[esturk]

Have you considered that Laos is the way it is because of its past history and geographical location? For one, it's the most heavily bombed nation in the world per capita (done by America during the Vietnam War)? [1]

It isn't easy to develop a country that is so severely set back by war. Especially without outside help and/or investment.

Laos also isn't getting the same attention as its neighbors like Thailand and Vietnam by the West almost as if it holds no strategic value to the West.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance#Laos

[jahewson]

Every place is the way it is because of its past history and geographical location.

[rayiner]

> Laos also isn't getting the same attention as its neighbors like Thailand and Vietnam by the West almost as if it holds no strategic value to the West.

This is a really offensive mindset. As if developing countries can only progress by getting "attention ... from the west." Thailand and Vietnam haven't been getting "attention ... from the west" because of their "strategic value" or any special humanitarian concerns. It's because those countries have been building up their financial systems and industry. And countries in this region are progressing by aligning with Russia and China often in opposition to what Western countries would want.

[esturk]

Apparently, you disregarded the entire first part of my point which was that they were bombed so heavily that set them back decades. They need outside investment to jump start development. Just like Japan and Germany did after WW2.

You speak as if Thailand and Vietnam didn't hold important geopolitical values that the West and China want to exploit which makes them attractive to investments.

Those same countries still need to court outside investments to build out infrastructure and industries like recent efforts to move manufacturing to southeast Asia.

[gedy]

I think we need to quit blaming the utter failure of communist systems and corruption on "American bombs" 50 years ago.

[wolverine876]

How long do the effects of warfare last, particularly in a poor country?

[pr0zac]

I'm not exactly a fan of authoritarian communism but the point you're trying to make here fails considering Vietnam, one of the countries used as a successful example, has the exact same governing system as Laos.

Also the point made that the main difference between which countries recover and which don't post-war is whether they receive economic investment doesn't seem to be relevant to communism or who exactly did the previous bombing at all.

[wolverine876]

Beyond a doubt, political, economic, and military support (including access to major international markets), from from the wealthy countries of the world has a major impact on development, and opposition from the same can crush development. Since the Cold War, over 30 years ago, the great majority of wealth and power has been in the democratic, capitalist countries. Russia is a shell, and China only recently has enough money to become an economic force (though they've politically alienated most of their neighbors).

In particular, Thailand has long been tied to the US, and Vietnam is to a signiicant degree aligning with the US as protection from China. They also have other relationships, of course.

If the merits are so strong in your argument, why this tired sophistry of victimhood, and attacking the parent comment?

[fnordpiglet]

That’s one of their problems. But if you’ve visited the real problems are very apparent, and they start with their form of highly corrupt communism and hostility to the outside world. It’s not getting the attention from the west because the government is highly insular. Being the most efficient route to China and between Vietnam and Thailand makes it very strategically important, and China is probably more responsible for the state of Laos than anywhere else. It’s very much in their interest the west has no toe hold there, and that it stay effectively a vassal state dependent on their patronage.

[jimkleiber]

Just one thing to note, I'm sure among many: if I lived in a place they got bombed so much by outsiders, I'd probably become insular and hostile to outsiders.

Not saying I think they should stay that way, but maybe just adding one perspective on why they might feel that way.

[fnordpiglet]

In my time in Laos the people were incredibly welcoming and open to foreigners. I spent most my time around Paxe which is very rural, but also around the most intense American involvement as well. It may be different further north near the capital but there was a lot less bombing and special forces counter insurgency. I think, while not justifying anything, it’s really important to note that the Chinese and north Vietnamese had invaded Laos and were actively destabilizing the government and led to its collapse, as well as invited the American bombing campaigns that were focused on north Vietnamese captured territories. It’s easy to lay the blame on the US, but it’s not like China wasn’t directly responsible for drawing Laos into that position by force through the north Vietnamese proxy. The US tried to keep the central government of Laos from collapsing while China actively subverted it and installed the government they have today. Prior to French colonialism China pillaged Laos ransacking and razing their cities repeatedly to the point of causing a significant labor shortage in Laos. France tried to solve this through forced migrations from Vietnam to Laos to repopulate the country, leading to further instability. So - it’s not just the bombing, it’s a major confluence of really shitty behavior by a lot of people over Laos primarily because of its strategic importance, but if I were to lay blame on an outsider for their problems, I would place it entirely on China. Laos has been a pawn in chinas ambition for hundreds of years and it has it under complete control and subjugation at this point in time. Finally I would note almost all the bombing happened in very sparsely populated areas. It’s not like Europe or Japan where it was a wholesale bombing of major population centers. There were no dresdens, no nagasakis, fire bombings of Tokyo - all of which happened to countries that have embraced the world outside them.

[wolverine876]

Thank you for your experience and perspective

> In my time in Laos the people were incredibly welcoming and open to foreigners.

We need to be cognizant that often they have little choice. We have all the power and money. The economic disparities, as I'm sure you noticed, are hard to concieve without witnessing them.

