Can a Nation Plunder Its Way to Wealth (with Noah Smith)

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🗓️ 15 January 2024

⏱️ 70 minutes

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Summary

Did nations get rich on the backs of other nations? Did the West get rich from imperialism? Noah Smith says no. But why not? If you can steal stuff, isn't that better than having to make it yourself? Listen as Noah Smith and EconTalk's Russ Roberts discuss the impact of imperialism and industrialization on growth and wealth. Smith argues that understanding plunder and where wealth comes from is more than an exercise in economic history--it matters for today's world, too.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.8	I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done
0:24.5	going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. Today is December 21st, 2023, and I want to encourage listeners to go to econ talk.org where you'll find a link for our annual
0:46.2	poll of your favorite episodes. Please go there and vote. Thanks for voting and for providing feedback about the program.
0:54.3	And now for today's guest, economist Noah Smith. His blog on Substack is No Opinion.
1:00.3	That's Noah, Noah Pion, No, A H, P, I, O, A, P, I, O, N, O, is Noah's third appearance on the program.
1:09.4	He was last year in October of 2018 talking about worker compensation and market power.
1:17.0	Nowa, welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:19.0	Thanks for having to be back.
1:21.0	Our topic for today is the Wealth of Nations, not the book, but the concept, although we may talk about the book a little bit.
1:27.0	We're going to be referring to a recent essay at no opinion that you wrote with the title nations don't get rich by plundering
1:36.7	other nations so a lot of people would disagree with that I think.
1:42.8	So let's start with the idea of plunder.
1:46.1	What do you think people have in mind when they explain the wealth of nations
1:51.2	via plunder and what's wrong with it?
1:54.0	Well, usually plunder talks about natural resources.
1:58.0	So you have some ships, you have some guys with guns, you send the ships and the guys with guns to somewhere else and you say, hey, you know, we're in charge here, now you're working for us in the mines.
2:11.0	And then you open up some mines and the local people you know mine the
2:15.9	stuff for starvation wages or you just enslave them or whatever and then you take
2:20.4	the the metal or whatever resources or the rubber whatever they've got right and then
2:25.6	you cart it away to the metro pole of empire where you use it to build monuments to your
2:30.7	empire's greatness and things like that.
	...

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