Bad Samaritans Quotes

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“free trade economists have argued that the mere co-existence of protectionism and economic development does not prove that the former caused the latter. This is true. But I am at least trying to explain one phenomenon - economic development-with another that co-existed with it - protectionism. Free trade economists have to explain how free trade can be an explanation for the economic success of today's rich countries, when it simply had not been practised very much before they became rich.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Not being able to see this, culture-based explanations for economic development have usually been little more than ex post facto justifications based on a 20/20 hindsight vision. So, in the early days of capitalism, when most economically successful countries happened to be Protestant Christian, many people argued that Protestantism was uniquely suited to economic development. When Catholic France, Italy, Austria and southern Germany developed rapidly, particularly after the Second World War, Christianity, rather than Protestantism, became the magic culture. Until Japan became rich, many people thought East Asia had not developed because of Confucianism. But when Japan succeeded, this thesis was revised to say that Japan was developing so fast because its unique form of Confucianism emphasized co-operation over individual edification, which the Chinese and Korean versions allegedly valued more highly. And then Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea also started doing well, so this judgement about the different varieties of Confucianism was forgotten. Indeed, Confucianism as a whole suddenly became the best culture for development because it emphasized hard work, saving, education and submission to authority. Today, when we see Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia, Buddhist Thailand and even Hindu India doing well economically, we can soon expect to encounter new theories that will trumpet how uniquely all these cultures are suited for economic development (and how their authors have known about it all along).”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Ricardo's theory is absolutely right-within its narrow confines. His theory correctly says that, accepting their current levels of technology as given, it is better for countries to specialize in things that they are relatively better at. One cannot argue with that.

His theory fails when a country wants to acquire more advanced technologies so that it can do more difficult things that few others can do- that is, when it wants to develop its economy. It takes time and experience to absorb new technologies, so technologically backward producers need a period of protection from international competition during this period of learning. Such protection is costly, because the country is giving up the chance to import better and cheaper products. However, it is a price that has to be paid if it wants to develop advanced industries. Ricardo's theory is, thus seen, for those who accept the status quo but not for those who want to change it.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Gore Vidal, the American writer, once famously described the American economic system as ‘free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich’.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity

“In the prologue, I explained the gradual and subtle process in which history is re-written to fit a country's present self-image. As a result, many rich-country people recommend free-trade, free-market policies in the honest belief that these are policies that thier own ancestors used in order to make their countries rich. When the poor countries protest that those policies hurt, those protests are dismissed as being intellectually misguided or as serving the interests of their corrupt leaders. It never occurs to those Bad Samaritans that the policies they recommend are fundamentally at odds with what history teaches us to be the best development policies. The intention behind their policy recommendations may be honourable, but their effects are no less harmful than those from policy recommendations motivated by deliberate ladder-kicking.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Britain also banned exports from its colonies that competed with its own products, home and abroad. It banned cotton textile imports from India ('calicoes'), which were then superior to the British ones. In 1699 it banned the export of woolen cloth from its colonies to other countries (the Wool Act), destroying the Irish woolen industry and stifling the emergence of woollen manufacture in America.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“فإذا أتاحت الرشوة -على سبيل المثال- لمنتِج قليل الكفاءة أن يؤسس مصنعا للصلب ففي هذا نيل من كفاءة الاقتصاد. ولكني أعود فأقول إن هذه ليست نتيجة محتومة. فلقد ذهب البعض إلى أن المنتِج المستعد لدفع أعلى الرشاوي هو المنتِج الأكثر كفاءة، فالمنتِج الذي يتوقع تحقيق أموال أكثر من الترخيص هو قطعا الذي يستعد لدفع رشوة أكبر للحصول على الترخيص. ولو أن الأمر كذلك، فإعطاء الترخيص للمنتِج الذي يدفع الرشوة الأكبر يماثل في جوهره عرض الحكومة الترخيص للمزاد، ومن ثم فهي الطريقة المثلى لاختيار المنتِج الأكفأ، باستثاء أن العائد يذهب إلى المسئول معدوم الضمير، بدلا من الذهاب إلى خزينة الدولة في حالة إقامة مزاد شفاف. وبالطبع تتهاوى حجة "الرشوة بوصفها مزادا (كفئا) غير رسمي" لو أن منتجين أكثر كفاءة رفضوا لاستقامتهم الأخلاقية أن يدفعوا الرشاوي، ففي هذه الحالة تتيح الرشوة لمنتِج أقل كفاءة أن يحصل على الترخيص.
