Peace, order, and good government

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace,_order,_and_good_government

In many Commonwealth jurisdictions, the phrase "peace, order, and good government" (POGG) is an expression used in law to express the legitimate objects of legislative powers conferred by statute. The phrase appears in many Imperial Acts of Parliament and Letters Patent, most notably the constitutions of Barbados, several of the British Overseas Territories, Canada, Australia and formerly New Zealand and South Africa.

Background

Legal documents often contain a residual clause which expresses which entity will have authority over jurisdictions that have not otherwise been delineated or are in dispute. While specific authorities are often enumerated in legal documents as well, the designation of a residual power helps provide direction to future decision-makers and in emerging issue areas.

At its origin, the preferred phrase was "peace, welfare and good government," but this eventually evolved into "peace, order and good government," which soon became part of the standard phraseology used in British colonies to denote the residual power of the government. Although this phrase is used in the constitutional documents of several commonwealth countries, it has taken on a particular importance in the Canadian constitution due to repeated disputes about the nature of residual federal power in Canada.

It is often contrasted with "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", a spiritually analogous phrase found in the US Declaration of Independence. While in British colonial India's Constitution of 1935, the reference was used: "Peace or Tranquility".

Canada

In Canada, "peace, order and good government" (in French, paix, ordre et bon gouvernement) is sometimes abbreviated as POGG and is often used to describe the principles upon which that country's Confederation took place.

A similar phrase, "peace, welfare, and good government", had been used the Act of Union 1840 that created the Province of Canada. The now familiar phrase "peace, order and good government" was originally used in the British North America Act 1867 (now known as the Constitution Act, 1867) enacted by the Imperial Parliament, and it defines the principles under which the Parliament of Canada should legislate. Specifically, the phrase appears in section 91 of the act, which is part of the block of sections that divide legislative powers between the federal and provincial levels of government.

It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters...

POGG is a head of power arising from opening words of section 91 and is distinct from the enumerated powers under that section. The broad language suggests to some although not to others that there is a comprehensive grant of residual legislative authority to the federal government. Although the residual nature of the clause remains, the scope of the clause has been limited by the jurisprudence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC). The JCPC narrowed the scope of the clause to the three distinct branches which remain while also broadly interpreting the scope of provincial authority over property and civil rights under section 92(13) of the Constitution Act, 1867. The jurisprudence has been defined into three branches: Emergency Branch, Gap or Purely Residual Branch, and National Concern Branch, as defined in the Supreme Court of Canada judgment Re: Anti-Inflation Act.

Interpretation doctrines

Although the text of the act gives Parliament residuary powers to enact laws in any area that has not been allocated to the provincial governments, subsequent jurisprudence has limited the scope of the "peace, order, and good government" power. The limitation on the scope of this clause stems from the narrow interpretation of its branches and the expansive interpretation of provincial powers under section 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867. Particularly limiting is the breadth of provincial power over property and civil rights under s. 92(13). Although the Emergency Branch and the National Concern Branch may be viewed as delimited federal competencies like the enumerated clauses under section 91 (see e.g. AG Canada v AG Ontario (Labour Conventions), [1937] AC 326 (PC)), the clause remains residuary.

The powers under POGG must be interpreted in light of the subsequent jurisprudence on the limitations of the clause and the expansive powers of the provinces under their enumerated heads of power. If a matter does not fall within one of the enumerated classes in section 92, section 91, or the emergency or national concern branches, then it falls within the narrowly defined residual branch of POGG. The POGG power is best understood as a narrowly defined residual power limited to the following three branches.

The gap or purely residual branch

POGG's gap-filling power covers issues such as drafting oversights and matters not within the boundaries of a province. Drafting oversights include things the drafters of the constitution forgot to think about but would unambiguously have allocated to Parliament if they had. For instance, section 92 allocates responsibility for provincially incorporated companies to the legislatures but section 91 says nothing about federally incorporated companies: the gap branch allocates this jurisdiction to Parliament, per John Deere Plow Co v Wharton, 1915. Matters not within the boundaries of a particular province include Canadian territorial lands and waters that are within provincial boundaries such as the seabed off the coast of Newfoundland, per Reference Re Seabed and Subsoil of Continental Shelf Offshore Newfoundland, [1984] 1 S.C.R. 86.

The gap branch is rarely relied on because there is so little left to default to the federal government after taking into account the enumerated provincial power over property and civil rights under section 92(13) which applies to any transaction, person or activity that is found within the province. Historically new subject matters, such as aeronautics, do not necessarily fall residually to the federal government, per Johannesson v West St Paul (Rural Municipality of), 1952.

