The conclusions that the professor makes are shocking but one cannot disagree with them. They are even intuitively true. I am from Bulgaria and our governments are trying to apply the standard model ever since 1989 and with disasterous results that is.
I found this lecture (and the book on which it is based) very instructive. I especially admire the application of some global perspectives, where technological change is put in relation to world trade, and seeing how the strong states sort of force each other into applying those standard model policies. I also found it interesting, innovative, and fitting for a social democrat, to make the connection between a strong standing of labourers within these states, and economic development. However, I have some disagreement with the basic aim and framing of the analytical undertaking. Nationally achieving ”development” must either involve rationalizing the agricultural sector, or importing food from elsewhere. If we want to speak of ”development” in global terms, we surely cannot count on the latter (save for establishing contact with Martians). Unfortunately, Allen doesn’t speak too much about natural resources, or the environmental burdens of the production process. The importance of cheap energy for British industrialization is briefly mentioned. But no mention of, for example, rationalization of agriculture to this day having meant heavy drainage of nutrients from the soils (this far compensated by input of fertilizers), monocultural land-use resulting in biodiversity loss, and how the main energy source (coal, and later oil) is a) finite and b) causing a destabilization of the Earth-atmosphere-system. Instead of the question being ”how can the poor countries catch up to the rich?”, shouldn’t it rather be ”how can we enable a decent future for all without fucking with mother earth?”, or maybe even the reverse: ”how can we realistically defeat this juggernaut of endless accumulation”?
The conclusions that the professor makes are shocking but one cannot disagree with them. They are even intuitively true. I am from Bulgaria and our governments are trying to apply the standard model ever since 1989 and with disasterous results that is.
I found this lecture (and the book on which it is based) very instructive. I especially admire the application of some global perspectives, where technological change is put in relation to world trade, and seeing how the strong states sort of force each other into applying those standard model policies. I also found it interesting, innovative, and fitting for a social democrat, to make the connection between a strong standing of labourers within these states, and economic development.
However, I have some disagreement with the basic aim and framing of the analytical undertaking.
Nationally achieving ”development” must either involve rationalizing the agricultural sector, or importing food from elsewhere. If we want to speak of ”development” in global terms, we surely cannot count on the latter (save for establishing contact with Martians). Unfortunately, Allen doesn’t speak too much about natural resources, or the environmental burdens of the production process. The importance of cheap energy for British industrialization is briefly mentioned. But no mention of, for example, rationalization of agriculture to this day having meant heavy drainage of nutrients from the soils (this far compensated by input of fertilizers), monocultural land-use resulting in biodiversity loss, and how the main energy source (coal, and later oil) is a) finite and b) causing a destabilization of the Earth-atmosphere-system.
Instead of the question being ”how can the poor countries catch up to the rich?”, shouldn’t it rather be ”how can we enable a decent future for all without fucking with mother earth?”, or maybe even the reverse: ”how can we realistically defeat this juggernaut of endless accumulation”?
Those are pretty irrelevant questions if you don't answer original question first.