of all of all of all that, you know, but the Polynesians moved around a lot as well. You know, they were great seafarers. So yeah, so so I you know, I think so I think I would say historically, actually, Africans are very used to dealing with all of this, and there's lots of cultural ways that they can deal with it. And you know, any African society, for example, you look at, I mean, Botswana, you mentioned Botswana. Botswana is actually a fascinating example of this. That the last census, which is in 1948, where they tried to systematically record people's you know, identities or ethnicities, you could say, or languages, what you see is that actually these Swana tribes were incredibly heterogeneous. You know, they they were they incorporated all sorts of people from all over southern Africa. People were moving about, and they were political entities that incorporated all sorts of people. So I think so I'd say, like, from that perspective, you know, Africa sort of has an advantage. It's not like English people, you know, who can't stand the French, you know, and they want to just build a big wall, you know, to keep all the Europeans out of England. You know, I Africans are not like that in my experience. But but nevertheless, this creation of these, you know, the colonialism created these new things, you know, created these new entities, it created lots of tensions and problems that Africans hadn't had to deal with historically. So maybe they didn't have the tools to deal with those problems, and that that takes time, that takes time to figure that out. But I, you know, I think there's a lot of progress from that perspective in in Africa. You know, there's a lot of people are figuring it out, people are adapting, and it just took time. And and uh, you know, the same thing was true in Latin America. You know, if you look in the 19th century, after Latin America becomes independent, you know, the first 50 years looks looks a bit like Africa. You know, there's economic decline, there's political instability, there's civil wars, there's there's you know, they're trying to decide Argentines, like we're Argentines. How do we how do we organize Argentina? What does the constitution look like? What do the rules look like? We're Colombians, are still trying to figure that out, by the way. But but but but but so I you know you see analogies. It's difficult to exit from colonial rule, I think is the big story, but they're doing it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

I didn't want this comment to s uh to fly by. You said that uh a lot of the social sciences was uh a little bit superficial. Can you open up on that a little bit more? Well, I think I think you know, my without getting you in trouble, of course.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

I think the reality is that a lot of social theory is was devised by you know white European men uh uh who who kind of based it on an interpretation, it's a sort of generalization of interpretations of European and Western history, European and Western economic development, European and Western political development. And then the next step is just to say, well, everything else is just the same, basically. You know, you look at economics, you know, economics is all about markets and prices and property rights and you know, etc. And so then you get this very elaborate sort of construction of economic theory, and then it's sort of like that everything is the same, like the rest of the world, it's the same, you know. But that's a kind of ludicrous thing, you know. Africa, for example, historically, were organized in fundamentally different ways. They were not they were not organized like Western market property rights were different, exchange was different, notions of value were different, like the whole thing is different. You know, if if if you constructed economic theory based on knowledge of Africa, you'd have come up with an economic theory that looked completely different from the type of economic theory that people developed in you know 19th century or 20th century England. So, so how generalizable is that understanding of the world? And you know, think about politics. You know, like we have this idea of the way political institutions work and you know what legitimate authority looks like and what to worry about. But you know if you look at China or the history of political theory in China, that looks totally different. Okay, so who's right? We're right and they're wrong, you know. Maybe, you know, like I just so so I I think that we don't really have a very sophisticated comparative understanding of social science, in my view, which means taking Europe Western ideas and sort of going to Africa with all these ideas in your head about how things should work and what you know that that that's that's a very confusing experience for me. And and that that was a very confusing experience for me, and it's been a big learning exercise. Uh, I would say.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Yeah. What what you're describing so well is um Nisimteleb's procrastinian bed metaphor. Are you familiar with it? Uh yes. Okay, um, I I just I just want to say it in case the people are the labors of Theseus, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Or I don't know if they were labors, but it's when Theseus, Theseus, is tried to get back to Athens, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah, and he stays in the inner procrusies, and then I mean, but basically the idea that you're explaining how um the the European uh white men came up with this sort of model for how Africa works. Rather than letting the reality shape their model, they tried fitting reality into their predetermined. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

You know, it's what social psych there's a lot of what social psychologists call motivated reasoning, you know, like you have a you have a model of the world and then you process information in a way to reconfirm your model of the world. I feel like there's a lot of research on Africa like that. And so so so you know, so I I I've been trying to sort of deprogram myself, I I I would say, for the how's that going? I think it's you know is it starting to um like pushes? I've made some progress. I've made some progress, I should say. I've made some pro I've made some progress on on that, but it's very difficult, you know. You could you you come with all these preconceptions about how the world works, you're having grown up in Western countries or whatever, and yeah, and and and so you have to really be open to think about things in a very different way. Like nowadays, whenever I even when I'm teaching, whenever I'm teaching things, you know, I'm teaching these PhD students at the moment, I just try to question everything I I say to them, you know, is that right? You know, like I think that's what you have to do, you just have to endlessly challenge yourself.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Yeah, yeah. Um, I I didn't plan on going down this tangent, but I'm I'm I'm quite interested in like you and how you're spending your time. Um, because maybe I'm just here projecting and romanticizing a little bit your line of work, but how's the time spent? Are you are you sort of jet setting around the world, taking on important um you know, projects to do with with governments and big multinationals? Am I over-romanticizing it? Yeah, how does it how does it work? Like the easy thing. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