قد "يشوِّه" الفساد قرارات الحكومة بتعطيله القواعد التنظيمية. فلو أن شركة مياه توفر مياها دون المستوى وتستطيع الاستمرار في أعمالها برشوة المسئولين المعنيين، فالعواقب الاقتصادية سوف تكون وخيمة [....].
لكن لو كانت القواعد التنظيمية "غير ضرورية"، فالفساد هنا قد يزيد كفاءة الاقتصاد. وعلى سبيل المثال، قبل الإصلاح التشريعي في عام 2000، كانت إقامة مصنع في فييتنام تقتضي تقديم عشرات المستندات [...] فكانت إجراءات تجهيز المستندات للحصول على جميع الموافقات اللازمة تحتاج لستة أشهر في ما يقال. في وضع كهذا، قد يكون خيرا للمستثمر المحتمل أن يرشو المسئولين الحكوميين المعنيين فيحصل على الترخيص بسرعة. وقد يقال إن هذه الطريقة تجعل المستثمر يفوز بكسبه مزيدا من المال، والمستهلك يفوز بكسبه المزيد من الإشباع لطلبه بسرعة، [...]. لهذا السبب، غالبا ما يقال إن الرشوة قد تعزز الكفاءة الاقتصادية للاقتصاد شديد البيروقراطية بإدخال قوى إلى السوق وإن بوسائل غير مشروعة. وهذا ما قصده أستاذ العلوم السياسية الأمريكي المخضرم صمويل هنتنجتن في قوله الكلاسيكي: "في ما يتعلق بالنمو الاقتصادي، ليس أسوأ من مجتمع ذي بيروقراطية صارمة، شديدة المركزية، فاسدة، إلا مجتمع ذو بيروقراطية صارمة، شديدة المركزية، وغير فاسدة". وأعود فأقول [...].”
― ها -جوون تشانج, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“The place to start is with a true history of capitalism and globalization, which I examine in the next two chapters (chapters 1 and 2). In these chapters, I will show how many things that the reader may have accepted as ‘historical facts’ are either wrong or partial truths. Britain and the US are not the homes of free trade; in fact, for a long time they were the most protectionist countries in the world. Not all countries have succeeded through protection and subsidies, but few have done so without them. For developing countries, free trade has rarely been a matter of choice; it was often an imposition from outside, sometimes even through military power. Most of them did very poorly under free trade; they did much better when they used protection and subsidies. The best-performing economies have been those that opened up their economies selectively and gradually. Neo-liberal free-trade free-market policy claims to sacrifice equity for growth, but in fact it achieves neither; growth has slowed down in the past two and a half decades when markets were freed and borders opened.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“In fact, most successful people are those who have been well supported, financially and emotionally, by their parents when they were children. Likewise, as I discussed in chapter 2, the rich countries liberalized their trade only when their producers were ready, and usually only gradually even then. In other words, historically, trade liberalization has been the outcome rather than the cause of economic development.