
How to Save A Life - twampss
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/savealife
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pg
"But how did medieval Europe stop being medieval Europe? The answer is through
protectionism"

That is false. Protectionism may (or may not) have helped specific industries
in individual countries, but it was net harmful for medieval Europe, because
nearly all international trade in medieval Europe was with other European
countries.

It's a very interesting question how medieval Europe stopped being medieval.
The short version is peace and trade. When society is dominated by local
warlords, you tend to have neither. Europe's rise out of medievalness was
basically achieved by an alliance between medieval kings and a growing
merchant class. The kings used the wealth of the merchants to increase the
power of the central goverment, which then protected the merchants from the
random exactions of over-powerful nobles.

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nazgulnarsil
You might be interested in Mancur Olson's Stationary Bandits hypothesis which
he expounds in Power and Prosperity.

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rglovejoy
The article starts off well, but then veers off into Bizarro world.

The assertion that some countries are poor because their labor or natural
resources are somehow being exploited is ridiculous. Countries like Sudan or
Haiti are poor because of the bad choices and corruption committed by their
governments, not because rich people in New York or London are doing dastardly
deeds. The trade with Africa, say, is but a tiny drop in the bucket compared
to the business we do with China or Canada.

Swartz's contention that protectionism will help these countries climb out of
poverty is equally ludicrous. The example he cites of Britain becoming a
wealthy nation because if protectionism isn't really true. Britain became
wealthy because it was the first country to industrialize on a large scale,
which made its workforce much more productive. There were efforts by the
British government to prevent its methods of industrialization from spreading
to other countries, with mixed results. The attempts to prevent the American
colonies from manufacturing goods was one of the causes of the Revolution;
this policy was also resented in India and other parts of the Empire. The
Continent industrialized, in varying degrees, over the course of the 19th
century, with Britain staying at the head of the pack by continuously
innovating. (These innovations ended up making everyone, not just Britons,
wealthier.)

If anything is going to alleviate the suffering of the poorest of the nations,
it will be efforts to reduce official corruption and to eliminate tariffs.

