Friedman’s Oil Test

~ Laura

Thomas Friedman's favorite country, Taiwan, is center stage in his column this week. He writes that countries that have few naturual resources, like Taiwan, are forced to invest in the skills of their people. That's why countries like Japan, India, and Israel have well educated citizens, but countries with large oil supplies and other natural resources have poorly educated citizens. Education later translates into economic success for the entire nation.

Friedman is right about a few things. An educated citizenry is more important than natural resources in creating a wealthy nation. Some countries do invest more in education and have a culture that is oriented toward academic success, while others don't. 

But Friendman is also wrong about other things. First of all, comparing education between countries is tricky. Does the entire population take the test or only an elite group of children? Is the population diverse? Do the schools have a different educational philosphy than the one on the test? 

Some countries, like the US, do a very good job educating one portion of the population, but utterly fail at educating the test. We have oil. So, why do we do a good job with one part of the population and not the other? 

I can't get too annoyed at Friedman though. If fear of becoming obsolete makes us improve our education system, why complain? 

Published by Laura

47 thoughts on “Friedman’s Oil Test”

  1. Steve Sailer has a couple of interesting posts critiquing the idea of a “resource curse.”
    http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-there-such-thing-as-resource-curse.html
    http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/03/occams-butterknife-applied-to-pisa.html
    As he points out, it may be that chaotic, dangerous countries with lots of mineral wealth wind up with economies dependent on that mineral wealth not because of a “resource curse,” but because it’s a heck of a lot easier and safer to stick to resource extraction in that environment . He quotes the following from John Tierney:
    “Resource extraction becomes “the default sector” that still functions after other industries have come to a halt, according to the authors, C. N. Brunnschweiler of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and E.H. Bulte of the Oxford Center for the Study of Resource-Rich Economies.
    They find that the curse vanishes when they look not at the relative importance of resource exports in the economy but rather at a different measure: the relative abundance of natural resources in the ground. Using that variable to compare countries, they report that resource wealth correlates with slightly higher economic growth and slightly fewer armed conflicts.”
    Russia is one of the traditional examples for the “resource curse” and I think there is some truth to it (because of Russia’s oil wealth, its leadership can get away with a lot of mismanagement in other areas), but Sailer notes that Russia (a resource-rich country) actually outscores Israel (a resource-poor country). It’s probably also true, though, that the cultural factors that make Russia an academic powerhouse (smart Russians are very smart) pre-date its role as a petro-power.

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  2. Russia has tremendous amounts of STEM talent and social capital and has very impressive research achievements in those areas. There are lots of people from Russia who have done very well in the US in computer science (for instance Google’s Sergei Brin). However, you really would have to think twice before doing something like trying to start the next Google in Russia itself. The business environment is tricky, to put it mildly. (At least back in 90s when I lived there, going into business was literally taking your life in your hands. Things have settled down a bit, but it’s still a very difficult environment to navigate.)

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  3. Given that Steve Sailer is a pretty vile racists I’d not want to spend any time on his site (and given that John Tierney is, frankly, an idiot, I’d not want to take anything he says as right, either) but there are other reasons to wonder about what Friedman says. (That’s beyond the fact that Friedman, too, is pretty dumb and more likely wrong than right most of the time. Just look at Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Norway is a resource-rich state and Sweden and Finland are not. But I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find any very significant differences between the three education-wise. There are other examples, too. So, basically, at best, Friedman is doing what he normally does- making things up or wildly over-simplifying. Really, he’s better to ignore. Just because he writes for the New York Times doesn’t mean that he’s not an idiot. He doesn’t deserve your attention. Even when he’s right, it’s likely to be accidental.

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  4. I find the whole “unclean, unclean!” method of ruling people out-of-bounds very tiresome and intellectually stunting, especially when they happen to be correct about something. Sailer has some very interesting and original ideas, he’s sometimes wrong but always fearless, and lots of more “respectable” people rather obviously borrow his ideas. Given that he’s metaphorically speaking the gal that guys take out but don’t want to be seen with, I think he should get credit when he’s right.
    Norway does have somewhat less good education results, which comes up in comparisons with Finland, which is the trendy education system du jour for education.

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  5. But the point that certain types of punditry lends itself to big ideas built on shifting sands is a valid one. People like Friedman, Brooks, Tierney, Krugman have the job of coming up with 500-1000 words that expresses a big idea usually based on very weak data, and they need to come up with big ideas on a pretty regular basis. It’s not surprising that the strength of their ideas is not very supported by the data (that they’re more vague guesses of something someone could try to figure out, and in some cases actually has tried to figure out and found untrue).
    I don’t know the substance of good and bad resource management, but my first thought was also to wonder whether there were examples of countries that were managing resources in ways that benefit their population educationally.

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  6. I don’t think it’s properly thought of as “fearless” to argue that blacks and Hispanics are genetically inferior, and that this explains their lower social status, as does Sailer. (Nor to think that this implies that we should exclude Hispanics from immigrating to the US because of their supposed genetic inferiority.) He’s shown himself to be immune to evidence on this issue repeatedly, even on pretty clear cases. Given that, and given how important that issue is, I don’t think he’s worth considering. Plus, this sort of stuff tends to seep in to his views all over. Unless you are sympathetic to the idea that blacks and Hispanics are genetically inferior, there’s really no reason to go to him as a source. He’s not a real expert, and there are better people to look at. He doesn’t deserve the legitimation.
    (The difference between Krugman, on the one hand, and Friedman, Brooks, and Tierney on the other, is that Krugman has an independent knowledge-base to draw from, and we have independent reason to think he’s pretty smart. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t sometimes get things wrong or over-simplify in his writings, of course, but it’s still much better than we can say of Friedman, Brooks, or Tierney, none of whom have any independent claim to intellectual authority and who draw from no knowledge-base. That ought to make us much more skeptical of their claims, and that seems to be born out in all of them.)

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  7. As far as Sailer being ‘fearless’, well, he is certainly brave enough to stand up to the knowledge that he’ll be declared beyond the pale by Matt. And lots of other correct thinkers. That takes a certain amount of courage. I’m with AmyP – Sailer is consistently interesting, he reports what he sees. I read him regularly, and think I get more from him than from more emollient writers.

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  8. Apparently, this question has come up before. On Google, you only need type “Is Steve Sai” before autocomplete finishes with “ler a racist.”

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  9. “Krugman has an independent knowledge-base to draw from, and we have independent reason to think he’s pretty smart.”
    Krugman’s popular work has really deteriorated over the last few years and a lot of things he says today contradicts stuff either in his older articles or his own textbook. It’s like a lot of his stuff is written by a much less smart person than he used to be. (My favorite example was the recent episode when he was comparing test scares in Wisconsin to test scores in Texas, without accounting for differences in racial/ethnic composition of the two states. That’s an amateurish mistake that almost nobody here would have made.) I don’t know what to attribute it to–either the mental decline that seems to strike a lot of men his age, partisanship that’s destroying his fairness and intellectual honesty, or perhaps just heavy use of ghost writer help. (Krugman and his wife have mentioned that she contributes much of the partisan stuff in his columns. Needless to say, she does not have a Nobel Prize in economics.)
    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/01/100301fa_fact_macfarquhar

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  10. I find the whole “unclean, unclean!” method of ruling people out-of-bounds very tiresome and intellectually stunting, especially when they happen to be correct about something.
    My grandfather LOVED “All In The Family” and thought Archie Bunker was right about absolutely everything except for his unfortunate and unfounded prejudice against Jews. Now THERE was an intellectually stunted man.
    So, in honor of my grandfather, Alav Hashalom, I’m happy to put aside Steve Sailer’s occasional racist rants and consider the value of his independent arguments on the merits when he says that Nigeria is just like all the other black African countries, Venezuela is just like all the other Hispanic South American countries, and that he’s going to have to hedge his bets a little because he hasn’t decided whether the Slavs of Russia and the Jews of Israel qualify as More White.
    I’ll get back to you when I’m done giving it all the consideration I think it deserves . . .

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  11. I’m trying to make a systematic comparison. For example, you have to type “Is the po” before you get “pe Catholic” added for you. If you want to find “Don’t give a damn about the whole state of Michigan,” you need to type clear to the first letter of ‘the.’

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  12. “Nigeria is just like all the other black African countries, Venezuela is just like all the other Hispanic South American countries, and that he’s going to have to hedge his bets a little because he hasn’t decided whether the Slavs of Russia and the Jews of Israel qualify as More White.”
    You got quotes for that? I read Sailer pretty regularly, and that doesn’t sound anything like him.
    Now, back to the question of the existence or non-existence of a resource curse. Any thoughts?

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  13. What I see here is evidence that a lot of 11D regulars (‘levenders’?) read Sailer regularly. For some, it is a guilty pleasure. Others of us are unrepentant. Sailer himself has noted that ideas he has floated regularly appear in David Brooks after a few weeks…

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  15. Bill James had an interesting line many years ago about some of the roster and lineup decisions Billy Martin would make: James said it was as if Martin would conspicuously “crumple up the stat sheets and toss them in the garbage for the reporters to see, and once the reporters left the room, he’d dig them out and look at them.” I think there are many “respectable” types who treat Sailer the way Martin allegedly treated the stat sheets. (Feel free to do the same, Laura.)

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  16. Hey, I hadn’t read him before either. I just read Amy’s links, which said:
    “Venezuela isn’t a whole lot different from Guyana or Colombia or Ecuador, and Nigeria isn’t that different from Cameroon or Benin. It’s just that the countries with oil attract more publicity.”
    and
    “Actually, Israel’s overall PISA scores are mediocre. Israel does worse on the PISA than Russia, which has a resource-driven economy. Israel has a smart fraction, definitely, but even that doesn’t appear to be all that spectacular according to what PISA measured. (This may say more about limitations in PISA than about Israel.)”
    He doesn’t explain what makes the African countries not “a whole lot different” or why a lower score for Israel may be a limitation in the test rather than the country. But if you are reading him, he doesn’t have to because, well, you know . . .

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  18. That doesn’t actually seem racist.
    It wouldn’t if it were in any relevant sense true. Just to pick one example (Nigeria and Benin) in the context of the resource curse:
    Nigeria’s GDP per capita is 2.5 times higher than Benin’s (because it has oil, which is the point). One might think that this would make Nigeria a nicer place to live.
    On the other hand, it’s population is 2.5 times as dense. Nigeria is more urban and Benin more rural. Nigeria is half Christian and half Muslim, and a former British Colony. Benin is 1/4 each with the other half being a lot of people practicing local religions, and was a former French colony.
    And, in results, Nigeria has a life expectancy of 47 years, compared to Benin’s 59 years. Benin is significantly higher on most charts of things like Press Freedom and Quality of Life.
    One might look at that difference and wonder, “Hey, is there some sort of a resource curse? Why is Benin so much better off, despite Nigeria having all the money?”
    Sailer does not. And one is challenged to come up with any relevant factor at all in which “Nigeria isn’t that different from . . . Benin” if he means anything other than “they are both filled with black people.”

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  19. (This may say more about limitations in PISA than about Israel.)”
    This would be the classic recourse of ideologues (and I use the word broadly to mean anyone who has a non-data driven hypothesis) — to deny the value of a test or measurement instrument when it doesn’t give you the answer that you want to prove your “idea.”
    I agree that Krugman is not in the same category as Brooks, Friedman, Tierney (Krauthammer, Will?) when he is talking about his area of expertise (financial markets, and sometimes more generally about economics). However, he does saddle the fence, and though his expertise is undeniable, it is still possible for someone like him to become a crank. I think he occasionally crosses over into punditry land.
    I like the DenialismBlog as a short hand to when a debate or proposal or idea isn’t really an idea:
    “Five general tactics are used by denialists to sow confusion. They are conspiracy, selectivity (cherry-picking), fake experts, impossible expectations (also known as moving goalposts), and general fallacies of logic.”

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  22. If not caring about that level of detail in Africa is racist, nearly the whole U.S. is racist.
    I’m not disagreeing.
    On the other hand, not caring about that level of detail is a lot different from positively asserting, “Your statement about why Nigeria is worse off is false because, in fact, it is very similar in relevant ways to Benin.”

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  23. True, but I’m pointing out that lumping every country with a per capita GNP of less than $4,000 together as “too poor to contemplate” isn’t entirely unreasonable.

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  24. Under that definition, half of the countries in the world are “too poor to contemplate.”
    Which is fine. Don’t contemplate them. But if you are going to contemplate them enough to write a blog post about them, you should contemplate that the global poverty markers are set at $1.25 per day and $2.00 per day, and that under those sub-$4000 markers, Benin has 47%/75% living poverty and Nigeria has 64%/84% living in poverty. A huge difference considering the difference in GDP.
    Meanwhile, on similar measures, Venezuela ($12K GDP) is actually a lot better off than Guyana ($7K) (and both are above $4,000!) Venezuela’s GDP per capita is the same as Romania’s and Iran’s, and maybe a comparison there would be worthwhile. Is Venezuela a point against the resource curse because it’s people are better off than Guyana’s? Or in favor because its people are worse off than Romania’s?
    One might have an interesting debate over the resource curse by looking at questions like this. Instead, we get “Venezuela isn’t a whole lot different from Guyana” which is both untrue and untrue in the direction that a person who thinks all Latin Americans are the same would believe.