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“In recommending free trade to developing countries, the Bad Samaritans point out that all the rich countries have free(ish) trade. This is, however, like people advising the parents of a six-year old boy to make him get a job, arguing that successful adults don't live off their parents and, therefore, that being independent must be the reason for their successes. They do not realize that those adults are independent because they are successful, and not the other way around.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“To sum up, the truth of post-1945 globalization is almost the polar opposite of the official history. During the period of controlled globalization underpinned by nationalistic policies between the 1950s and the 1970s, the world economy, expecially in the developing world, was growing faster, was more stable and had more equitable income distribution than in the past two and a half decades of rapid and uncontrolled neo-liberal globalization. Nevertheless, this period is protrayed in the official history as a one of unmitigated disaster of nationalistic policies, especially in developing countries. This distortion of the historical record is peddled in order to mask the failure of neo-liberal policies.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“كانت الحياة لتصبح أبسط لو أن كل الأشياء المرفوضة أخلاقيا كالفساد هي في الوقت نفسه ذات عواقب اقتصادية سلبية واضحة لا لبس فيها. لكن الواقع أكثر تشوشا من هذا. ولو أننا نظرنا فقط إلى نصف القرن الماضي لرأينا أن هناك ولا شك دولا دمَّر الفساد العنيف اقتصادها -مثل زائير في ظل موبوتو أو هاييتي في ظل دوفليير. وفي الطرف المقابل، لدينا دول مثل فنلندا والسويد وسنغافورة المعروفة بنظافتها وبجودة اقتصادها أيضا. ثم إن لدينا دولا مثل إندونيسيا كانت شديدة الفساد وذات أداء اقتصادي جيد. ودول أخرى -يخطر منها على البال إيطاليا واليابان وكوريا وتايوان والصين- كان أداؤها في تلك الفترة الأخيرة من أداء أندونيسيا برغم فساد عميق ومنتشر وغالبا ما كان واسع النطاق (وإن لم يكن في جسامة الفساد في إندونيسيا).
والفساد ليس ظاهرة من ظواهر القرن العشرين وحده، فأغلب دول العالم الثرية اليوم نجحت في التحول إلى الصناعة برغم أن الحياة العامة فيها كانت على قدر مبهر من الفساد *. في بريطانيا وفرنسا، كانت إقامة المزادات العلنية على المناصب العامة (ناهيكم على المناصب الفخرية) مسلكا شائعا حتى القرن الثامن عشر على أقل تقدير. وفي بريطانيا، حتى القرن التاسع عشر، كان من قبيل السلوك الطبيعي للغاية أن "يستعير" الوزراء ميزانيات وزاراتهم لتحقيق أرباح شخصية. [...] وانتشر تزوير الانتخابات وشراء أصوات الناخبين، كما تضمنت الانتخابات في الولايات المتحدة، وهي بلد فيه كثير من المهاجرين، توطينا فوريا للغرباء غير القابلين قانونيا للتوطين، فتصبح لهم أصوات، وكان ذلك يتم "دونما قداسة، وفي عجلة، لا تضاهيها إلا عجلة تحويل الخنازير في مجزر إلى لحوم معبأة" بحسب ما كتبت نيويورك تربيون في 1868.
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* كان لهم فسادهم وإن اختلف عن التعريف السائد اليوم للفساد. فحينما وجه البرلمان اتهام الفساد سنة 1730 لروبرت وولبول، اعترف الأخير بأريحية بأن لديه ضياعا كبرى وتساءل: "ما الذي يتوقعه أيكم ممن شغل أحد أعلى المناصب ربحا لقرابة عشرين عاما؟ إلا لو كانت جريمةً أن يجني المرء ضياعا عظيمة من منصب عظيم". وقلب المائدة على رؤوس متهميه إذ سألهم: "ألا تكون الجريمة أعظم حينما يحصل امرؤ على ضيعة من منصب أدنى؟" انظر [...]”