The emergency branch

Parliament may invoke emergency powers under the emergency branch of POGG. This began in 1882, when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (then the supreme authority over Canadian law) ruled in Russell v. The Queen that the federal government could legislate with regard to alcohol, because even though this would probably have been considered provincial jurisdiction in ordinary circumstances, the federal government was acting to ensure order in Canada. This concept further evolved during the 1920s, when in the 1922 Board of Commerce case, it was stated that POGG could be invoked in times of war and famine, to allow Parliament to intervene in matters of provincial jurisdiction. POGG was later used this way in the Anti-Inflation Reference of 1976, when the Supreme Court of Canada allowed Parliament to regulate inflation on the grounds that it posed a considerable economic problem for Canada. In that case, a great degree of deference was exercised in accepting what the federal government deemed to be an emergency.

The national concern branch

The "national concern" doctrine (sometimes referred to as "national dimensions") was an alternate means of applying the POGG powers that found use in the mid-20th century. It allowed Parliament to legislate on matters that would normally fall to the provincial government when the issue became of such importance that it concerned the entire country.

The doctrine originated from a statement by Lord Watson in the Local Prohibition case (1896), wherein he stated:

Their Lordships do not doubt that some matters, in their origin local and provincial, might attain such dimensions as to affect the body politic of the Dominion, and to justify the Canadian Parliament in passing laws for their regulation or abolition in the interest of the Dominion.

After this case the doctrine was completely ignored until 1946 when Viscount Simons brought it back in the case of Ontario v. Canada Temperance Foundation, [1946] A.C. 193 (P.C.). The test as stated in Temperance Foundation was whether the matter "goes beyond local or provincial concern or interests and must from its inherent nature be the concern of the Dominion as a whole".

Current approach towards interpretation

The above branches of the power are currently governed by the principles stated by Le Dain J. in R. v. Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd.:

The national concern doctrine is separate and distinct from the national emergency doctrine of the peace, order and good government power, which is chiefly distinguishable by the fact that it provides a constitutional basis for what is necessarily legislation of a temporary nature;

The national concern doctrine applies to both new matters which did not exist at Confederation and to matters which, although originally matters of a local or private nature in a province, have since, in the absence of national emergency, become matters of national concern;

For a matter to qualify as a matter of national concern in either sense it must have a singleness, distinctiveness and indivisibility that clearly distinguishes it from matters of provincial concern and a scale of impact on provincial jurisdiction that is reconcilable with the fundamental distribution of legislative power under the Constitution;

In determining whether a matter has attained the required degree of singleness, distinctiveness and indivisibility that clearly distinguishes it from matters of provincial concern it is relevant to consider what would be the effect on extra‑provincial interests of a provincial failure to deal effectively with the control or regulation of the intra‑provincial aspects of the matter.

Sociological value

Despite its technical purpose, the phrase "peace, order and good government" has also become meaningful to Canadians. This tripartite motto is sometimes said to define Canadian values in a way comparable to “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity) in France or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the United States.

It has been used by some scholars to make broad characterizations of Canada's political culture. US sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, for example, contrasted POGG with the American tripartite motto to conclude Canadians generally believe in a higher degree of deference to the law. As Canadian historian Donald Creighton argued in his report to the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, the expression was used interchangeably in the 19th century by Canadian and Imperial officials with the expression peace, welfare and good government. The term welfare referred not to its more narrow modern echoes, but to the protection of the common wealth, the general public good. Good government referred to good public administration, on the one hand, but also had echoes of what we now talk of as good governance, which incorporates the notion of appropriate self-governance by civil society actors, since one element of good government was thought to be its limitation to its appropriate sphere of responsibility.

Elsewhere in the Commonwealth

The phrase "peace, order and good government" appears in many 19th and 20th century British Acts of Parliament, such as the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852, the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865, the British Settlements Act 1887, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, the South Africa Act 1909, Hong Kong Letters Patent 1917, and the West Indies Act 1962 and the Government of Ireland Act 1920. In the Constitution of Malta, the phrase is followed by the qualifier "in conformity with full respect for human rights, generally accepted principles of international law and Malta’s international and regional obligations in particular those assumed by the treaty of accession to the European Union".

The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty began "Ireland shall have ... a Parliament having powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland, and an Executive responsible to that Parliament"; the resulting 1922 Constitution stated "The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the peace, order and good government of the Irish Free State (Saorstát Eireann) is vested in the Oireachtas." The words "sole and exclusive" were added by Charles Gavan Duffy in an attempt to deny the Westminster Parliament's right to legislate for the Free State, which Westminster overrode in the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. In 1932, Éamon de Valera justified abolishing the legislative oath of fidelity to the King, despite the oath being required by the 1921 treaty, on the basis that it was "a measure required for the peace, order and good government of the State". The current 1937 Constitution replaces the 1922 text with "The sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is hereby vested in the Oireachtas", dropping mention of "peace, order and good government", although elsewhere it separately mentions "peace" and "order".

