Astral Codex Ten

South Asia

4 min read

South Asia

Article

South Asia is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 21, 2021 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “India, hurting the Soviets in South Asia”; ""economic and energy crises for Europe, East Asia, and South Asia""; “there are billions of people in south Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa”. It most often appears alongside ACX, Africa, Argentina.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: May 21, 2021
  • Last seen: June 18, 2025

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.

Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
American foreign policy comes off looking surprising competent through Zeihan’s story. In describing the history of Bretton Woods, he runs through some key participants and highlights the benefits of their membership. India, hurting the Soviets in South Asia; Sweden, hurting them in the Baltic; Argentina and Egypt, limiting their influence in South America and the Middle East; and most significantly, China, depriving them of their best ports. Why did America fight in Korea and Vietnam? To demonstrate the value of the security guarantee component of the Bretton Woods regime (“if the Americans proved unwilling to engage the Chinese in Korea, then was their security guarantee for the Germans against the Soviets really worth what they said it was?”).
If America withdraws, it “will simultaneously trigger economic and energy crises for Europe, East Asia, and South Asia and financial and security crises for the Persian Gulf states.” Zeihan’s positive scenario for this world involves mere austerity and Greece-like scenarios, and is premised on countries getting along peacefully, but he doesn’t expect that. “It is far more likely that they won’t [get along peacefully].” Instead, his expected and pessimistic scenario should be terrifying for those outside of the American bubble:
Highlights From The Comments On Kids And Climate Change
October 13, 2021 · Original source
Matt Yglesias touches on this in One Billion Americans. He argues that climate change can only be solved by technological progress. Even if America cut its population by 50%, there are billions of people in south Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa whose lives are rapidly improving, and therefore will see their emissions per capita increase. It's unethical to try and thwart this improvement in their lives, and so the only way to fix climate change is through technological innovation. And the best way to achieve innovation is with more people not less. Yglesias therefore encourages policies to make it easier for Americans to have children, but also to increase immigration to the largest technologically innovative economy.
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
June 18, 2025 · Original source
Since 2022, Alice has undertaken qualitative research in nine world regions: Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Britain, US, Poland, Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Through this globally comparative analysis, she analyses the drivers and obstacles to gender equality. Gender interventions will be more impactful if they target locally binding constraints - in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, this is "the honour-income trade-off" (whereby male honour depends on female seclusion, and women tend to remain at home. Meanwhile, Latin America and the Caribbean face a different obstacle: pervasive violence elevates femicides. Over the past few years, she's held visiting appointments at Stanford, Chicago, and Yale, while providing policy advice to the World Bank, and sharing insights with a public audience via Substack (www.ggd.world). In April 2025, she gave a TedTalk on romantic love as an under-rated driver of gender equality.