― ها -جوون تشانج, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“الدول الفقيرة ليست فقيرة لأن أبناءها كسالى، بل إن أبناءها كسالى لأنها فقيرة.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“In 1832, Andrew Jackson, today a folk hero to American free-marketeers, refused to renew the license for the quasi-central bank, the second bank of the USA - the successor to Hamilton's Bank of the USA (see chapter 2). This was done on the grounds that the foreign ownership share of the bank was too high -30% (the pre-EU Finns would have heartily approved!). Declaring his decision, Jackson said: 'should the stock of the bank principally pass into the hands of the subjects of a foreign country, and we should unfortunately become involved in a war with that country, what would be our condition?........Controlling our currency, receiving our public moneys, and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence, it would be far more formidable and dangerous than the naval and military power of the enemy. If we must have a bank...it should be purely American.' If the president of a developing country said something like this today, he would be branded a xenophobic dinosaur and blackballed in the international community.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“But it is far more important that we allow developing countries to use protection, subsidies, and regulation of foreign investment adequately in order to develop their own economies, rather than giving them bigger agricultural markets overseas. Especially if agricultural liberalization by the rich countries can only be 'bought' by the developing countries giving up their use of the tools of infant industry promotion, the price is not worth paying. Developing countries should not be forced to sell their future for small immediate gains.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“To begin with, even though the rich countries have low average protection, they tend to disproportionately protect products that poor countries export, especially garments and textiles. This means that, when exporting to a rich country market, poor countries face higher tariffs than other rich countries. An Oxfam report points out that 'The overall import tax rate for the USA is 1.6 percent. That rate rises steeply for a large number of developing countries: average import taxes range from around four per cent for India and Peru, to seven per cent for Nicaragua, and as much as 14-15 percent for Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal. As a result, in 2002, India paid more tariffs to the US government than Britain did, despite the fact that the size of its economy was less than one-third that of the UK. Even more strikingly, in the same year, Bangladesh paid almost as much in tariffs to the US government as France, despite the fact that the size of its economy was only 3% that of France.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“But the conclusion of the HOS theory critically depends on the assumption that productive resources can move freely across economic activities. This assumption means that capital and labour released from any one activity can immediately and without cost be asbsorbed by other activities. With this assumption-known as the assumption of 'perfect factor mobility' among economists-adjustments to changing trade patterns pose no problem. If a steel mill shuts down due to an increase in imports because, say the government reduces tariffs, the resources employed in the industry (the workers, the buildings, the blast furnaces) will be employed (at the same or higher levels of productivity and thus higher returns) by another industry that has become relatively more profitable, say, the computer industry. No one loses from the process.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Hamilton provided the blueprint for US economic policy until the end of the Second World War. His infant industry programme created the condition for a rapid industrial development. He also set up the government bond market and promoted the development of the banking system (once again, against opposition from Thomas Jefferson and his followers.) It is no hyperbole for the New-York Historical Society to have called him 'The Man Who Made Modern America' in a recent exhibition. Had the US rejected Hamilton's vision and accepted that of his archrival, Thomas Jefferson, for whom the ideal society was an agrarian economy made up of self-governing yeoman farmers (although this slave-owner had to sweep the slaves who supported this lifestyle under the carpet), it would never have been able to propel itself from being a minor agrarian power rebelling against its powerful colonial master to the world's greatest super power.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“It is a law of competition that people who can do difficult things which others cannot will earn more profit.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Hong Kong became a British colony after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the result of the Opium War. This was a particularly shameful episode, even by the standards of 19th-century imperialism. The growing British taste for tea had created a huge trade deficit with China. In a desperate attempt to plug the gap, Britain started exporting opium produced in India to China. The mere detail that selling opium was illegal in China could not possibly be allowed to obstruct the noble cause of balancing the books. When a Chinese official seized an illicit cargo of opium in 1841, the British government used it as an excuse to fix the problem once and for all by declaring war. China was heavily defeated in the war and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, which made China 'lease' Hong Kong to Britain and give up its right to set its own tariffs.

