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Convergence
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Convergence

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Has India Regained Its Shine?
•�February 11, 2015
•�500 Words •�36 Comments
There is, once again, widespread excitement about the prospects of the Indian economy. This comes on the heel of news that India's Q3 growth has now marginally edged above China's, after a statistical adjustment. Can we now expect the Elephant to replace the Dragon as the motor of the world economy? At times like these... Read More
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Genetics, IQ, and Convergence
•�January 15, 2015
•�1,500 Words •�96 Comments
In a new paper at the (conveniently open) journal The Winnower (h/t @whyvert), building on his earlier work, geneticist Davide Piffer has tried to calculate the genotypic IQs of various world populations, and how they compare to measured phenotypic IQ: Piffer, David - Estimating the genotypic intelligence of populations and assessing the impact of socioeconomic... Read More
What Is Ukraine's Game Plan?
•�September 27, 2013
•�1,000 Words •�106 Comments
Even a few months ago, it looked as if Ukraine had taken a significant step towards Eurasian integration by signing up as an observer to the Customs Union between Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. However, in the past month, evidence is emerging that it was but a temporary ploy to appease Russia while in reality speeding... Read More
Russia Overtakes Germany to Become Europe's Largest Economy
•�July 12, 2013
•�300 Words •�38 Comments
See data. For real, this time. While it is perhaps a big strange to start thinking of Russia as a high-income economy, it's not so surprising when looking at concrete statistics such as vehicle consumption, Internet penetration, etc. - all of which are now at typical South European and advanced East-Central European levels (even if... Read More
The West Made Its Bed, Now Russia Will Lie In China's
•�April 11, 2013
•�900 Words •�10 Comments
The latest US-Russia.org Experts Panel discussion was about Russia's burgeoning partnership with China. I especially recommend Mercouris' contribution which - although unfortunately titled by VoR's editorial staff)) - is otherwise quite brilliant. My own effort follows below: First of all, let me preface that I’m one of the biggest China bulls around. Its economy in... Read More
Russia Moving Into the Fastlane
•�March 29, 2013
•�400 Words •�1 Comment
One of the most reliable indicators of influence is access to cars. They are the standard symbol of affluence and middle-class status the world over. They are also far more understandable at the everyday level than things like the PPP GDP per capita, or the number of burgers your national McWage will buy. Following on... Read More
Russian Is the Internet's Second Most Popular Language
•�March 27, 2013
•�200 Words •�43 Comments
In the wake of Russia's Internet penetration breaking the 50% mark (now - 55%) and overtaking Germany in total number of users last year, we now have news that Russian overtook German as its second most popular language. It is used on 5.9% of all the world's websites. It is projected that Russia will maintain... Read More
A Values Chasm That Can't be Bridged... At Least for Now
•�March 14, 2013
•�500 Words
My latest for VoR and US-Russia.org on Russia's recent Foreign Policy Concept: The new foreign-policy concept is a long-overdue adjustment to international realities. There can be no meaningful "strategic partnership" between Russia and the US or indeed Russia and the West in general, when their respective core values have diverged from each other so much.... Read More
Russia Now Produces As Many Cars As the USSR Did At Its Peak
•�February 25, 2013
•�100 Words •�14 Comments
