Mauritius

Article

Mauritius is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 01, 2021 and January 11, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “East Asian countries and Mauritius (which sounds fascinating, and which I should try to learn more about)”; “zones led to broader economic liberalization in Mauritius”. It most often appears alongside Africa, China, Ireland.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: July 01, 2021
  • Last seen: January 11, 2024

Appears In

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.

July 01, 2021 · Original source
I tried tracking down the original source, and I think it’s this paper, although it lists only 13 countries: Equatorial Guinea, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mauritius, Portugal, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan.
Equatorial Guinea struck oil. Puerto Rico is not a country. Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Greece are European countries that missed the general First Worldification of Europe for various reasons which then went away. Israel is chosen by God. That leaves just the East Asian countries and Mauritius (which sounds fascinating, and which I should try to learn more about).
The one thing I know about Mauritius. I guess a rising tide does not lift all boats.
January 11, 2024 · Original source
Zone based reforms are a hack around the public choice challenges of nation-state reforms. Bob Haywood, former director of the World Economic Processing Zones Association, makes the case that zones address Doug North's "natural state" of oligarchy preventing liberalization because export zones don't immediately threaten the rent-seeking structures. In his experience, usually zones were adovcated by the peripheral elites - not the core elites, but the son-in-law, cousin, younger brothers, etc. who had access to elites but were not currently benefiting from rent-seeking themselves. Without zone solutions, however irregular their success, most nations tend to be stuck in the "natural state" of oligarchic rent-seeking. Haywood makes the case that zones led to broader economic liberalization in Mexico, China, Mauritius, Ireland, and elsewhere. If the benefits of zone-based reforms includes broader economic liberalization then the returns are much greater.