I mean, I don't I yeah, I don't, I don't, I mean, I don't I I wouldn't you know over-romanticize it. I don't speak African languages, you know. Like I, you know, I think my ability to understand stuff is very limited. That that would be my starting point. I'm I'm doing my best. Uh I don't do things too much for governments, actually. I you know, because because uh you know, because I think I don't think I'm not sure I have the right mindset for it, you know, because in the sense that uh like people who advise governments have to sort of they always pretend they know what's true and what to do, and maybe that's an effective way of advising governments, and and but that that's not kind of the way I think about the world, you know. I'm just I'm just kind of fraught with uncertainty and sort of oh, it's also complicated. And I did I do know and I did talk a lot to the former prime minister of the DRC, uh, Mr. Matata, because I because I can because I got I became convinced that he was he was a very serious man and he was surrounded by very serious people, you know, like when I and in fact I learned a lot just interacting with him. And when I first met him and uh uh and you know, and I and and I met with his cabinet and all his people in Kinshasa, it was very interesting because the first thing I noticed was that you know he's from a place called Kindu in uh in Manyema, in the middle of Congo, and then nobody else in the room was from Manyema. Whereas, like in Africa, everyone is supposed to be from the same ethnic group, right? You know, nobody, this guy was from Gemene, he was from Bakongo, he was, you know, like he was from Bandundu. And it was very odd. And I thought, oh, this is not how it's supposed to be, you know. And then the other idea is in Africa, everyone shuffles people all the time, people are in, people out. Yeah, I came back six months later, it was exactly the same later, same people. Even now, he's not prime minister anymore. You know, he he did a PhD, he's teaching at the Protestant University, he has this NGO. Same people are working for him. Like, there's just you know, like it just that that sort of, and you know, even the drivers weren't for Maniemla, you know, like even the the guy who was driving you around Kinshasa. So I I just sort of that it's just a little thing, it's just an anecdote. But it was so different from what I was led to believe happened in a place like Congo, based on what the books I'd read. It was sort of revealing, and he was just very serious. He was just a very serious man. He was always asking me questions what about this? What do we learn about this? How do we know about China? What do we know about South Korea? What do we know about and I felt like he's just he wants he wants to know stuff, and and and and and and and so I was just I tried I organized a conference conferences with him. He wanted to organize a conference last year with me to for the 60th anniversary of the independence of Congo, but of course it happened because of COVID. So I I I don't know, I'm not gonna pretend to you that I I I don't, you know, I don't know that what I did, I didn't offer him a plan, I didn't tell him he should just help him think through problems, you know, and I'm very happy to do that if I feel there's somebody you know genuinely engaged and serious. And and there are many people like that in politics, and and um uh but but but but I wouldn't say you know, I'm not really in the business of advising uh government. You know, my my commitment in yeah, my wife is Colombian, and you know, I teach every summer in Bogota, I've taught every summer in Bogota for since 1994. And so so I go every summer, I teach, you know, uh the summer school, and and and you know, that's been you know, that's been a fantastic thing for me because I've had so many students, like many students. I collaborate with many of my former PhD students, Colombians, they come to Europe to study, to do master's degrees, to do PhDs. I've done 10 of my former Colombian students. I have many former PhD students teaching in Colombia, in Bogota, you know, in Nimedain, in Barranquilla, you know, so so that's that's I don't know what that is. I I tend not to get involved with politicians in Colombia. Um Uh I've resisted the temptation. Uh academic, you know, I'm just an academic. I'm not, you know, I'm not some big important person. I just, you know, try to understand the world and and help other people do that. And and and and you know, but helping, you know, that that I feel like I've done some good with in Colombia. Like again, I don't know. I just try to create opportunities for people, you know, to the extent I can and get them excited about social science and and and you know, so that's that's my sort of Colombian project, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Uh nice. I I on and again, like I said to you before, I do have questions for for days. Uh, a lot that I'd love to learn about Colombia, because I imagine you have very unique insight of the country, but we've gone 25 minutes without mentioning the book. So let's introduce the uh the book. Um where did the idea come from? And it's uh a collaborative effort with Daron Ekemoglu. Um so how does how does that work? What was the contribution from each of you? Where did the idea for the book come from? And um how's it been received since it was published?