As I write the book, I create a lot of graphs. Here is one of them. So in manufacturing terms, as far as cars are concerned, the "deindustrialization" era is decidedly over. Of course it's also important to note that in 1985 they were producing this whereas today they are producing this as well as... Read More
Andrew Ryvkin's Strange Ideas About the Russian Economy
•�January 21, 2013
•�900 Words •�6 Comments
By the usual standards of Guardian reporting on Russia, this one by GQ Russia editor Andrew Ryvkin is... well, about par for the course. Citing a recent PwC report that Russia will overtake Germany to become Europe's biggest economy in 2030, he asks, "Should we believe them?" Well, the PwC is just repeating predictions made... Read More
Russia Is Now An Internet Society
•�September 3, 2012
•�300 Words •�3 Comments
One of the most common arguments made to explain why Russians don't finally overthrow the evil Putin in a bloody bunt is that they are brainwashed by the regime's TV propaganda stations. This isn't actually very accurate at all. Russian TV isn't any more propagandistic than in the West, and on some issues, less so;... Read More
Russia Overtaking USSR, Converging with West, On Food, Housing Consumption
•�August 18, 2012
•�700 Words •�4 Comments
Just to hammer down the myth of Russian impoverishment one more time (with the help of graphs from Sergey Zhuravlev's blog)... In the past few years, in terms of basic necessities (food, clothing, housing) Russia has basically (re)converged to where the Soviet Union left off. Here is a graph of food consumption via Zhuravlev. At... Read More
The World Economy's Orbit
•�August 15, 2012
•�200 Words •�1 Comment
The map below shows the shifting location of the world's economic center of gravity. It was compiled by McKinsey and reproduced by The Economist. All is broadly as one might expect. In pre-industrial times, the world's economic center of gravity was always basically triangulated between India, China, and the Roman Empire (later North-West Europe). By... 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
Russian Wages Are Fast Converging to Western Levels
•�June 21, 2012
•�900 Words •�22 Comments
Via The Economist, I've come across some fascinating research by Orley Ashenfelter and Stepan Jurajda (Comparing Real Wage Rates, 2012) showing how real wages can be meaningfully compared across different regions by taking notes on prices and wages in McDonald's restaurants. The methodology seems solid. Big Macs are a very standardized product, hence they are... Read More
Actually China Is Probably Already Bigger
•�June 19, 2012
•�200 Words •�2 Comments
Despite the generally loathsome nature of The Economist, it does have its advantages most of which can be reduced to its Daily Charts blog which focuses on statistics as opposed to rhetoric. According to the chart above, as of 2012 ever more people, especially in the developed world, are starting to believe that the China... Read More
More Russians Vacationing Abroad
•�June 19, 2012
•�300 Words
According to a recent Levada poll, more Russians are starting to go to fun places on vacation. The total numbers of those going to the Black Sea or the Far Abroad rises to 16% in 2012, compared with 9% in 2006, 5% in 2000, and 4% in 1997. The percentage of those saying they won't... 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
The Profound Irrelevance of Corruption, Institutions, and Ease of Business to Economic Growth
•�February 23, 2012
•�1,500 Words •�64 Comments
That title sure caught you attention? Good. Now for the 1000-words-in-a-picture evidence. Human capital refers to educational attainment, as measured by the results of the PISA and TIMMS standardized tests*. As you can see, there is a very close correlation between human capital and GDP (PPP) per capita. The exceptions all confirm the rule. For... Read More
Are Russians As Rich As Czechs?
