Thread by @vpalsmith33

/THREAD/ Recently, @KatharinaPistor recommendation of the intellectual biography genre convinced me that I should read this Hirschman biography since it caught my eye in the @BostonReview and I noted relevance to @M_C_Klein overshoot to @adam_tooze in Sep.

https://twitter.com/vpalsmith33/status/1438939659518627840?s=20&t=UzvbVkxNQdoJj1P5TrxEjw

2. I intend to catalog my reading notes according to his view of underdevelopment as the "difficulty to take the decisions needed for development in required number and required speed." ( p.80) Speed & scale points me in two directions—climate and China

https://twitter.com/hollyjeanbuck/status/1461787700063789059?s=20&t=ZWBoAHvB2gUbQl058is6ww

3. Green transition away from @michiokaku Level 0 civilization is necessary reminder every country is underdeveloped. China also a natural case study, as @JonathanWoetzel once said, its industrialization was 100x as large, 10x as fast, 1000x impact (12:-)

4. "No ivory tower intellectual...Hirschman's life cannot be divided [into] viva activa and viva contemplativa" (p. xiii) Classic thesis, antithesis, synthesis pattern of distinction starting from classical philosophers, to Marx, to Hannah Arendt en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human…

5."Convinced that only hope for [Weimar]
republic was collaboration [b/t SPD & Communists]" (pg.9) Young Hirschman couldn't have known but decisive moves would be made on right against "catch-all party of social protest" theatlantic.com/international/…
BBC doc: pbs.org/video/edgar-ju…

6. "Demangeon explained trade as...complex activity taking place b/t different regions," (p.11). Behind every great person is a great mentor. Emphasis on economic geography would later be taken up by Justin Yifu Lin profiled in @eosnos Age of Ambition. openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/3…

7. Hirschman's interest in Poincare developed at LSE in 1936, one representative view "'there is no crisis [involving stubborn commitment to gold standard], [merely] a phantom invoked by the incompetent and eternally discontented.'" 12 Compare to Mellonism

https://twitter.com/vpalsmith33/status/1495921657403551747?s=20&t=UzvbVkxNQdoJj1P5TrxEjw

8. "Hayek's individualism & reflections on the limits of knowledge struck a chord" (pg.13) Studying at LSE when Keynes published General Theory, Hirschman was more influenced by Hayek's skepticism to planning than Keynes' macroeconomic management. Pin this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rheto…

9. "power-seeking countries tend to direct their foreign trade toward smaller and poorer countries. Reaction of small & weak..." (p. 45). In Hirschman's early work, start to see connections to China. @RobAtkinsonITIF discussed resonance with @jordanschnyc chinatalk.substack.com/p/build-or-die…

10. "Peace victory of possible forces"p49 His proposal of supranational economic authority shared by Keynes @ Bretton Woods was dismissed. But beginnings of idea he would later articulate as possibilism. I hear Niebuhr on illusion of "perfect justice" here vincentpalumbosmith.substack.com/p/to-believe-i…

11. "Hirschman listed a number of instances in which initial dependence leads to independence," (p.53). Remarkably, Hirschman would anticipate the revisionist critics to narratives of China's debt diplomacy in responding to dependency theorists of his day deborahbrautigam.com/books/books/

12. "half slave, half free better than total freedom—when only alternative is return to total regulation,"(p56-57). Discussion of post-war Italian price reform has China's "crossing the river by feeling the stones" logic, to be contrasted w/shock therapy. noemamag.com/how-china-avoi…

13. "inherent uncertainties" (p.58) @michaelxpettis "Hirschman level" of investment is elusive, "not easy to find the correct amount of investment, a priori deductions are not able to replace method of trial & error." Note China & Italy's regional divides

https://twitter.com/michaelxpettis/status/1447132735471030274?s=20&t=EBEE9PKElYoklEX04EbyRw

14. "totally impractical in the absence of a fiscal union" (p. 60). Nicholas Kaldor would later echo Hirschman's argument about sequencing of fiscal, then monetary union i.e. "unequivocal political acts" concertedaction.com/2012/08/16/nic…

15. "Rhetoric of the plan had little to do with the policies that were actually implemented" (p. 72). Logan Wright and Pettis emphasize the gaping discrepancy b/t coherence of the plan offered by China's political analysts and regulator's implementation chinatalk.substack.com/p/explaining-e…

16. Development depends on "'resources and abilities that are hidden, scattered, or badly utilized,'" (p.80). Comparative advantage is often presented in Ricardian terms, as reflecting endowments. Not so. Bangladesh and Colombia 2 case studies @rodrikdani nber.org/papers/w8952

17. "Alleged obstacles may in fact reveal themselves as positive assets" (p. 81). This was the theme of my Master's dissertation rebutting development requires wholesale adoption of good governance agenda. @yuenyuenang book key for China. foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsul…

18. "Extended family may liberate resources for cooperative entrepreneurship" (p.82). The decidedly un-Weberian improvisational investment promotion strategies Yuen Yuen Yang emphasizes were raw material for growth engine. Second-best institutions p. 259 drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rod…

19. "[The removal] of obstacles is not imperative as one might think" (p. 82). Not about the removal of rents, but whether that "access money" facilitates or stymies learning economy.bloomsbury.com/us/business-po…
Access money variant of "too soon" problem p. 58
academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8…

20. "resolution can at least be postponed"(p. 82). Kelsall above warns of addictive properties of access capital degenerating into partial reform trap. Ang's steroid metaphor works, after "asset" & "bypass" phases no longer needed. Procedure was successful foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/…

21. "inducement mechanisms trigger decision-making ability"(p. 83) This political insight influenced the scholarly literature. Strategic capability wider.unu.edu/sites/default/… improves under systemic vulnerability & low fragmentation of ruling coalition researchgate.net/publication/48…

22. "agriculture...structural scarcity of linkage effects" (p. 85) I recently enjoyed reading this paper on Ethiopia by @HarvardGrwthLab @Pato_Goldstein, which formalized the problem Hirschman intuited through product space analysis growthlab.cid.harvard.edu/publications/p…

23. Transitioning to climate: "futility and brutality two sides of same malaise [on Latin American oscillations]"(p.86) Most concerning trend in American politics rn? Progressive futility. Why? #AvocadoPolitics. Churchill & John Stuart Mill similar message

https://twitter.com/vpalsmith33/status/1442623055553961984?s=20&t=3wRMECeccXM31SUFvceuFQ

24. "motivation of problems often pulls ahead of understanding" (p. 104). I didn't know Hirschman belonged to same intellectual milieu as critical rationality theorists like Charles Lindblom. Policymaking he describes here is classic garbage can model

25. Rest of thread, detailing nature of our polycrisis as theorized by Hirschman here.

https://twitter.com/vpalsmith33/status/1498231820470525954?s=20&t=3wRMECeccXM31SUFvceuFQ

I find the natural break in this thread fascinating, suggests like other great thinkers there may be a cleavage if not break in Hirschman's early and mature work

10b. Musil's protagonist left axiomatic world "for essayism, [and lived by] possibilism..essayism is 'solution in the absence of a solution'; trying things out one way then another...'a modernist paradigm that extends backward & forward'." Forward is Hirschman

h/t @shortl2021

11b. Reading the Economist`s special report on China-Africa, “[the deal protecting local traders] is an example of how African countries exercise agency in spite if asymmetrical nature of their relationships with China.” economist.com/special-report…