[fnordpiglet]

It wasn’t about money or power. They were just extremely friendly people. In fact when I would get over charged for things the Laotian people would grow irate with the business operator because it was unfair.

[jimkleiber]

I really appreciate you writing this and giving me not context to what happened—thank you.

[WalterBright]

Japan and Germany were both bombed flat in WW2. Their recovery was based on turning to free markets.

[dredmorbius]

And $173 billion (current equivalent) in aid, in Europe alone:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan>

Japan's recovery benefitted as well from US post-war assistance, though also from a deliberate government-led economic policy as well.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle>

[WalterBright]

Much larger MP sums were given to Britain and France than Germany, and only Germany had the miracle. From your link.

[pyrale]

> only Germany had the miracle. From your link.

You're aware that there was no actual "miracle", right? It's just a name given to an economic boom, which France and Britain also experienced, under different names (golden age for the UK, trente glorieuses for France).

[WalterBright]

The German Miracle was far more than what happened in France and Britain.

[wolverine876]

Evidence? Aren't France and Britain also free market economies? And didn't Germany start from a lower point?

[dredmorbius]

The miracle in France is called the Trente Glorieuses, "a thirty-year period of economic growth in France between 1945 and 1975, following the end of the Second World War":

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses>

Germany and Japan both benefitted by the fact that their extant infrastructure and owners were demolished, removed, and/or financially wiped out by the war and/or the ensuing occupation and denazification / deimperilisation (in Germany and Japan respectively), which removed ownership-based objections to new development and investment --- think NIMBYism, but on steroids.

There's an article I've mentioned and submitted to HN numerous times, Bernhard J. Stern's "Resistances to the Adoption of Technological Innovations" (1937). I'd first heard of it through Isaac Asimov who was a research assistant for Stern whilst a student at Columbia.

<https://archive.org/details/technologicaltre1937unitrich/pag...>

As markdown: <https://rentry.co/szi3g>

The piece looks at the innate opposition to technological (and economic) innovations and advance largely from extant established interests, in the areas of transportation, communication, power, metals, textiles, agriculture, and construction.

Something I've noticed in looking at development is that greenfield projects* in which there is no extant political, social, and economic power structure to present an opposition move far faster than those with a well-developed set of independent agents. This is highly pronounced in transportation, where initial route deployment occurs through undeveloped lands. As the transportation itself induces further development, commerce, residences, industry, etc., those interests themselves impose high frictions and costs on further development.

To put it another way, simply following financial amounts hugely distorts understanding of the impact of assistance. Money spent in Germany and Japan (both physically, politically, and financially devastated by World War II) went far further than equivalent sums in either occupied but victorious regions (e.g., France) or unoccupied victors (e.g., UK).

It's interesting to note that high-speed rail (HSR) development has proceeded most rapidly in regions either strongly disrupted by WWII, or in which industrialisation is now occurring for the first time to any significant degree: Japan, France, Germany, and China most notably. HSR's failure-to-launch in the US is attributable in large part to resistance from regional airlines (SouthWest most notably for the proposed "Texas Triangle" routes), and high land costs and dense extant development (both East and West coast projects).

Single-factor explanations are of course limited. Italy (defeated and occupied) did not see the same post-war rebound as its Axis allies Germany and Japan did, though it did of course grow. The Eastern Bloc similarly lagged, likely for other reasons (though it also often saw a far more rapid initial response, see notably North and South Korea's respective development following the 1953 armistice, with the North greatly outpacing the South).

[iamerroragent]

They were both administrated by the U.S./Western powers for quite some time were they not?

I'm pretty damn sure they weren't exactly given a choice.

[WalterBright]

The US initially ruled Japan's economy via leftist academics. The economy remained flat, until the leftists were removed and the free market was allowed to revive.

Yes, the US administered Japan for a while, and along with the USSR, GB and F administered Germany. I don't know at what point they turned it over to the Germans, but Germany's government was a free market one until 1970, when they took a sharp left turn.

The more recent attempts by the US to administer Iraq and Afghanistan were total failures. It would be interesting to see why those failed and the Japanese/German occupations were successful.

(Of course I know that the USSR didn't turn over the Soviet sector until 1989.)

[morsch]

Laos is smaller in area and still had more ordnance dropped on it than Germany. And Germany was a highly developed country before the war, despite heavy bombing, there was a lot of infrastructure remaining.

Germany in the fifties and sixties was governed by Germany's center right party, CDU. But the CDU of the fifties was in many ways more "leftist" (a word best dropped from polite conversation) than today's center left SPD. Their 1947 policy conference was headlined as "overcoming capitalism and marxism"[1] and was quite left wing. It was pared down a few years later, but it's had a lasting impact.

