I also find it extremely amusing that he titles the piece “Much More
Than You Wanted to Know”, presumably imagining that his audience cares
so little for India that a relatively short essay comparing a few
studies on poverty-alleviation is all they could possibly stand
There’s nothing wrong with Alexander’s use of the study or
comparison of competing analyses
He highlights it specifically in order to mount a
counter-argument to the argument that the open neoliberalisation of
India’s economy drove the decline in poverty
He doesn’t make your last claim at all
Far be it from me to defend Scott “wanking-motion” Alexander, but
you’re way off here. At the end of this piece Alexander makes a fumble
at the idea that overregulation dooms people to poverty (which is, in an
entirely vacuous sense, often true) and that’s dumb, but he also
incorporates into his argument the history of power in Indian society
(the Indira Ghandi story) and the manifestation of poverty-alleviation
as a tool of political power in a corrupt state. He goes on to argue
that post-colonial states such as with the Licence Raj have regulated
economies in a self-interested manner which preserve the power of the
state, which is undoubtedly and non-vacuously true.
A much much much stronger objection to Alexander’s piece is the silly
attempt at the end to associate such regulations with the programme
proposed by the likes of Bernie Sanders (or Matt Bruenig, for that
matter) in America, which criminally overlooks the colonial situation to
make an ignorantly flat “view from nowhere” comparison between regulated
and unregulated economies.
You think it's unfair to paraphrase "[W]e need to study and raise awareness of the history of democratic, comparatively “nice” countries that did nothing worse than overregulate business a bit – and investigate whether even these best-case scenarios still doomed millions of people to live in poverty. My (biased) guess is that careful study will show this to be true." as "Overregulate business a bit and you will doom millions to poverty"? I did cut corners there to keep the title snappy enough but I don't think that's too much of a reach.
Regarding 1 and 2, when I opened this post my first instinct was to check who exactly are Charter Cities Institute, found they seemed questionable and not particularly noteworthy, and after seeing Scott spend most of the post talking about how their claims seemed iffy I was left baffled why call attention that report, or why have it front and center if you just wanted to write a post on the topic. But sure, if you want to focus more on the position Scott is taking there I don't think the bulk of it is particularly objectionable, the part that made the whole thing stand out to me was the sharp pivot to "socialism bad" in the last paragraphs.
_*cascading notes that go dulelelilelulule_* with Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson. Welcome to the podcast on the media, PR, power, and the history of bullshit. Today we're going to discuss a common media trope: classifying landlords as "people."
I also find it extremely amusing that he titles the piece “Much More Than You Wanted to Know”, presumably imagining that his audience cares so little for India that a relatively short essay comparing a few studies on poverty-alleviation is all they could possibly stand
There’s nothing wrong with Alexander’s use of the study or comparison of competing analyses
He highlights it specifically in order to mount a counter-argument to the argument that the open neoliberalisation of India’s economy drove the decline in poverty
He doesn’t make your last claim at all
Far be it from me to defend Scott “wanking-motion” Alexander, but you’re way off here. At the end of this piece Alexander makes a fumble at the idea that overregulation dooms people to poverty (which is, in an entirely vacuous sense, often true) and that’s dumb, but he also incorporates into his argument the history of power in Indian society (the Indira Ghandi story) and the manifestation of poverty-alleviation as a tool of political power in a corrupt state. He goes on to argue that post-colonial states such as with the Licence Raj have regulated economies in a self-interested manner which preserve the power of the state, which is undoubtedly and non-vacuously true.
A much much much stronger objection to Alexander’s piece is the silly attempt at the end to associate such regulations with the programme proposed by the likes of Bernie Sanders (or Matt Bruenig, for that matter) in America, which criminally overlooks the colonial situation to make an ignorantly flat “view from nowhere” comparison between regulated and unregulated economies.
Citations needed.