Feb

14

Gordon Tullock's stint in China was crucial to his rent-seeking insight:

"See, you go into these cultures where people have produced just immense cultural achievements but are living in bitter poverty, and you discover very quickly they have a dominant government and the government is corrupt. Conventionally, economists have argued that a corrupt government doesn't really cost anything because the man who receives the bribe gains what the man who pays the bribe loses. Well, you can't really believe that if you're in China."

His book The Calculus of Consent [online version] is about to celebrate 50 years.

And Prof. Tullock is celebrating 90 today.


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1 Comment so far

  1. douglas roberts dimick on February 18, 2012 2:37 am

    Come and See

    So well said to this day, it bears repeating…

    “See, you go into these cultures where people have produced just immense cultural achievements but are living in bitter poverty, and you discover very quickly they have a dominant government and the government is corrupt. Conventionally, economists have argued that a corrupt government doesn’t really cost anything because the man who receives the bribe gains what the man who pays the bribe loses. Well, you can’t really believe that if you’re in China.”

    The balance sheet of corruption is not realized as a transactional event registering 0s and 1s. The loss is similar in nature to business goodwill; there is a depletion or degradation of academic, industrial, or social ingenuity and industry.

    There are also non-recognition (as well as those non-realization) aspects of corruption. One grows up knowing Christian charity; there is none of that here in China. Instead what would be considered charitable is premised on maximizing calculable disaffection of citizens not conforming or (potentially) threatening the tyrannical order.

    In effect, the “state of the people” as propagated is a subversion, whereby an enigmatic consortium of the political hierarchy extols control over the populous. There is no balance sheet or financial statement; it is all consumed by unaccountable deeds within nontransparent shapes of associations that can be denied or declared based on who will pay the most — what one would call bribes albeit cultural declination of the payment itself.

    Come and see…

    dr

    Ps. Happy birthday, Sir. I understand there will be a beach polo game in Tainjin this coming summer or fall as some sort of real estate development promotion. Might be fun for a belated birthday party…

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