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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

"Poor countries are poor because they are ruled by narrow elites that organize society for their own benefit at the expense of the citizenry."

Seems to me he got cause and effect backwards.

The same thing that causes countries to be poor also make them "easy picking" for elites who want to exploit them.

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"Why Nations Fail" is an excellent book on this topic. There's a cycle between poverty and exploitation, and the book does an excellent job detailing many historical examples.

This is why I am skeptical about the long term threat/success of China. With Xi now effectively chairman for life he will put more energy into maintaining his position than governing.

Unfortunately for the governed there is a lot left to drain out of their reservoir. Take Venezuela for example. It’s been going on 20 years too long but it keeps going.

On the flip side - it also means that if we have a bad president or two in the United States, we’ll still probably be ok. With multiple branches of government there’s only so much damage that can be done in 4/8 years.

I used to think that. Then this term happened. Or I still do but severely underestimated "only so much damage".

Personally I think it's less about how much energy is put into maintaining your position, and more about how the system adapts to the presence of an individual.

When an individual is in power for an extended period of time, the system adapts to them being there. The longer they're there, the more the system comes to rely on them being there instead of an arbitrary person being in that position.

This, I think, is one of the reasons that the transition period in long running monarchies is so dangerous. All of the plans that relied on the specific qualities of the former leader just went out the window.

A proper experiment is obviously infeasible but there are countries that a) went from poor to rich and b) have had strong citizenry even back when they were poor.

And what, in your view, is it that causes countries to be poor?

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