Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Catching-up from Way Behind. A Third World Perspective on First World History
- Chapter 2 Recent Trends in Economic Theory — Implications for Development Geography
- Chapter 3 A Schumpeterian Theory of Underdevelopment - A Contradiction in Terms?
- Chapter 4 Competitiveness and Its Predecessors - A 500-Year Cross-national Perspective
- Chapter 5 Diminishing Returns and Economic Sustainability: The Dilemma of Resource-based Economies under a Free Trade Regime
- Chapter 6 Economics: ‘The Dismal Science’ or ‘The Never-ending Frontier of Knowledge’? On Technology, Energy and Economic Welfare
- Chapter 7 Production Capitalism vs. Financial Capitalism – Symbiosis and Parasitism. An Evolutionary Perspective and Bibliography
- Chapter 8 Globalization in the Periphery as a Morgenthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s
- Chapter 9 Increasing Poverty in a Globalized World: Marshall Plans and Morgenthau Plans as Mechanisms of Polarization of World Incomes
- Chapter 10 An Early National Innovation System: The Case of Antonio Serra’s 1613 Breve Trattato
- Chapter 11 Innovation Systems of the Past: Modern Nation-States in a Historical Perspective. The Role of Innovations and of Systemic Effects in Economic Thought and Policy
- Chapter 12 The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics
- Chapter 13 Benchmarking Success: The Dutch Republic (1500–1750) as Seen by Contemporary European Economists
- Chapter 14 Mercantilism and Economic Development: Schumpeterian Dynamics, Institution Building and International Benchmarking
- Chapter 15 Development and Social Goals: Balancing Aid and Development to Prevent ‘Welfare Colonialism’
Chapter 8 - Globalization in the Periphery as a Morgenthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2024
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Catching-up from Way Behind. A Third World Perspective on First World History
- Chapter 2 Recent Trends in Economic Theory — Implications for Development Geography
- Chapter 3 A Schumpeterian Theory of Underdevelopment - A Contradiction in Terms?
- Chapter 4 Competitiveness and Its Predecessors - A 500-Year Cross-national Perspective
- Chapter 5 Diminishing Returns and Economic Sustainability: The Dilemma of Resource-based Economies under a Free Trade Regime
- Chapter 6 Economics: ‘The Dismal Science’ or ‘The Never-ending Frontier of Knowledge’? On Technology, Energy and Economic Welfare
- Chapter 7 Production Capitalism vs. Financial Capitalism – Symbiosis and Parasitism. An Evolutionary Perspective and Bibliography
- Chapter 8 Globalization in the Periphery as a Morgenthau Plan: The Underdevelopment of Mongolia in the 1990s
- Chapter 9 Increasing Poverty in a Globalized World: Marshall Plans and Morgenthau Plans as Mechanisms of Polarization of World Incomes
- Chapter 10 An Early National Innovation System: The Case of Antonio Serra’s 1613 Breve Trattato
- Chapter 11 Innovation Systems of the Past: Modern Nation-States in a Historical Perspective. The Role of Innovations and of Systemic Effects in Economic Thought and Policy
- Chapter 12 The Other Canon: The History of Renaissance Economics
- Chapter 13 Benchmarking Success: The Dutch Republic (1500–1750) as Seen by Contemporary European Economists
- Chapter 14 Mercantilism and Economic Development: Schumpeterian Dynamics, Institution Building and International Benchmarking
- Chapter 15 Development and Social Goals: Balancing Aid and Development to Prevent ‘Welfare Colonialism’
Summary
‘I apprehend [the elimination of diminishing returns] to be not only an error, but the most serious one, to be found in the whole field of political economy. The question is more important and fundamental than any other; it involves the whole subject of the causes of poverty … and unless this matter be thoroughly understood, it is to no purpose proceeding any further in our inquiry.’
(Mill 1848)‘Woe to the vanquished’ – a saying of the ancient Romans – came to mind when I attended a conference in the Mongolian Parliament building in March 2000. As the only non-Asian I participated in a forum addressing the severe economic problems of the country. The local newspapers vividly reported that not far away from the snug heat of Parliament, an estimated 2 million animals pasturing on the plains were starving to death in the bitter cold. Permanent desertification threatened the country, and it was clear that this disaster was manmade. What was not reported was the important fact that the 2 million animals dying during the winter of 1999–2000 were only the increase in the animal population over the previous two or three years. The fundamental cause of the disaster was the same type of diminishing returns that has afflicted mankind since biblical times: too much economic pressure on one factor of production, land, the supply of which was fixed. Rooted in this phenomenon, vicious circles of poverty were already well established.
In terms of economic theory, the Mongolian situation takes us back to economics as the ‘dismal science’, to Thomas Malthus (1820), John Stuart Mill (1848) and even Alfred Marshall (1890). In spite of the recurrence and description of these phenomena since the biblical Genesis, the mechanisms at work in Mongolia during the 1990s apparently were not recognized, even when the disaster was a consummated fact. The underlying cause was clearly not global warming, as the Western press reported.
The more I studied Mongolia in the months that followed, the clearer it became that this nation, vanquished in the Cold War, for all practical purposes was being subjected to a Morgenthau Plan (Morgenthau 1945).
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- The Other Canon of EconomicsEssays in the Theory and History of Uneven Economic Development, pp. 215 - 260Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2024