Ha-Joon Chang was born in Korea, at a time when that country was extremely poor. During his lifetime, that country changed from quite poor to quite prosperous, all the while being next door to North Korea that had remained in the grip of very severe poverty. While that was happening, Prof. Chang grew up and became an economist. He teaches economics at Cambridge, one of Britain's two great old universities. He has written several books. One of them was featured in a sale by Audible.com and it caught my eye: "The Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism."
Ever since I studied statistics in the early 60's, I have been aware that economics can show things that are not easy for the average person to see by himself. Over the years, I learned that economists are quite skilled at logic, argument and data acquisition and analysis. I know that statistics can be fascinating and fun, even though I have always maneuvered my life to be able to step away from the subject when I wanted to. My first brush with economics was probably "The Great Ascent" by Robert Heilbroner. I grew up when the main opponent of the US was the Soviet system and I knew that theoretically, the difference between us and them was our approach to economics. Over time, I ran into titles such as "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", which I see has some highly negative reviews. But as I read about Britain's economic tricks and rules against the American colonies, as I realized that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and such organizations were based in the US, I suspected that maybe our millions and our wealth was not always created in highly moral or pristine ways.
But Ha-Joon Chang is a British-educated economist and a Korean native who specializes in developing countries and their best path toward greater prosperity. He writes with arresting clarity and he attacks very convincingly many of the ideas I have heard about all my life. I didn't realize that the idea that open, free, unrestricted markets was so fundamental to the prevailing Western economic gospel, but the "Bad Samaritans" makes clear that such markets are only a good idea between equals. He compares very poor countries' likely experience in an open market to what happens to children under the age of ten who try to earn a living, as many do in poor countries. They just don't have the resources and the knowledge of how to use them.
I have not finished the book and I am not eager to have it end. He has explained the lengthened and tightened patents, copyrights and trademarks the West, especially the US, have lately been using to extend their dominance and profits, a sore point with another intellectual property student and teacher I know. Chang states there has been a questionable correlation between low-levels of corruption in government and that a country's prosperity, a relation that the Western forces have drummed as a holy truth. He explains the history of inflation, another bogey man the Westerners repeatedly name as a deep evil and over-use as a measure that poor countries must work on.
In all three areas of patents, corruption and inflation, he shows that Western aid to poor countries has had more and more strings and conditions all the time, reducing the country's ability to work flexibly on its individual problems. These conditions and interference on a growing scale seem the very opposite of the holy free market and individual freedoms to me.
(Improved by L.S. Kirby)
Ever since I studied statistics in the early 60's, I have been aware that economics can show things that are not easy for the average person to see by himself. Over the years, I learned that economists are quite skilled at logic, argument and data acquisition and analysis. I know that statistics can be fascinating and fun, even though I have always maneuvered my life to be able to step away from the subject when I wanted to. My first brush with economics was probably "The Great Ascent" by Robert Heilbroner. I grew up when the main opponent of the US was the Soviet system and I knew that theoretically, the difference between us and them was our approach to economics. Over time, I ran into titles such as "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", which I see has some highly negative reviews. But as I read about Britain's economic tricks and rules against the American colonies, as I realized that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and such organizations were based in the US, I suspected that maybe our millions and our wealth was not always created in highly moral or pristine ways.
But Ha-Joon Chang is a British-educated economist and a Korean native who specializes in developing countries and their best path toward greater prosperity. He writes with arresting clarity and he attacks very convincingly many of the ideas I have heard about all my life. I didn't realize that the idea that open, free, unrestricted markets was so fundamental to the prevailing Western economic gospel, but the "Bad Samaritans" makes clear that such markets are only a good idea between equals. He compares very poor countries' likely experience in an open market to what happens to children under the age of ten who try to earn a living, as many do in poor countries. They just don't have the resources and the knowledge of how to use them.
I have not finished the book and I am not eager to have it end. He has explained the lengthened and tightened patents, copyrights and trademarks the West, especially the US, have lately been using to extend their dominance and profits, a sore point with another intellectual property student and teacher I know. Chang states there has been a questionable correlation between low-levels of corruption in government and that a country's prosperity, a relation that the Western forces have drummed as a holy truth. He explains the history of inflation, another bogey man the Westerners repeatedly name as a deep evil and over-use as a measure that poor countries must work on.
In all three areas of patents, corruption and inflation, he shows that Western aid to poor countries has had more and more strings and conditions all the time, reducing the country's ability to work flexibly on its individual problems. These conditions and interference on a growing scale seem the very opposite of the holy free market and individual freedoms to me.
(Improved by L.S. Kirby)