The seventies brought political changes, but it doesn't seem accurate to describe them as a sharp left turn in terms of economics. It remained a free market social democracy, there was no discontinuity there. Foreign policy changes, and a sort of grudging reflection of the cultural changes of the sixties were much more important, or at least are more well remembered.

[1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahlener_Programm

[WalterBright]

> there was a lot of infrastructure remaining

Are you sure about that? Everything was destroyed, because the RAF and the USAAF bombed everything day and night for years. They quite literally tried to bomb Germany and Japan back into the stone age. About every city in Japan was firebombed to ashes.

And the German men were killed. Millions died of starvation after the war ended.

What was different with Germany (and Japan) was - free markets. You can see this starkly in the different fortunes of East and West Germany. The first was under communism, the second under free markets.

Free markets pretty much don't exist in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Laos. Adding money to unfree markets just disappears.

History shows us in country after country after country, free markets leads to prosperity, leftism leads to poverty.

[morsch]

Yes, I'm sure about that. Let's take a famous example, Dresden[1]: after the bombings, most industry was still standing (though not operating), 50+% of living quarters were left, 70% of retail was still operating; rudimentary civilian rail operations were resumed after two weeks, military rail operation resumed within days.

And while some areas were partially destroyed, once you move into the suburbs not to mention the rural areas, everything was left standing. And even where there was rubble, under the rubble were roads and within the rubble were bricks.

They may have tried to bomb Germany back to the stone age, but they couldn't; from what was recently posted here, they probably realized this, but they did try to bomb the population into submission[2], which also didn't work, it's just a war crime.

Millions of Germans did not die of starvation after the war, though hundreds of thousands died of starvation and exposure in 1946/47, which was the harshest winter of the 20th century. I'm not sure how that jives with your whole free market thing; but like I said, Germany in the fifties wasn't the libertarian utopia you make it out to be, so that's probably why people died.

Edit: Let me hasten to add that I don't want to minimize the impact bombing campaigns have on cities and countries. Tens of thousands of people died in Dresden. We still dig out unexploded ordnance where I live, 80 years after the fact. I'm just saying that a lot of infrastructure remained. Germany after the war probably had more infrastructure left standing than Laos did before the war.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftangriffe_auf_Dresden

[2] https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...

[wolverine876]

You keep saying it, but no evidence.

[wolverine876]

> The US initially ruled Japan's economy via leftist academics. The economy remained flat, until the leftists were removed and the free market was allowed to revive.

Do you have any evidence of this stuff? Maybe it was flat because they were bombed to hell, untold number of dead (especially productive age males), etc etc. Who could possibly expect lots of economic activity in Japan immediately after the war?

[imtringued]

>I don't know at what point they turned it over to the Germans, but Germany's government was a free market one until 1970, when they took a sharp left turn.

You are getting your history exactly backwards. Post war Germany was ordoliberal aka "sharp left" until the 70s and neoliberal aka "sharp right" after that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordoliberalism

[wolverine876]

Is there any basis for pointing to free markets as opposed to every other factor? Other than free market fantasy?

We occupied and ran the countries for a decade, and funded, rebuilt, and defended them. Most of all, they were first-world economies before the war; Germany was probably the world center of intellect and culture. And they retained all those skills (though many leading pre-war intellects moved to the US), just not the infrastructure.

It's a bit different for Laos!

[bilbo0s]

Meh.

I'm not going to count Japan and Germany since there is that little "Marshall Plan" detail that, at least as I understand it, may have had some small influence on their development. [end sarcasm]

No seriously, how can you make that statement and not mention the billions on billions of dollars they were given in aid? That's the height of intellectual dishonesty bro.

[Jensson]

Billions of dollars have been given in aid to Vietnam and similar as well. The Marshall plan isn't an outlier in size, most poor countries have been given more, the only special thing about the Marshall plan is that it was successful not that it was a large amount.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Vietnam/foreign_aid/

[rayiner]

Fun fact: the Marshall Plan was about $150 billion in today's money, for all of Europe. It was nice, but let's not overstate the significance. The U.S. spent $145 billion on nation building (that doesn't count the war effort) in Afghanistan and accomplished fuck-all.

[WalterBright]

Because far more billions in MP were given to Britain and France, who did not have an economic miracle. Britain was also far far less devastated than Germany was.

You might also consider the hundreds of billions spent trying to develop Iraq and Afghanistan, to little visible effect.

[inglor_cz]

"billions on billions of dollars" can be squandered in their totality by corrupt elites and not be of any use to the nation at all. Just look at all the superwealthy authoritarians in Africa.

And you do not even have to look at Africa and squandered aid. Russia has enormous revenues from its natural resources, but the money ends up in yet more oligarch yachts and gigantic Putinopolises on the Black Sea coast, while random Russian soldiers loot toilet bowls and the Russian army is so decrepit that it cannot capture a city somewhat larger than Bangor, Maine after several months of battle.

I mean, the last effect is actually beneficial to us, but still, it nicely illustrates the point about billions being to no use if they are stolen.