SPEAKER_00 23:11

Yeah, well, you know, we I mean, we you know, we we met I think 29 years ago uh when I gave a job talk at the London School of Economics, and he was a PhD student, and we've been friends ever since, and we've been working together for about 26 years, probably, and we must have written over 50 scientific papers together. So, you know, he's my best friend. Yeah, we talk on the telephone every day, we've written all these papers together. You know, I shouldn't think there's an idea I've had in the last 26 years that I'd have that I haven't discussed with him. So I think it's very difficult for me to say whose idea was what and who did which bit. And we're so good at working together and sort of dividing tasks. And you know, it's like I don't know. Like I find it difficult to talk about that. It's difficult. I just see it's difficult to articulate it. So so I think the book, you know, the book, you know, we wrote a lot of academic papers uh that were very successful, that people liked a lot, and and and and you know, but we're you know, our inspiration's often been from history. You know, I was talking about Jan Van Sina's work on the Congo and uh anthropology, social, like other social, you know. I just I felt you know, I felt that the economics I learned as a PhD student basically was like an empty box, you know, when I actually came to trying to understand the problems in poor countries. It just didn't contain that would have been such a letdown. It didn't contain, it was a beautiful thing, you know, but it actually didn't contain the concepts which were relevant for understanding, you know, why a country like Colombia was how it was, you know, and I think a lot of the work, Daron and I, we had exactly the same sort of feeling. And so a lot of our work has been sort of trying to put you know what we thought was missing in that. I guess you know it's funny how once you're trained, you know, in a particular way, like trained as an economist, you know, you're sort of socialized into thinking that this is how you do research. So, you know, it's sort of like our research has been, you know, the here's economics, and it's just you know, just you're just trying to put all these things in. And you know, maybe one could have done it differently, but there's a lot of path dependence in life, isn't there? You know, and so so so so um, you know, so so I you know, so we wrote all these academic papers, but of course, a lot of it is published, most of it is published in economics journals, and uh economic economists are not interested in the details, they're not interested in the history, and so we'd endlessly get these papers back from journals, and they would like, oh, you have to delete that section or delete this or delete that. So we were just like building up all of these stories or historical episodes, which which in some sense had inspired a lot of the research, but then the paper comes out in this very kind of arid academic form. Yeah. So at some point we started thinking, gosh, you know, like if these if these if all this material had inspired us, maybe it would inspire other people too, or maybe it would get other people to think about the world. So then so that that's sort of how it started. Uh and then I was teaching, I was teaching at Harvard at the time. And then we sort of said, okay, like why, why let's let's put a course together? Let's let's try to put this into a course and see if it makes sense, you know. So so so putting the course together, then we sort of saw how we could organize material, and that's how it that's how it started. But I I don't think, you know, like uh with the way Daron and I work, you know, it's like uh it's like let it's difficult to tell. You know, we it we everything is the two of us, you know, we go backwards and forwards, we I write something, he rewrites it, he writes, you know, it I I I just I mean I can't say who did what or who thought of what, or I can I can hardly remember myself most. Um so what year was it published?

SPEAKER_02 27:10

2012. And how has because it was a you know, it was like a phenomenal bestseller, right? I mean, just by the by the um by the like the domain of book publishing is extremely long-tailed, right? So um how did did your life change at all once the book became a success? Did it open up a lot of new opportunities, or was it sort of just more of the same between you and I think it did open up.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

I mean it's been very interesting. You know, you get to meet all sorts of people who you would never have have met otherwise. Uh because because and I don't I don't think we sort of understood that, you know, we that we didn't we didn't really understand uh I think we did, you know, we tried to make it very accessible. We could have written it in a more academic way or a less academic way. I think we tried to write it in an accessible way, and I think that's actually because you know, you take Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. You know, there's a lot of intelligent people out there in the world, you know, educated people asking questions about how things are, you know, and and so so you know, and I remember thinking my father-in-law reading was reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, and he was asking me all these questions about it, and he was really into it. And I thought, like, you know, that's I mean, he's an engineer, you know, so he's an educated man and everything. But but so I thought that, you know, well, you know, that's pretty cool, you know, if you can actually write something, you know, explanation of how we got here. Yeah, it's very like that. So I think that was our aspiration. Now it's not clear that you know, it's not it's not clear that it wasn't clear to us that we were capable of writing such a book. Uh somehow we did it, we did it anyway. And and and that's been very fun. It's been it's very fun when somebody just like that, you know. I get emails all the time from people just saying, you know, oh, I read your book, I really found it interesting. And that's like it's very thrilling when you get uh when you get an email like that. So I I find that and I you know, and all sorts of people like business people, you know. I once I I you know I went to this business people come and invite you to I I get once and you learn all sorts of things actually. You meet people who you'd never meet ordinarily, and you learn all sorts of things, not just politicians, but business people, and that that's been actually extremely interesting. Yeah, yeah, I get presidents and people asking me to come and talk about the book and meet with them, you know. And like I went to I I went to Ecuador and met with former President Correa, you know, who's a very educated man. He has a PhD in economics and he'd read the book. You know, you could see like the highlighting in the book, and we had this fantastic conversation about the book for an hour, and and that that sort of thing is it's it's really interesting, you know. Um I I so and I've learned a lot of things. Uh I've learned a lot of things from that that I didn't know that I didn't know. So so so yeah, and I I I wasn't expecting that to happen. I you know, I wasn't, it really wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Was the idea of um um um extractive and inclusive institutions, was that original to why nations fail? Or was that an idea that you had teased out in papers before the book um was published?

