Astral Codex Ten

OECD

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OECD

Article

OECD is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 9 times across 9 issues between April 14, 2021 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “If a drug has been approved in an OECD country”; “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD in 2005 found”; “family spending as measured by the OECD has actually declined on a per-child basis”. It most often appears alongside UK, Germany, US.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 9
  • Issue count: 9
  • First seen: April 14, 2021
  • Last seen: December 31, 2025

Appears In

None.

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
Likewise, Próspera has 100% drug approval reciprocity. If a drug has been approved in an OECD country (eg by the FDA), it’s approved in Próspera. Again, close to my heart. Amisulpride is a great antipsychotic, probably better then most of the ones we use here. It’s approved in Europe, the UK, Australia, Israel, etc, where many studies have shown it’s safe and effective. Because none of those studies were done in the US, the FDA refuses to approve it here, and has demanded several hundred million dollars worth of more studies, which the company involved has chosen not to do (an injectable version was recently approved for nausea, but can’t be easily used for psychosis). Meanwhile, bupropion (“Wellbutrin”), the fourth-most prescribed antidepressant in the US, isn’t approved for depression in Britain; the subset of patients who respond to this medication and nothing else are out of luck. Próspera will be one of the only places in the world where patients will have access to amisulpride, bupropion, and all the other medications that one country or another is restricting because “it wasn’t invented here”.
Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?
June 04, 2021 · Original source
Hall blames public funding for science. Not just for nanotech, but for actually hurting progress in general. (I’ve never heard anyone before say government-funded science was bad for science!) “[The] great innovations that made the major quality-of-life improvements came largely before 1960: refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, gas and electric stoves, and washing machines; indoor plumbing, detergent, and deodorants; electric lights; cars, trucks, and buses; tractors and combines; fertilizer; air travel, containerized freight, the vacuum tube and the transistor; the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, movies, radio, and television—and they were all developed privately.” “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD in 2005 found, to their surprise, that while private R&D had a positive 0.26 correlation with economic growth, government funded R&D had a negative 0.37 correlation!” “Centralized funding of an intellectual elite makes it easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of a field, and they by their nature are resistant to new, outside, non-Ptolemaic ideas.” This is what happened to nanotech; there was a huge amount of buzz, culminating in $500 million dollars of funding under Clinton in 1990. This huge prize kicked off an academic civil war, and the fledgling field of nanotech lost hard to the more established field of material science. Material science rebranded as “nanotech”, trashed the reputation of actual nanotech (to make sure they won the competition for the grant money), and took all the funding for themselves. Nanotech never recovered.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
But your regular reminder that IT'S NOT TRUE. Under Orban's government, family spending as measured by the OECD has actually *declined* on a per-child basis! This whole story about redesigning the whole culture is wrong! Indeed, a core part of my critique of Orbanism is precisely that I don't think it's radical enough. It does a lot of flashy stuff.... funded by cutting other programs, and with little eligibility quirks that end up limiting who benefits from it.
Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal?
December 09, 2021 · Original source
What about the US? Here's a figure from Tideman & co's big paper, which uses OECD numbers to chart the share of household wealth in the USA due to "non-produced assets" (conventional land, natural resources, and everything else that isn't a kind of capital that humans create, which Georgists call "Land").
Inline links: Tideman & co's big paper
Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems
January 27, 2022 · Original source
Several people brought up this idea of US drug prices subsidizing the world. There’s some evidence in support: the US contributes 58% of the OECD’s total pharmaceutical spending despite only having 24% of the OECD’s total population and 38% of its total GDP. This study has some slightly different data and doesn’t think that US drug companies innovate much more than foreign drug companies, but since most companies sells their drugs in most countries regardless of where they’re based, I don’t know if that proves anything.
Inline links: contributes 58%, 24%, 38%, This study
