>Doug is right IMHO. Canada and Australia are the best examples of
>what could have happened with Argentina if we were not a semicolony,
>such as we are. There were wild dreams in Argentina during the 1890s
>and 1900s, but the disease was there...
But what in h*** was the disease. Canada, Australia, Argentina--three
resource-based agricultural export-based European settler economies,
all of them dependent on British capital, all of them becoming
enormously rich at the end of the nineteenth century because of
falling transport costs, high domestic productivity, and Europe's
enormous and growing demand for agricultural goods.
All face the problem of dealing with an unstable world economy while
still being dependent on foreign capital, and all face the problem of
turning agricultural resource-based wealth into human skill- and
capital-based wealth. All three appear to be succeeding: B.A. was
perhaps thirteenth among cities of the world in telephones per capita
in 1913. Argentina was fifth in the world in automobiles per capita
in 1929.
Yet then things fall apart. The two *real* British colonies continue
to grow rapidly. The semi-colony--in spite of what one would think of
as the advantages of independence--does not...
I don't understand this. And this frustrates me enmormously...
Brad DeLong