SPEAKER_00 30:27

So I I think I think it partly uh you know the notion of extractive institutions, we we we sort of developed in in one of our early papers, this paper on colonial origins, which was I think that's our most successful academic paper in terms of citations. But but actually we didn't really have we didn't have terminology for the opposite of extractive, it was sort of degrees of extractive. But you know, in some sense to write the book, we realized that you know we needed we needed a word for the opposite thing of extractive, and and actually it was a very good friend of ours, Tim Besley, who's a professor, very distinct, actually, Sir Tim Besley, who's a very distinguished economist at the London School of Economics. We were at a conference in Buenos Aires, and we went to have lunch in the Plaza de San Telmo, if you know Buenos Aires at all. And and then Tim, Tim, we said, like, Tim, Tim, you know, come on, like, and Tim came up with this idea of include this word inclusive, and we immediately realized that that's that's the perfect word for what we're talking about. It's completely the opposite of extracted, exact extractive institutions. And so so that was, yeah. I mean, we tried to come up with you know, the thing about the world is complicated, you know, and and all the details are so different, you know. So uh you know, so North Korea and Sierra Leone and Colombia, all the details are different, and you need a sort of language that allows you to see, you know, despite all those differences of the details, these places all have something in common. What is it, you know, and so that that I think that terminology was very important. Uh that seemed to resonate with people, and uh, but but yeah, it was Tim who Tim Besley who came up with inclusive. I I claim no credit.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Um, and you you said like uh the difference between North Korea, Ecuador, and and another country, and how um try explanations beforehand to try and explain why they might have been uh developing whilst other nations were developed. What the book does initially is it sort of expels the three sort of classic explanations for why a nation failed. You know, the geographical hypothesis, the cultural hypothesis, and the ignorance hypothesis. Um, and I really loved reading about that because I was quite um, you know, I mean, I still don't know much about it at all, but I was ignorant to these ideas, right? Um, because it is it is easy for one to try and sort of explain, well, you know, Africa is um always going to be stifled and poor because look at their geography, you know, you you can't transport down the river system, they don't have natural harbors, uh, it's got no roads, like and you could make this geographical explanation. I wanted to um ask you if you could lay out the argument for why extractive uh the extractive inclusive matrix way of looking at things, um, to evaluate a country is better opposed to those three classical hypotheses. If you could disprove the three hypotheses and then prove extractive inclusive.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yeah, I mean I think I think you know, scientifically disproving them, it takes data and data analysis, and that's what a lot of our papers did. Early scientific papers. Of course, that's not that's not the the book tries to use simpler ways of thinking about that. You know, it tries to use what we call natural experiments, like like take the Korea, you know, the Korean peninsula. The Korean peninsula is you know, sort of has thousand years of centralized state authority, you know, common language and culture and history, and you know, and then it gets arbitrarily split in half at the end of the Second World War, and the North gets a sort of communism slapped on top of it, and the south, you know, gets this capitalist market economy. Okay, that's the book is not about communism and capitalism, it's about extractive and inclusive institutions. But the point there is that it's almost like it's like a sort of experiment, you know, where you create these very different, you you take a place which is very culturally and geographically homogeneous, and you create these very different institutions with very different incentives, and you get this massive economic divergence. So there, that can't be explained by geography or culture, it's got to be explained by the fact that these institutions create very different patterns of incentives and opportunities. So we use examples like that. You know, we lead with this example of Nogales, you know, Nogales is sort of split down the middle with a fence, and half of it is in Mexico, and half of it is in the United States. And again, that's a you know, it's a very culturally, a geographically homogeneous place, but there's enormous economic divergence because part of it is under the institutions of the United States, and the other part is under the institutions of Mexico. So, so so so that's we use that to kind of rule out these other hypotheses, you know, in in in in that you know, in the book, that's that's sort of the approach we take because that just seems much more intuitive, and we want it to stay out of data and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Yeah, it is much more intuitive. Like anyone who um can look on a map or has or knows about the North Korean anecdote or has traveled to Mexico or America, that like it's very easy to conceptualize that straight away. It's like obviously the geographical argument doesn't work here, and obviously the cultural argument doesn't work here, and more mess more mass matters, neither does the ignorance uh hypothesis. Um but I just wonder like in those specific areas you can you can create your sort of specific explanation for why that's the exception there. I I I'm I'm asking you to do a difficult thing, obviously, which is to sort of explain globally why those three hypotheses just don't work. Because if you take the Nogales uh US example, you know, you can explain your way out of it. Same with the North Korea, um, South Korea.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