Some very quick math: the US spends 2.5x more on medications than OECD average, but its medication use is exactly average for its population. So total OECD drug spending is 2.5*0.24 + 1*0.76 = 1.36x what it would be if the US spent an exactly average amount. So if the US spent an average amount, the total pool of pharmaceutical funding would go down to 74% of current totals - or other countries would have to increase their spending by 36% to even things out. I don’t know if this is the right way to look at things.
Inline links: 2.5x more
ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#38: Promote Citizens’ Assemblies And Lotteries The newDemocracy Foundation is an organisation in Australia that develops, demonstrates, and promotes innovations in democracy. Its focus is on deliberative democracy and random selection. We have worked with the UN and the OECD to develop international standards of best practice and founded the Democracy R&D network. We’re designed and operated ground-breaking projects in Melbourne, Geelong, and Canberra, and have collaborated with international partners in Brazil, Spain, North Macedonia, and Malawi. We require funding to take advantage of an opportunity in Australian politics. Citizens’ assemblies and democratic lottery are gaining traction but the ecosystem for their implementation still requires support and training that is best provided by an independent organisation like ours. Additional funding could allow us to expand our project capacity, conduct needed research or improve our advocacy and reach to politicians. I’m happy to answer any questions or provide a brief organisation overview, you can reach me at kyle.redman@newdemocracy.com.au You can view our website here: www.newdemocracy.com.au.
Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine
May 27, 2022 · Original source
The idea that “less-developed countries” should all be alike seems unlikely, but it fits with the current trend in economics where essentially any question involving non-OECD countries is lumped together into “development.”
Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline
July 20, 2023 · Original source
Source: World Bank. Britain is the thick blue line. …and it also shows UK growth being about average. So what’s going on? I asked about this in an Open Thread. Here were some of your responses. Eric Rall writes: There are two different ways of calculating real GDP per capita in an international context, both of which involve converting local currency to dollars and then inflation-adjusting the dollars based on the US's GDP deflator. One uses market exchange rates, while the other uses "Purchasing Power Parity", attempting to optimize the GDP figure as a proxy for standard-of-living by using local prices for equivalent goods and services as the currency conversion factor. For Brexit-related and COVID-related reasons, the relationship between PPP and market exchange rates for Britain have been highly unstable in the period in question: exchange rates have been very volatile (ranging from US$1.08 to US$1.40 per £1.00), and tariffs and COVID disruption have both radically changed the availability and prices of imported goods. Looking at either the PPP or market exchange rate numbers, everyone took a big hit in 2020, while Britain appears to have taken a deeper hit than France and the overall OECD average (the two control groups I picked off the top of my head). The big difference is that in market exchange rate terms, the recovery looks proportionate to the decline (i.e. Britain fell more, but also recovered proportionately faster so as to bounce back to approximately 2019 levels in 2022 the same as France and OECD): (source) But in PPP terms, the UK has recovered at the same rate as France and OECD and thus appears to have permanently (so far) lost ground in standard of living relative to other countries. UK was also growing more slowly in PPP terms between 2015 and 2019 than France, but about the same as the OECD average: (source) Putting some numbers on the second graph: Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP
Inline links: World Bank, asked about this in an Open Thread, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ctPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F168f87c7-e9e0-45f8-901c-dd418f541b57_800x617.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AqdU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faae66a91-fc33-43e0-90b9-2ec1a41d5dc8_790x627.png, source
(source) But in PPP terms, the UK has recovered at the same rate as France and OECD and thus appears to have permanently (so far) lost ground in standard of living relative to other countries. UK was also growing more slowly in PPP terms between 2015 and 2019 than France, but about the same as the OECD average: (source) Putting some numbers on the second graph: Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP
Inline links: source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AqdU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faae66a91-fc33-43e0-90b9-2ec1a41d5dc8_790x627.png, source
Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP
Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession
December 31, 2025 · Original source
The OECD also produces consumer confidence surveys and the US is pretty middle of the pack compared to other advanced countries for the last three years - US, Australia, western europe, UK, japan, are all in the -1 to -1.5 z score range historically. China is the worst, around -2 z scores. Interestingly, Mexico is one of the few places with high consumer confidence right now.