关于我们新书的讨论

有朋友问到我们的理论和主流理论有什么区别，我们来和最新得到诺贝尔经济奖的工作比较一下。他们最有代表性的工作是《为什么国家会失败》这本书。在这本书里，他们用北韩和南韩的对比，证明北韩是失败国家，南韩是成功国家。从我们的角度，北韩固然是失败国家，而南韩的人口出生率为 0.8， 大大低于替代率 (replacement rate)。也是失败国家。

我们的理论，是生物学和经济学的统一理论。这个理论，和很多传统智慧是一致的，也极具前瞻性。传统智慧告诉我们，不要拔苗助长，杀鸡取卵，不要为了经济增长而压制人口，特别是当人口出生率已经低于替代率。五十年前，大部分西方社会的人口出生率已经低于替代率，那个时候，他们就应该改变注重经济增长的模式，这样，就不会导致今天的“西降“。同样，某些东方社会，为了＂东升＂，大量消灭婴儿，以提升经济，将会成为历史上对本民族的最大灾难。

有朋友会问，我们的理论，不就是常识吗，有什么了不起？首先，在这个专家遍地的世界，常识是非常稀缺的。很多人可能还记得，主流媒体，经常挖苦超生游击队，主流机构，一直在鼓励，甚至强制堕胎。其次，我们从物理学基础上，推导出极为简单的数学理论，准确地描述了社会现象。这点，大家可以和主流经济学对比一下。

https://www.amazon.com/Entropy-Economics-Living-Basis-Production/dp/0226827194

下面，是前段时间写的，关于《为什么国家会失败》这本书的简评。

Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty

This is probably the most prominent work by Acemoglu and Robinson. In this book, they elaborate on a popular theme: Inclusive institutions lead to prosperity; extractive institutions lead to poverty. There is a problem with the terminology. Do inclusive institutions engage in extractive activities?

All organisms need to extract external resources to survive and prosper. Humans, being organisms, need to extract external resources to survive and prosper. All institutions, including the so called inclusive institutions, are extractive institutions.

All people are fighting for resources. No institutions are truly all inclusive. From the definition provided by the book, inclusive institutions uphold property right. But property right is exclusive. We often notice No Trespassing sign on various properties.

The basic idea of the book is laid out in Chapter Three, The making of prosperity and poverty. The authors use the stark contrast between North and South Korea to illustrate their point. North Korea is indeed living hell. But the authors seemed not to notice that the fertility rate of South Korea was far below the replacement rate at the time of their writing. Today, its fertility rate, below 0.8 per woman, is the lowest in the world. The people of South Korea are not on the road to prosperity. They are on the road to extinction.

Inclusive institutions, being more internally cohesive, are more powerful in fighting for the control of resources. Hence an inclusive institution is more prosperous than an exclusive institution in general. An inclusive institution, whose resources are more widely shared, consumes more resources. Hence dominant inclusive institutions will suppress extractive institutions, as defined in their book, from emerging into inclusive institutions, which aspire to consume more resources and will have to compete with dominant inclusive institutions for resources.

In the book, Latin America is often used as an example of extractive institutions. That is why Latin America is mired in poverty. But according to the Monroe Doctrine, Latin America is the backyard of the US. The institutional structures of Latin America are largely shaped by US and US interests. Some countries in Latin America are called banana republics. These banana republics are institutions molded by the US to extract resources at low cost.

When resources are shared by less people, the powerful people who control the most resources are better off. This is why there is always a strong tendency for a system to become less inclusive over time during peace time. This tendency is mostly interrupted only during war time, when the need to include more people in fighting is the strongest.