Meme Streets
As I’m sure everyone knows, the Economics Nobel was awarded this week to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson. I’m sure that by this time you have all heard or read lots of learned commentary on the pros and cons of the award. I’m certainly not going to add to that. And I’m sure many of you are familiar with Pseudoerasmus on Twitter and BlueSky, who has been engaged (despite his best efforts) with the prize and has had a few interesting things to say, of which this one about the gap on East Asia struck me as quite interesting. And he also did an excellent long thread on the literature around institutions and development here. In response to which I was inspired by a variant on classic joke that you might remember from your days in high school. This “gap” on East Asia is something, I think is an issue as well not just about AJR, but also Albert Hirschman and Janos Kornai, who are frequently invoked in discussions about East Asia but actually didn’t really directly engage with the region very much.
Other than those observations above, I have little substantive to add. On the other hand, the debate has given me an opportunity to do something I really enjoy—playing with memes to deal with somewhat weightier topics. Everyone does it these days, so I like to see what I can bring to the table when it comes to my favorite subjects. I also thought it might be interesting to subvert the way some memes are supposed to work — by making the takeaway the opposite of what it customarily is. This is inside baseball for people with far too much time on their hands so do not take it amiss if some (or all) of it makes no sense. Much of this will seem familiar to those of you who have been exposed to my screeds singing the praises of globalization, complexity-generating export-led-growth, high state capacity etc. But what follows might at least be amusing. So here goes.
Subverted meme format Type A (Actually it works sometime)
2. Subverted meme Type 2 (Anakin was actually right—Deng vs. Gorby)
3. Straight meme — (follows from the above 2)
Kornai in Comecon is not Kornai in China — see also here
4. Straight meme — Speaks for itself (and hints at my problem, which I confront here)
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And finally, the one where you’re not sure what’s sincere and what’s a troll, whether you said it, or the people that you think you’re trolling, unless they’re actually sincere.