•�January 31, 2012
•�300 Words •�20 Comments
In terms of new cars, they now are. According to 2011 statistics, Russians bought 17.6 new automobiles per 1000 people. This indicator is still quite a bit below most of Western Europe, such as Germany's 38.5, France's 33.4, Britain's 31.9, Italy's 30.1, and Spain's 20.0. However, it has already overtaken most of East-Central Europe, whose... Read More
BRIC's of Stability: Why Occupy Wall Street Isn't Coming to Moscow or Beijing
•�November 7, 2011
•�1,000 Words •�83 Comments
As repeatedly noted by Mark Adomanis, the Russian liberals and the Western media have predicted about 10 of the last zero Russian revolutions. Likewise, the "Jasmine Revolution" in China that was the subject of so much talk about a year ago has fizzled out like a wet firework. Meanwhile, the Arab world remains in the... Read More
Russia's Economic "Stagnation" In Global Perspective
•�July 14, 2011
•�1,500 Words •�38 Comments
Иn the wake of the 2009 recession, declinist rhetoric has come to dominate discussion of Russia's economic prospects. Jim O'Neill, the founder of the BRIC's concept, has his work cut out defending Russia's expulsion from the group in favor of Indonesia, Mexico, or some other random middle-sized country. Journalists in the Western media claim its... Read More
Conclusion: Comparison of USA, UK, Russia
•�April 13, 2011
•�1,600 Words •�16 Comments
As my series comparing life in Russia, Britain, and the US draws to an end, I rank them based on my own preferences - with the caveat that the perceptions of people of different temperaments, character, and socio-economic status may differ radically. Then I finish off with a brief overview of the main trends in... Read More
Russia Updates: Luzhkov, Rearmament, GDP
•�October 2, 2010
•�1,000 Words •�13 Comments
As you may have noticed, posting has slowed down in the past few days, mostly thanks to a combination of (1) Kindle, (2) 中文 and (3) the natural periods of apathy that afflict most non-pro bloggers. I don't really see that changing until the end of the year... 1. Sayonara, Luzhkov. Props to Jesse Heath... Read More
Everyone Is Still Underestimating China
•�August 18, 2010
•�1,500 Words •�25 Comments
There's been lots of fanfare over China's GDP overtaking Japan's in Q2 2010 (coming hard on the heels of a big ruckus over its DF-21 "carrier killing" ballistic missile and rising tensions with the US over North Korea and the South China Sea). The big debate is now whether China will overtake the US as... 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
The Transition 20 Years On: the Reckoning
•�March 10, 2010
•�3,000 Words •�17 Comments
It is now nearly 20 years since market reformers began liberalizing the economies of Eastern Europe, or as some smart-ass put it, trying to revive the fish in the centrally planned fish stews. These stews, cooked to diverse recipes from goulash socialism to Soviet "structural militarization", were subjected to a wide spectrum of overlapping treatments... Read More
Voice of the People Part 3, Cont.
•�January 3, 2010
•�3,900 Words •�3 Comments
This is a summary of opinion polls conducted by the Levada-Center, Russia's Gallup, since February 2009, and continues on from the first post. Along with the original post Lovely Levada, this series constitutes a unique English-language reference for social trends under late Putinism as expressed by the Russian people themselves, rather than the limousine liberals,... Read More
Review of “Kicking Away the Ladder” by Ha-Joon Chang
•�October 19, 2009
•�2,800 Words •�6 Comments
Chang, Ha-Joon – Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002) Category: economy; history; industrial policy; Rating: 5/5 Summary: Kicking Away the Ladder:How the Economic and Intellectual Histories of Capitalism Have Been Re-Written to Justify Neo-Liberal Capitalism (Ha-Joon Chang) Much has been said of the smug arrogance, cultural aloofness and end-of-history conceit characterizing... 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
News 2 May: Russia's Second Oil Peak
•�April 25, 2008
•�4,600 Words •�5 Comments
For all the noise being made this month about Georgia, about NATO, about Tibet, etc, possibly the most portentous is that it seems Russia hit its oil peak (strictly speaking, its second - the first happened in 1987), well in line with peakist predictions. Production increases via application of new technology, as seen in the... Read More
Mailbag: Back from a Russian Century?
•�January 13, 2008
•�1,200 Words
Four days and 50 reader views into our baby blog's existence, we have been priveleged to receive a number of letters to our darussophileATyandexDOTru address. All of them deal with our Towards a New Russian Century? core article (which is, in addition, the most popular item on this blog by far - possibly because colleen... Read More
Towards a New Russian Century?
•�January 11, 2008
•�4,100 Words •�9 Comments
EDIT 11/27/08: Since writing this, I have come to realize that peak oil is real and will play a major role in any future scenario, and far sooner than the other three themes I highlight here. The twentieth century was, above all, a Russian century. Granted, Germany was the most important challenger Great Power in... Read More
"Convergence" Items Across Entire Archive
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.