So there it was-the self-proclaimed leader of the 'liberal' world declaring war on another country because the latter was getting in the way of its illegal trade in narcotics. The truth is that the free movement of goods, people, and money that developed under British hegemony between 1870 and 1913-the first episode of globalization-was made possible, in large part, by military might, rather than market forces. Apart from Britain itself, the practitioners of free trade during this period were mostly weaker countries that had been forced into, rather than had voluntarily adopted, it as a result of colonial rule or 'unequal treaties' (like the Nanking Treaty), which, among other things, deprived them of the right to set tariffs and imposed externally determined low, flat-rate tariffs (3-5%) on them.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“This neo-liberal establishment would have us believe that, during its miracle years between the 1960s and the 1980s, Korea pursued a neo-liberal economic development strategy. The reality, however, was very different indeed. What Korea actually did during these decades was to nurture certain new industries, selected by the government in consultation with the private sector, through tariff protection, subsidies and other forms of government support (e.g., overseas marketing information services provided by the state export agency) until they 'grew up' enough to withstand international competition. The government owned all the banks, so it could direct the life blood of business-credit. Some big projects were undertaken directly by state-owned enterprises-the steel maker, POSCO, being the best example-although the country had a pragmatic, rather than ideological, attitude to the issue of state ownership. If private enterprises worked well, that was fine; if they did not invest in important areas, the government had no qualms about setting up state-owned enterprises (SOEs); and if some private enterprises were mismanaged, the government often took them over, restructured them, and usually (but not always) sold them off again.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“If there are so many successful public enterprises, why do we rarely hear about them? It is partly because of the nature of reporting, whether journalistic or academic. Newspapers tend to report bad things – wars, natural disasters, epidemics, famines, crime, bankruptcy, etc. While it is natural and necessary for newspapers to focus on these events, the journalistic habit tends to present the public with the bleakest possible view of the world. In the case of SOEs, journalists and academics usually investigate them only when things go wrong – inefficiency, corruption or negligence.Well-performing SOEs attract relatively little attention in the same way that a peaceful and productive day in the life of a ‘model citizen’ is unlikely to make front-page news. There”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“The Roman politician and philosopher Cicero once said: ‘Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labours of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Free trade economists have to explain how free trade can be an explanation for the economic success of today’s rich countries, when it simply had not been practised very much before they became rich.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“والفساد موجود لاتساع حجم السوق لا لضيقه، والسوق الحرة والديمقراطية ليستا شريكين متلازمين بالضرورة، والدول الفقيرة ليست فقيرة لأن أبناءها كسالى، بل إن أبناءها كسالى لأنها فقيرة”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“real estate and stock market bubbles burst in 2029,”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“Unlike what neo-liberals say, market and democracy clash at a fundamental level. Democracy runs on the principle of 'one man (one person), one vote'. The market runs on the principle 'one dollar, one vote'.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“So the two champions of free trade, Britain and the US, were not only not free trade economies, but have been the two most protectionist economies among rich countries, i.e. until they each in succession became the world's dominant industrial power.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

“A critical but often ignored impact of FDI is that on the (current and future) domestic competitors. An entry by a TNC through FDI can destroy existing national firms that could have 'grown up' into successful operations without this premature exposure to competition, or it can pre-empt the emergence of domestic competitors. In such cases, short-run productive capabilities are enhanced, as the TNC subsidiary replacing the (current and future) national firms is usually more productive than the latter. But the level of productive capability that the country can attain in the long run becomes lower as a result.

This is because TNCs do not, as a rule, transfer the most valuable activities outside their home country, as I will discuss in greater detail later. As a result, there will be a definite ceiling on the level of sophistication that a TNC subsidiary can reach in the long run. To go back to the Toyota example in chapter 1, had Japan liberalized FDI in its automobile industry in the 1960s, Toyota definitely wouldn't be producing the Lexus today-it would have wiped out or, more likely, have become a valued subsidiary of an American carmaker.

Given this, a developing country may reasonably decide to forego short-term benefits from FDI in order to increase the chance for its domestic firms to engage in higher-level activities in the long run, by banning FDI in certain sectors or regulating it. This is exactly the same logic as that of infant industry protection that I discussed in the earlier chapters-a country gives up the short-run benefits of free trade in order to create higher productive capabilities in the long run. And it is why, historically, most economic success stories have resorted to regulation of FDI, often in a Draconian manner, as I shall now show.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism