How Asia Works

But most services require goods or people to travel in two directions, adding time and cost.

In short, productivity gains in services are inherently slower than in manufacturing because there is greater dependence in the former on people and on enhancing human skills

See Klaus Deininger and Lyn Squire, ‘New Ways of Looking at Old Issues: Inequality and Growth’, Journal of Development Economics, vol. 57, no.

‘They are city states,’ writes Wade, ‘and not to be treated as economic countries.’

Freund concludes: ‘Peasants were actually more productive in per-acre use of the land.’

Or as Deininger puts it: ‘there is a strong negative relationship between initial inequality in asset [land] distribution and long-term growth’ and ‘inequality [in land distribution] reduces income growth for the poor, but not for the rich’.

Once again: there is no significant economy that has developed successfully through policies of free trade and deregulation from the get-go.

From micro interventions, however, economic miracles will not spring.

Economic development is only one part of a society’s development. The other parts, to do with freedom and the rights of the individual, are no less important

Far better to take a page out of Park Chung Hee or contemporary China’s book: make public pronouncements about the importance of free markets, and then go quietly about your dirigiste business.