Well I think I think there's lots of I think there's lots of different ways of seeing that. You know, one thing we pointed out in one of our scientific papers is you know, there's this fact, supposed fact, that uh tropical countries are poorer than temperate latitudes, you know. But if you think about just take the Americas and think about the history of the Americas, and you go far enough back in time, let's say go back 500 years, actually the opposite was true. You know, where was the political and economic development in the Americas at the time of colonialism? Not in not in North America and Canada, you know, Central America, you know, the Mekas or the you know, the Mayas were sort of in decline by that time. But the Inca Empire, the Inca Empire was an incredible thing. They built tens of thousands of miles of roads, they had a famine release system, granaries, you know, they produced public goods. I mean, it was yes, they had this incredibly organized uh society, the Incas, you know. Uh what was there in North America? Nothing. You know, there was just there was nothing. So so if anything, if you think about development, it was the it was the tropical places that were more affluent than the you know, than than the you know, what about the South Latin Argentina or Chile? There was nothing there, you know, compared to Andy at the you know, so so that was an enormous reversal, actually. There was a huge reversal, and this pattern within the Americas of the temperate zones are more, you know, are more prosperous, is actually a consequence of colonialism. It's not something intrinsic to kind of geography or anything like that. It was a consequence of institutional creation during the colonial period. So so I think you know, I think there's many, that's an example, you know, in some sense, where you see that there can't be any persistent kind of constant relationship between geography and prosperity. It's all to do with what sort of societies humans create, essentially. And I, you know, so so and I you know, I think the same is true in Africa. I mean, there's a mountain of evidence showing that these claims about African prosperity uh geography are just completely incorrect, you know. And I've always found it wildly implausible, uh, personally, you know, just never coincided with any intuition or idea I had uh being in Africa. And you know, and Africans are just, you know, so I I you know I that that that I could give other pieces of evidence, but that's a sort of strategy we take. We just try to take these historical experiments and just try to show that really challenges these ideas about the relationship between geography and culture. You know, the Korean thing is an interesting example of culture. Um, I you know, I think with culture it depends. Cultures are different, you know, cultures are different uh in the world, and and uh uh uh and and you know, and but but I guess you know we'd say, oh, think about the China, you know, so uh and you know, we could discuss cultural differences and and you know, but but I my impression is that that doesn't really get in the way of you know, everybody wants people value their cultures and they love their cultures and they're attached to their cultures, but people, in my experience, they all aspire to all the stuff that you know you and I have, you know, access to education, security, healthcare, you know, like the what traveling, jobs, all sorts of things. You know, they they don't want a government that exploits them and and suppresses them or oppress them, they want freedoms and political freedoms and economic freedoms. And you know, I my experience of working in different parts of the world, people are very have very similar aspirations like that. Uh and so so you know, I I I I you know that's a that's the kind of presupposition of the work, but but they but they can't enjoy those things because they're living under these extractive institutions in so much of the world.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Yeah, the the um differences between cultures are usually just the details, right? But the macro view is kind of universal. And then um just to reset what you said there, but off the back of that, can you define because what uh what inclusive um um inclusive extractive does very well is it it almost it almost gives a global explanation which you can which you can then locally apply, right? So off the back of that, could you define for us uh what is uh an inclusive economy, both politically and economically, and then extractive placement?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yeah, I think I think the you know the thing the thing to keep to bear in mind uh before getting to the definition is you know what sin you know what is it that creates prosperity? You know, we're trying to explain why it is that some parts of the world are more prosperous than others. And economists have known, you know, and I think they got this right since the work of Robert Solo, actually the great, great MIT economist Robert Solo in the 1950s, that it's innovation, you know, it's it's innovation, it's creativity, it's new ideas, it's entrepreneurship. That that's what creates prosperity, that's what increases productivity of human labor. You know, if you go back to the Industrial Revolution that really you know created the world we see today, created all the inequalities we see in the world, that's all about innovation, about mechanization of production, the steam engine, the railway, the factory system. So, so so so so that to be prosperous, a country has to just tap into it, it has to find a way of tapping into all that latent talent and energy and ambition and you know, like the visions and dreams, or the things that makes human society so kind of interesting and and fun, right? The kind of nuttiness and and originality of humans. And and so, but but but where is that? Where is that talent? You know, where where are those people? You don't know where they are. You need you need uh so the word inclusion, I'm sort of saying this because the word inclusion turns out to be very significant, even though we didn't come up with it, which is that you know, you need a a system of rules, of institutions that creates very broad-based incentives and opportunities. So you can tap into all that latent talent in society. You know, like the thing you see like in a place like Congo is just so much wasted talent, you know, so many clever people, so many, you know, who just have no opportunities, there's no road, there's no school, you know, there's no like what you know, there's just no way out, you know. And and so so so so so inclusive institutions are you know institutions that create broad-based incentives and opportunities. Extractive are the opposite. Extractive institutions, you know, put barriers to opportunity and they create incentives for some people and not for other people, you know, and and that creates it creates wealth for some people, you know, but it creates poverty uh for the mass of people.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

Can you define them both through like a country profile? What is sort of uh an archetypically extractive economy and and politic, so we can then um you know understand the definition much better through example, and then the same for inclusive.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

So I like a lot, I like a lot, you know, the example in the first chapter of the book where we we tell a story of the history of economic divergence between North America and Latin America, we end the chapter with an example that I like very much, which is not two countries but two people, which is Carlos Slim, who at the time we wrote the richest men in the world. I mean, they're still they're still in the ballpark. So still bloody rich. So they're very rich. But you know, what's important here is not how rich they are, but how they made their money, you know. Carlos Slim made his His money through getting the Mexican his friends in the P in the Mexico in the one party state to privatize the telecom monopoly to himself. Bill Gates made his money through innovation. He made his money through Microsoft to operate to create new value. Exactly. And why was he doing that? You know, did Bill Gates not think about being a monopolist like Carlos Slim? Of course he did. He was found Microsoft was found guilty of violating the Sherman Act for monopolistic practices. They're all at it. Apple, Facebook, all of them. Everybody wants to be a monopolist. They're all at it. You know, it's just more difficult to get away with it in the United States. Why is it more difficult to get away with it? Because of the institutions, because of things like the Sherman Act, because the state can enforce the Sherman Act on the richest guy in the world. That's unthinkable in Mexico. Absolutely unthinkable in any way.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

And the reason it's unthinkable is because of sort of the political corruption, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:59

And like ultimately that's that's the biggest state is captured by these people because you know, because there's dictatorship and because there's this massive failure of accountability, because there's no public pressure on the state to enforce rules on these people. So I think that example drives home brilliantly like how the institutions matter, and how this is not about culture, you know, it's not about like Hispanic culture bad, Anglo-Saxon American culture. No, no, no. Gates would have been just like that, except he was in a different institutional environment.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

The political institution then backed up by the economic institutions that then creates the prosperity.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

I mean, we we you know, our view is we're sort of political determinists, you know. Like for us, the politics is the economics is incredibly important for creating economic incentives, but ultimately it's the politics that creates different economic institutions. It's really that's that's the key. So for us, you could say, you know, well, in some general way, don't politics and economics interact? And I I you know I could say yes, but but all the research, all the academic, all the scientific research we've done suggests that it's the politics that really drives things. So in why nations fail, it's really, yes, you need to have inclusive economic institutions, but if you want to have inclusive economic institutions, you better have inclusive political institutions. You know, that's why we think this whole Chinese growth experience is not sustainable, because China was able to grow by making economic institutions more inclusive. You know, that's a good anti-cultural story, too. You know, it's not that Chinese culture changed and suddenly China became more wealthy. No, it's they got rid of many elements of extractive economics. They changed your institutions. Yeah, they started creating incentives and opportunities, and people responded, but but the political system never changed. And what we say in the book about that is that you can't have an inclusive economy in a sustainable way with extractive political institutions. It's a it's a train wreck. What history suggests is that's a train wreck waiting to happen. That's the prediction of the theory.

SPEAKER_02 47:05

Can you reflect on political corruption for a moment? Uh, is there an example that comes to mind where political corruption and inclusive institutions have ever aligned?

SPEAKER_00 47:16

Yeah, I I wouldn't I don't use the word corruption, honestly. I mean, so so I'm why is that? Because I don't think it's about corruption. I think it's about power. You know, I think corruption is you know, is is is a sort of I don't think the way people talk about the problem is corruption. I don't think it's about corruption, it's about access to power and the distribution of power and and you know, maybe things go on that look like corruption, but I never find and yeah, maybe this is more a kind of academic, picky kind of thing. You know, I always find that when economists use the word corruption, they use it to avoid talking about politics. So so that's that's why I don't, you know, that may not be relevant to you.

SPEAKER_02 48:03

It's a hot take, a good contrarian view to uh the idea of corruption, but it I mean, but it is I I'd love to understand that a little bit more because I I don't fully understand. I mean, there is like you know, something that is obviously corrupt is Carlos Slim just cutting in some of his friends to make sure that he can have this monopoly.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

You can say it's corrupt. I mean, I know this could be a bit of African Africa coming in, you know, in the sense that so so changing worldview, yeah, yeah. Interesting. You know, in Chicago, you know, if I got a job, you know, working for the mayor, you know, and I there's a lot of corruption in Chicago, by the way. And I got a job working for the mayor, and I I used that to kind of hire you know my family or something, that would be called corruption. You know, you're misusing public resources for some private uh objective. But in Africa, you know, if you get a job working in the government in Congo, like the the ethical situation is completely different. You know, here it would be unethical to use your position to help your family. In Congo, it would be unethical if you didn't help your family. Okay, you're you have all these people who are reliant on you, you you have an opportunity to benefit you know your network or your relatives or your your extensions or something. The moral situation, I'm I'm quite serious about this. The moral situation is completely different. It you're violating the moral kind of order if you don't take advantage of that opportunity to help people. And I I I've seen that, and I that's for real, you know. So so so I I think it's just a very different moral order, if you want my honest opinion. So you can call that corruption if you like, but that doesn't really help.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

And let's look at the spectrum of corruption then. Yeah. For example, if you go into Chicago politics and grease a few of your friends' palms, sure, that's manageable, small corruption. What what about if you rise to become the president and now all of a sudden you're just putting 50% of the tax revenue into your private Swiss account? You know, like that's that's crazy corruption that's going to start stifling your entire economy. Surely the morals change there. And because you're still doing it, you know, by by your rationale. You're still doing it to benefit your family because that's the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

But like at a certain scale, you start to now hinder everyone else who But I you know, I think I think those, you know, the stories of the castles in Morocco and whatever it is, and uh, you know, the the the that that's a very small part of yeah, that's going on, and and and it's not acceptable, and nobody's in favor of it in Africa, in my experience. Nobody's in favor of it, you know, they can't stop it. Uh they don't have the instruments or the mechanisms to stop it, but they're not that doesn't, you know, but they but but but I think that's a very small part of the problem, you know. I mean, that I I've never found any, you know, what people will tell you in Congo, for example, is that President Mabutu, you know, he basically squandered his entire fortune, you know, just kind of it all goes out. It's like it just comes in and then it goes in because you're endlessly trying to sort of make friends with people and build alliances and get supporters, and so there's a lot of redistribution. So I know these stories about the castles in Morocco are very kind of you know, they're fun and everything, and it just seems like terribly predatory, and uh you know, but but I think that's a very small part of the problem in these countries, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

So maybe that goes into informal sort of survivorship bias of what the idea of corruption is, yeah. When in fact it's actually a tiny minutia, but because that's like the I don't know, the exciting bit of corruption, it becomes the story that everyone knows about.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

But the Yeah, I think corruption, corruption could you know, to the extent that corruption it you know is happening, it also it's a sort of symptom of institutional weakness. That would be another way I'd think about it. You know, it's a it's a it's a symptom of the fact that the Mexican state is very weak and it's easily controlled by by outside. I mean, I'm much more familiar with the Colombian, the history of this in Colombia, you know, and and and you know, and and you know, there it's interesting, you know, because Colombia isn't close to the to the United States, and Colombians did grow coca, you know, like when the Colombian, when the Medellin drug cartel started, the the Colombians went to Peru and Bolivia and they bought the coca, you know. They just acted as intermediaries. They went they acted as intermediaries, you know.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

I've I've always been under the impression that the coca was uh is the Colombian slice of the Amazon, but no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

They brought it, they brought it, they brought it because they realized it was easier to control it in Colombia. You know, why is it easier to control it in Colombia? Because the government doesn't run half the country, half the country is a sort of vacuum of authority. So if you want to build, you know, Tranquilandia, which was the first big coca plantation or Rodriguez Gatcha built, you know, and he built like this thousands of hectares of coca, like with an airfield so they could ship it to the United States. Who noticed? You know, no one noticed. The government didn't, no one paid any attention to. So I I so I think that's like the the you know, colla Colombians took over the industry just because institutions were so weak and there was this massive vacuum of authority, and there's also this certain kind of entrepreneurial aspect to Colombian society, which you don't have in less so in Bolivia and Peru. So there was some sort of sociological thing, you know, and now and then the Colombians that sort of collapsed in Colombia and it moved to Mexico. But I think many much of that is for similar reasons, that the state is very weak and you know the authority of the state is very weak. Yeah, it's closer to the markets in Mexico, but you know, but but that didn't matter when the Colombians were in were in action, you know. So I I I mean, again, I would say, yeah, obviously there's this sort of under underlying factor, you know, like why institutions are incredibly weak in the Central African Republic, you know. So why doesn't coca growing move to the Central African Republic? Well, it's far from the market and you know, and it's complicated logistically and whatever, you know. So you need some human capital and and and submarines and airplanes, and you know, and they don't have that in the Central African Republic. So so there are reasons for Colombia or Mexico, but but I you know, I would fund, you know, I you know it's also a weakness of the American state in some sense, that like all of this stuff ends up on the street being sold, you know. Like, and that's yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to get to. I don't I don't I don't really understand why the US is so ineffective at stopping this, you know.

SPEAKER_02 54:42

Well, um obviously, because of your experience in Colombia, I'm sure in conversations, drugs is always rather a dominant theme, at least I'm sure it was in the early 2000s, maybe not so anymore. Um, but Mexico is like super close to my heart, right? And I've so much uh sympathy for this country because um I think with in their case specifically, it is there is obviously institutional failure, um, but they also are in this geographically bad hand, just from the terms of drugs, because the biggest consumer of these compounds in the world are their northern neighbor, and um, sure you could make the argument that it could just be, you know, the the Wathamalans could be the traffickers, but they just don't share the land border. So it is like a geographical problem they have, and it's not just cocaine that they're shipping anymore. As I'm sure you're aware, you know, there's loads of fentanyl and like these synthetic drugs are also being shipped into the um into things. And I had a theory about it. I don't know if it's original, I'm sure it's not original, but you're an economist. Um, so it'd be cool to run it by you. And this is a tangent that's not got anything to do with why nations fail. So um, you know, forgive me. But uh it's the idea that demand is a stronger force than supply because the entire drug war has been about stifling, stifling supply, you know, burning cocoa fields, salting the earth so they can't grow any cocoa, getting rid of one cartel, um, trying to get the the southern US border as strong as possible. All of these are are actions taken to try and stop supply when it at the end of the day, as long as there is demand, there is going to be entrepreneurs who defeat whatever this challenge on supply is and it will ultimately just rise the price. Although, ironically enough, we haven't seen much of a price change at all, which suggests that perhaps it's just really business as usual, no matter how much billions the US can throw at it trying to stop supply. And so it's a very complicated issue, one which everyone has to be sympathetic to Mexico for, because you know, it's Europeans, Americans, they're buying this shitty drug which does nothing for them, which is ultimately just laid in blood.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Yeah, and then the US should understand that, you know, because if you go back to the history of prohibition, for example, you know, exactly the same thing. Exactly the same, yeah, very different, which is that there's just created this enormous illegal supply of alcohol, you know. But the difference between, and then, you know, and they got rid of it after what, like 12 years or something. But the difference, of course, between prohibition and this is that in prohibition, all the misery and violence was in the United States, whereas here the misery and violence in Mexico. Sure. So it's not, it's not, it's not in the pain. I would say, I would say, by the way, uh, though, you know, there's one Colombian aphorism in this context that I like very much, which is due to a very famous Colombian writer, which is that in Colombia politics corrupts drug dealing.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

James, what country or region are you most bullish on looking into the future? Sort of given your worldview, given all the research that you do, um what are what is a country or a region in the world that you just are super excited about their future for?

