Links for November

Chinese imperial exams, European innovation, travel blogs

Here are some of the interesting things I read in the month of November!

Blogs

I take a keen interest in any proposals for pro-growth reforms of the European Union. Luis Garicano’s Constitution of Innovation is finally one that feels both practical and transformational.

Simon Grimm argues that decades-long liberal control after their 1848 civil war is why Switzerland is so rich. He says that this practically uncontested control allowed them to push through many changes that took other European societies a lot longer to get right, including: abolishing internal tariffs, setting up a nationwide currency, enabling relatively free trade with its neighbours, and setting up important institutions (like ETH Zurich, Credit Suisse).

Watch men from Works in Progress went over the history of the Swiss watchmaking industry, especially the comeback story after the Japanese industry overtook the market in the late 70s by being early with quartz.

The Chinese Imperial exams were insane. By the 1800s, the pass rate was 1 out of 25,000, requiring memorisation of vast swathes of ancient books and poetry that usually had zero practical implications for what a candidate might be doing if they managed to become an official. Nothing about knowledge of foreign countries or cultures, engineering, military & warfare. Instead, imagine questions like: “How many times does the character 城 (cheng) appear in the writings of Mencius? How was it used?”. It also had some unintended consequences:

The exam’s passage rate was so low that thousands of brilliant and capable men were not able to enter into the government. One such man, Hong Xiuquan, came close to passing the 1st stage of the exam on his first attempt at age 19. He studied obsessively for the next three years and took the test again at age 22. After all that effort, his result was worse. Hong’s failure led to a mental breakdown, he saw visions and he ended up starting a revolutionary movement which swept over China - called the Taiping Rebellion. Over 20 million Chinese men, women, and children died in the fighting and several major cities were utterly destroyed (including Nanjing). All because the exam system had such a low passage rate that it excluded many highly talented men. Frustrated but talented men are extremely dangerous, as historians know (see Robespierre, Lenin, Adolph Hitler…).

I feel lucky to have found Tim Urban’s 2007 travel blog of his journeys in Central Asia. It’s the first time I had heard of Buzkashi:

The national sport in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan? Buzkashi. The word “Buzkashi” means, literally, “grabbing the dead goat.” I’ll let the book I read about the region sum it up:
“The day before kickoff the goat carcass has its head, lower legs and entrails removed and is soaked in cold water for 24 hours to toughen it up. The game begins with the carcass in the center of a circle at one end of the field; at the other end is a bunch of wild, adrenaline-crazed horsemen. At a signal it’s every man for himself as they charge for the carcass. The aim is to gain possession of the carcass and carry it up the field and around a post, with the winning rider being the one who finally drops the carcass back in the circle. All the while there’s a frenzied horsebacked tug-of-war going on as each competitor tries to gain possession; smashed noses, wrenched shoulders, and shattered thigh bones are all part of the fun.”

A lot has been said about UK gilt markets from the perspective of policymakers. More interesting was a look from the perspective of the traders themselves.

Instead of top-down centralised government megaprojects requiring widespread grids, African adoption of solar has been driven by modular, distributed, digitally-metered, remotely-monitored, PAYG-financed infrastructure deployed by private companies in competitive markets.

This thorough analysis of Bending Spoons, a really unique European company that is a mix of a startup, conglomerate, and PE firm.

A lot of foreign aid in Western countries (sometimes even the majority) never leaves the host country because it goes to refugees already living there.

I myself am writing a Substack post on the history of 19th century American money, which should be done soon!

Tweets

I’m cautiously optimistic about the EU Commission moving forward with the EU-Inc proposal as a regulation rather than as a directive.

Travis Kalanick bought a backgammon engine company and is looking for a CEO. Last time he did something like this, it became kind of a big deal.

Again from Travis, this tweet explained the actual economics of tipping as a tool for maximising the price paid by consumers.

I’ve been following the ludicrous adventure of an account called KabutoKing, who is trying to collect every 1st edition Kabuto (a Pokémon) card in the world. He’s doing pretty well!

I was very impressed by the huge popularity of Anthropic’s thinking cap handout in London despite it being announced at such short notice.