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Literacy
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Literacy

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Veliky Novgorod 2018
•�August 4, 2019
•�4,400 Words •�129 Comments
The city of Novgorod has played a central role in the emergence of the Russian state since its founding in 862, as per the Primary Chronicle. That was the approximate date of the appearance of the first settlement at Rurikovo Gorodishche, around 2 km south of the present day city: "And so Rurik acquired sole... Read More
Human Capital in Early Modern Poland and Russia
•�February 22, 2019
•�1,500 Words •�33 Comments
There have been some recent debates on this blog's comments threads about human capital in Poland, Russia, and the West Russian lands while they were under Polish rule. While there is a consensus that Poland was more intellectually advanced than Russia, at least during the 17th century, the relative position of the Ukraine and Belorussia... Read More
Regional Literacy in Late Tsarist Russia Predicts 21st Century Average IQ
•�February 5, 2016
•�1,800 Words •�112 Comments
Prolific IQ researcher Richard Lynn together with two Russian collaborators have recently published arguing that multiple aspects of socio-economic development - infant mortality, fertility, stature, and literacy-as-a-proxy for intelligence were significantly intercorrelated in late Tsarist Russia. Here is the link to the paper - Regional differences in intelligence, infant mortality, stature and fertility in European... Read More
Protestantism and the Financially Literate Ethic
•�November 23, 2015
•�1,200 Words •�17 Comments
According to a recent n=150,000 global survey by Gallup and S&P, there is an astounding lack of financial literacy in the world. To gauge financial literacy, they asked a series of four questions on basic financial concepts such as risk diversification, inflation, simple interest, and compound interest. They were very simple and typically only had... Read More
On Defending the Soviet Union
•�July 12, 2012
•�1,100 Words •�197 Comments
Contrary to what some might try to take from my post on the longterm failure of the Soviet economy, I am not an anti-Soviet ideologue. I loathe lies about its achievements and the blanket condemnations directed its way by moralistic poseurs every bit as much or more than I detest reality-challenged attempts to paint it... Read More
The Soviet Economy - Charting Failure
•�June 22, 2012
•�1,600 Words •�143 Comments
Many Communists, leftists, and even patriots (I'm sorry to say) have a pronounced tendency to make out the Soviet economy as not quite the resounding failure it really was - or even to paint it as a success story that was only brought down by perestroika and liberal reforms. The above chart - based on... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth III
•�February 25, 2012
•�2,800 Words •�20 Comments
Just in case you thought the correlation between human capital and economic development was an artifice of the post-socialist world, here is a similar graph (R2=0.4273) for all the world's countries that have participated in the Math and Science portions of the PISA or TIMMS (8th grade) international standardized student assessments. The methodology is the... Read More
Why China Is Far Superior to India
•�February 4, 2012
•�1,300 Words •�168 Comments
It is not a secret to longtime readers of this blog that I rate India's prospects far more pessimistically than I do China's. My main reason is I do not share the delusion that democracy is a panacea and that whatever advantage in this sphere India has is more than outweighed by China's lead in... Read More
Walled Off By Complexity: Did China Stagnate Because of Its Writing System?
•�May 7, 2011
•�2,500 Words •�62 Comments
One of the biggest questions in global history is why it was Western Europe that industrialized first, and ended up colonizing most of the rest of the world. As late as 1450, the possibility of such an outcome would have been ridiculed. By almost any metric, China was well in the lead through the medieval... Read More
The Century Without an Indian Summer
•�July 8, 2010
•�2,100 Words •�36 Comments
How will the global South fare in our likely future of energy shortages, climate change and resource nationalism (and wars)? India has China's population mass, but lacks its industrial dynamism and human capital. Africa has Russia's energy and mineral wealth, but not the military power or social coherence to defend it. South America's prospects appear... Read More
IQ and Industrialism
•�June 26, 2010
•�2,200 Words •�25 Comments
My recent post on demographic myths unleashed a lively discussion on the issue of race and IQ in the comments section. I'm not too interested in wading into it: not out of any misplaced respect for political correctness, of course, but simply because though I think there are good arguments for both sides, it misses... Read More
Cliodynamics: Mathematizing History
•�December 4, 2009
•�4,900 Words •�5 Comments
One of the most interesting emerging sciences today, in my opinion, is cliodynamics. Their practitioners attempt to come to with mathematical models of history to explain "big history" - things like the rise of empires, social discontent, civil wars, and state collapse. To the casual observer history may appear to be chaotic and fathomless, devoid... Read More
Was the French Revolution Primarily a Class Struggle?
•�April 4, 2009
•�2,900 Words •�3 Comments
The classic Marxist argument holds than an emerging bourgeois class, its wealth based on commerce, industry and capital accumulation, was constrained and frustrated in its political ambitions by the nobility. France was divided into Three Estates, the Third Estate which bore the taille (the main direct tax), the nobility (subject only to the capitation poll... Read More
A Long Wait at the Gate of Delusions
•�August 3, 2008
•�2,500 Words
Sometimes, it is much simpler to expound upon one's views on a subject by replying to and arguing against an opposing view, rather than constructing one's own thesis. Call it intellectual laziness, a clever short-cut or whatever you not, this is what I'm going to do with the Washington Post article A Long Wait at... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth II
•�July 18, 2008
•�2,200 Words
A while ago I wrote Education as the Elixir of Growth on DR, in which I noted that in most countries the educational profile is closely correlated to their level of productivity. The major exceptions are nations with resource windfalls (inflated productivity) and socialist legacies (deflated productivity). Furthermore, the greater the gap between the 'potential... Read More
Education as the Elixir of Growth
•�March 10, 2008
•�2,900 Words •�11 Comments
What are the reasons behind the wealth and poverty of nations? Since this question has exercised the minds of thinkers from Adam Smith to David Landes, Jared Diamond and Richard Lynn, I decided to take a look at it myself. I came to the conclusion that while geography, macroeconomic policies, resource windfalls and the microeconomic... Read More
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Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.