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Yeah, I I mean I I think it's you know one should hesitate to make predictions. But actually, you know, I just wrote something. I wrote I wrote a paper which is on my webpage if you if you're interested, called Africa's Latent Assets, which is sort of how to be optimistic about African development if you want to be. You know, there's a lot a lot of Africa's latent assets, and and the the the argument there is actually there's a lot of things, you know. Here's the here's let me, you know, here's the example on the first page, which I which I sort of like, which is you know, if you'd been standing around in China in 1975, you would never possibly have predicted what happened, you know, in the 40 years after that. You know, that that suddenly changes would happen, and you know, and the economy the growth rate would go to 10% a year, and like the world, you know, the most dramatic experience of economic growth in world history was about to be unleashed. You know, so why was that? Well, it turned out that there were all sorts of aspects of Chinese society, I would say, which were terribly sort of conducive to capitalist development, like this notion of meritocracy. You know, for example, if you meet there's all these Chinese students at the University of Chicago, they're having trouble getting in the country at the moment. But before the COVID, there were all and Trump, there were all these Chinese students. So you talk to a Chinese student and ask, like, where are they from? Where did they grow up? Where are their parents from? They're everywhere, they're from everywhere. You know, they're in China, talent can always get to the top. You know, that's a very, you know, if you read Confucius, Confucius said promote the worthy and talented, you know, in the analytics. So that notion of sort of talent, you know, what I would call um achieved status is very powerful in China. Compare that to India. That's like not like that at all in India. If you meet an Indian student, they're all some Brahmin, you know, who went to one of like three universities, like presidents of college in Calcutta or whatever. Africa is much more like China. Africa, anyone can get ahead. You know, Africa is also a place of achieved status. Like, just if you have talent, you can get ahead in Africa. You know, that's a very powerful principle. For sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:52

So it promotes meritocracy because I think the idea that we have from the outside is that it it doesn't, you know.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Um, that's not true. So it's not true, it's not true in the data. It's not so my paper has a lot of data on this, like trying to show actually there's a huge amount of social mobility in Africa, and there's enormous, you know. I I just I know that just from my personal experience of working with Africans, you know, talented people can always get to the top. I think there's just a lot of misconceptions about that. So that's just one example of, you know, and yeah, and I think I think, yeah, you have to solve some institutional problems, and I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not problems that are easy to solve in a place like Nigeria or the DRC. But underneath that, you know, could you period something to grow at 10 more Congo? Absolutely, absolutely. There's just the amount of energy and talent is just staggering. You know, you go to Lagos, it's just amazing now. Lagos is just exploding with with energy and and and and you know, more so than Kinshasa, because the Nigerians are much more, they're much further down the road for building institutions, even though there's a lot of problems in Nigeria. But but but but so I that that's another so so that's you know, I don't know if that's too romantic, but I can imagine it. Um the paper is just kind of basically developing different ideas about how to think about that differently. And it's all based on my my personal experience and like just kind of my understandings of how things work in Africa and how that differs so much from how we think about it often.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

So Africa is a region and um Nigeria is a country.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Nigeria is a region too, yeah. I mean, there's there's huge differences between the south of Nigeria and the north of Nigeria, and you know, but Nigeria is not it's not the only place. You know, you go to Kenya, you know, South Africa, Ghana, there's you know, of course, there's massive Africa's not a con, you know, Africa's enormously heterogeneous. You know, there's a huge difference between Chad and southern Nigeria, whatever. But I'm just saying that's true in China. You know, in China when when when the growth happened, it happened in little pockets, it happened in parts of the country, and it still hasn't happened in large parts of China at all. You know, if you go to large parts of the interior of China, they look pretty much like they did in 1978, you know. So so I think I think and that's true with India as well. So that's always true. Yeah. So so I think that's that's let me say that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Fascinating. No, it's it's amazing. I was really looking forward to asking you that question, um, you know, particularly because it is the it is the realm in which you spend all your time thinking. So, you know, you get a nice informed answer. Finally, last question, very easy, nothing to do with the world, geopolitics, culture, or maybe a little bit to do with culture. Um, if you could s witness a conversation between any two people of history, who would they be?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:55

Gosh. They had they had to have lived at the same time. No, anyone you want. I think, you know, I'm very interested. Recently, you know, we we talked a little bit before about social science and you know the kind of where social theory comes from. And you know, I think it would be interesting to they weren't quite contemporaries, but they weren't that far apart. I'd be interested to hear Confucius and Aristotle discuss like politics, you know, because if you read Aristotle's politics, there's a kind of fundamentally different notion of like what political problems are in society and how you solve them. And also there's fundamentally different assumptions about people's motivation. And you compare that with Confucius, it's completely different. You know, Confucius had very different assumptions about how to get good government and how to get things working, and what were people's motivations, and and what, you know, and those those two things are very different. And like where where did they, how did they, you know, Aristotle in some sense starts this whole kind of Western tradition, you know. And Confucian starts this Confucius starts his other, you know, maybe there were, you know, there were, you know, you can always trace things back before before any book, but but but he kind of distilled a very different sort of tradition. So I guess it would be fascinating. I'm very fascinated myself personally to sort of understand the implications of those different traditions. But why they thought so differently, like what led them to conceive of these issues so differently.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

Like two alien um cultures and worldviews colliding that didn't even know about each other. Yeah. James, uh it's really been fascinating, and thank you so much for giving me yeah this time.