Backwardness

 

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Continued from here.

[Bear with me, the text is a bit repetitive, I have written it spontaneously, while trying to assure myself of the correctness of my thinking.]

Maybe this is only semantics: I refuse to accept the idea that there are advantages to being backward (relative to not being backward). Backwardness is by definition disadvantageous. It is not an advantage to be poor, less healthy, to live a shorter live etc. There are advantages of being able to develop and catch up efficiently, but these advantages are not caused or effected by being backward, but rather by becoming more developed. Is it an advantage to have a very low per capital income, low levels of productivity? Is it an advantage to be so poor as to show promise for strong growth some time in the future? My answer is no. It is the ability to climb out of poverty/backwardness that is advantageous — not poverty or backwardness per se. The elements making for progress are themselves not features of backwardness, but belong to the arsenal of development, progress, improvement that is not available from backwardness.

So it is the ability to copy or partake in other ways in the features of more advanced stages of development that are advantageous. A country can be as backward as it likes, it will not draw any advantage from that, to the contrary. The advantage of being able to catch up is derived (or "imported", if you like) from more mature stages of development.

Is it better to be poor (backward) today than 500 years ago? Perhaps the right answer is: yes, because backward countries are liable to catch up faster (and have more access to the joys/benefits of the more developed world) today than in earlier times. But again, that does not make backwardness advantageous or the cause of substantial progress.

You write: "Can you expand on your point that ‘it is always better to be advanced in terms of economic development rather than backward’? Better in what way? By the simple virtue of being wealthier already, or in terms of growth potential?"

I would argue that a country on an advanced level of development (as opposed to a backward one) will be wealthier and have a sounder growth path, and combine both to reinforce one another. In fact, this is a possible definition of development, of being developed as a opposed to being backward.

You write:

"Those latecomer countries that have caught up economically and joined the rich country club surely show that in such cases, they were able to exploit the advantages of backwardness. Does this not make your first point context-dependent?"

These countries have not enjoyed the advantages of backwardness, they have enjoyed the advantages of the developed world, and have learned to make use of them to be able to escape from backwardness. The drivers of this escape are elements from the modern advanced world: technology, know-how, mores, experiences, proven practices of the developed world.

At the risk of becoming excessively repetitive: no one catches up "like hell" because they are backward; they catch up because they have found ways to partake in features that make advanced countries advanced: appropriately modern business practices, legal techniques, forms of business organisation, technological progress etc.