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  26. Hitler considered Romania to be a “Latin” country.
    Let the record show, your honor, that I was not the first person to bring the Fuhrer into a conversation about Steve Sailer!
    However, now that you mention it, a relevant distinction between the two was that one foresaw a future with a white master caste and a beige servant caste, and the other was Adolph Hitler.

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  27. We had a Romanian au pair once. Romanians consider Romania to be a Latin country. Not that I’m trying to make Hitler look wise, or anything…

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  28. Romania is near the bottom of this amusing chart.
    Also, I know I’ve said here several times that friends don’t let friends read David Brooks. Just in case you don’t have “Boo-Boos in Paradise” handy, here’s the indispensable link. Brooks is a bullshitter through and through.

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  29. The most telling thing about that chart is the omission of any chart with both Britain and a mainland country. Also, Albania is refreshingly honest.

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  31. The only Romanian I’ve ever had a substantive conversation with was a man who approached me as I was eating in a cafeteria to let me know that “Romanians were Aryans too” and that their status as members of the master race should be duly noted for “next time.” He then helpfully pointed out that Scandinavian social democracy was ruining Nordic genes by making them all soft and squishy, and if I wanted my children to be ubermenschen, I should start doing pushups and invading Poland and stuff.
    Anyways, the moral of the story is, avoid conversations with people with hitler mustaches (like this man had.)

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  32. I should start doing pushups and invading Poland and stuff
    All the Crossfit stuff is very trendy now.

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  33. I am thinking that the fact that almost no Americans who read blogs can be bothered to contemplate poor countries might explain why my blog has so few readers.

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  34. JOtto, I read your blog fairly regularly. Much of it is interesting, I don’t care about local food vendors, though.

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  36. Jotto’s in GHANA, not GUYANA. Pay Attention! If he were in Guyana, you could make Kool-Aid jokes. As it is, you are stuck with Jerry Rawlings.

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  38. It’s also a little bit racist.
    The guys at The Exile were probably unusually hungover that day. Otherwise it would have been a whole lot racist, as was their wont.
    (Further: obligatory Guyana song)

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  39. Much of Guyana’s population is of African descent with the remainder being of East Indian heritage. So it is considerably different than most of South America and closer to the West Indies. But, Ghana is quite clearly in Africa. In the 1980s Americans had a lot of interest in Africa. I wonder what happened?

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  40. . In the 1980s Americans had a lot of interest in Africa. I wonder what happened?
    The end of the cold war and competition for “friendly” countries with the Soviet Union? I’m not sure if this was a real question or not, but I strongly suspect that’s most of the answer.

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  41. I am not talking about the US government, but popular culture. In the middle of the 1980s there was a lot of sampling of African culture in the US, particularly with regards to music. That interest seems to have dried up.

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  42. It’s also a little bit racist.
    (Further: obligatory Guyana song)

    See, now I have “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” from Avenue Q in my head, with the little personal addendum “but not quite as racist as Steve Sailer.”

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  43. I am not talking about the US government, but popular culture. In the middle of the 1980s there was a lot of sampling of African culture in the US,
    I suspect that there’s a lot of connection between government interest in some region and a more general interest in it, for a number of reasons- visibility on the news, funds made available for exchange programs, whether language teaching for the region is funded or not (lots of that came from state department or defense department funding), grants for researchers that then teach classes that interest students or that write books or do documentaries, and so on. Some of this is weird stuff- think of the CIA promoting abstract expressionism in Europe during the cold war, as an alternative to Soviet Realism. But a lot of it is just that, if the government is interested in an area, there is money for activities and this in turn produces a more general interest. It doesn’t explain everything, obviously, but I think it’s pretty important.

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  46. Since Moscow is six or seven hours in the future, I think Doug might know more about teleology than I do. So I’m just going to be happy I live somewhere where the racists and the liars can have $2.50 pints and public drunk transportation.

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