Don't overlook the value of a transparent and adequate legal system (laws, courts, and expertise). It's a boring topic to many, but it's a necessary (if not sufficient) condition of development. It may need to precede markets.
England did a lot of godawful stuff, but it did its colonies a great service with its court system. Conversely, places trying to develop without it more quickly turn into violent oligarchies.
The funny thing is when I was younger and much more naive, I thought the legal system was this unnecessary inefficiency and that it could be replaced with algorithms that would not suffer from noise or bias.
It's the same ideas that power books like Noise by Daniel Kahneman and Cass sunstein. I now understand what I didn't understand then: all it does is shift the problem further back into code and algorithms that fewer people can criticise or verify.
And it doesn't replace the issues. A fair and effective legal system is indeed incredibly important. The problem is it benefits most precisely the people that have the least say.
Volumes can be written about the failures and absurdities of the court systems (pick any country), but the idea of legally binding dispute resolution via algorithm is nightmarish by comparison. God forbid the criminal justice system ever slip completely behind the veil.
Don't overlook the value of a transparent and adequate legal system (laws, courts, and expertise). It's a boring topic to many, but it's a necessary (if not sufficient) condition of development. It may need to precede markets.
England did a lot of godawful stuff, but it did its colonies a great service with its court system. Conversely, places trying to develop without it more quickly turn into violent oligarchies.
The funny thing is when I was younger and much more naive, I thought the legal system was this unnecessary inefficiency and that it could be replaced with algorithms that would not suffer from noise or bias.
It's the same ideas that power books like Noise by Daniel Kahneman and Cass sunstein. I now understand what I didn't understand then: all it does is shift the problem further back into code and algorithms that fewer people can criticise or verify.
And it doesn't replace the issues. A fair and effective legal system is indeed incredibly important. The problem is it benefits most precisely the people that have the least say.
Volumes can be written about the failures and absurdities of the court systems (pick any country), but the idea of legally binding dispute resolution via algorithm is nightmarish by comparison. God forbid the criminal justice system ever slip completely behind the veil.