In Ibrelebbe v. The Queen [1964] AC 900, 923, the words "peace, order and good government" contained in the Ceylon Constitution Order-in-Council (1946) were said by the Privy Council to: "connote, in British constitutional language, the widest law-making powers appropriate to a sovereign". Likewise in Australia, the High Court found in Union Steamship v King [1988] HCA 55 that the grant of power to legislate 'for peace, order/welfare and good government' was a plenary power to legislate within/for the territory.

However, in New Zealand, those powers are not considered as unlimited. In The Trustees Executors and Agency Co. Ltd v. Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1933) 49 CLR 220, Justice Evatt of the High Court of Australia wrote a separate judgement analyzing the power to make laws for the "peace, order and good government of New Zealand" under the New Zealand Constitution. Evatt held that laws dealing only with circumstances, persons or things outside of New Zealand, while not prima facie invalid could, in some cases, fail to satisfy the description of being for the peace, order and good government of New Zealand. A law that failed to satisfy that description would be beyond legislative power and invalid, but Evatt J noted that cases of this kind would be "very rare".

In Bancoult (No 1) in 2000, the High Court of England and Wales struck down an ordinance made in 1971 by the Commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) which had expelled the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago to make way for an American military base at Diego Garcia, purportedly under his power to legislate for the "peace, order and good government" of the territory. Lord Justice Richard Gibbs wrote: "Each of the words 'peace,' 'order' and 'good government' in relation to a territory necessarily carries with it the implication that citizens of the territory are there to take the benefits. Their detention, removal and exclusion from the territory are inconsistent with any or all of these words." This was overturned in 2008 when the Law Lords held in Bancoult (No 2) that the plenary power exists to the extent that even legislation removing all inhabitants from a territory is valid; Lord Hoffman wrote that "the words 'peace order and good government' have never been construed as words limiting the power of a legislature", and that "the prerogative power of the Crown to legislate for a ceded colony has never been limited by the requirement that the legislation should be for the peace, order and good government or otherwise for the benefit of the inhabitants of that colony" Lord Rodger said "what can properly be said to conduce to the peace, order and good government of BIOT" was not justiciable; Lord Carswell agreed, writing "A court might understandably be strongly attracted to the view that a law which removes the Chagossians from their homeland cannot be said to be for the peace, order and good government of the colony. But it is not for the courts to declare the law invalid on that ground." The 2008 decision was confirmed in the 2016 UK Supreme Court case R (on the application of Bancoult (No 2)) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

Developmental state

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state 

 

See also: Developmentalism

Developmental state, hard state, State-led developmentalism or in some cases Neo-developmental state, is a term used by international political economy scholars to refer to the phenomenon of state-led macroeconomic planning in East Asia in the late 20th century. In this model of capitalism (sometimes referred to as state-development capitalism), the state has more independent, or autonomous, political power, as well as more control over the economy. A developmental state is characterized by having strong state intervention, as well as extensive regulation and planning. The term has subsequently been used to describe countries outside East Asia that satisfy the criteria of a developmental state. The developmental state is sometimes contrasted with a predatory state or weak state.

The first person to seriously conceptualize the developmental state was Chalmers Johnson. Johnson defined the developmental state as a state that is focused on economic development and takes necessary policy measures to accomplish that objective. He argued that Japan's economic development had much to do with far-sighted intervention by bureaucrats, particularly those in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). He wrote in his book MITI and the Japanese Miracle:

In states that were late to industrialize, the state itself led the industrialization drive, that is, it took on developmental functions. These two differing orientations toward private economic activities, the regulatory orientation and the developmental orientation, produced two different kinds of business-government relationships. The United States is a good example of a state in which the regulatory orientation predominates, whereas Japan is a good example of a state in which the developmental orientation predominates.

A regulatory state governs the economy mainly through regulatory agencies that are empowered to enforce a variety of standards of behavior to protect the public against market failures of various sorts, including monopolistic pricing, predation, and other abuses of market power, and by providing collective goods (such as national defense or public education) that otherwise would be undersupplied by the market. In contrast, a developmental state intervenes more directly in the economy through a variety of means to promote the growth of new industries and to reduce the dislocations caused by shifts in investment and profits from old to new industries. In other words, developmental states can pursue industrial policies, while regulatory states generally cannot.

Governments in developmental states invest and mobilize the majority of capital into the most promising industrial sector that will have the maximum spillover effect for the society. Cooperation between state and major industries is crucial for maintaining stable macroeconomy. According to Alice Amsden's Getting the Price Wrong, the intervention of state in the market system such as grant of subsidy to improve competitiveness of firm, control of exchange rate, wage level and manipulation of inflation to lowered production cost for industries caused economic growth, that is mostly found in late industrializers countries but foreign to early developed countries.

As in the case of Japan, there is little government ownership of industry, but the private sector is rigidly guided and restricted by bureaucratic government elites. These bureaucratic government elites are not elected officials and are thus less subject to influence by either the corporate-class or working-class through the political process. The argument from this perspective is that a government ministry can have the freedom to plan the economy and look to long-term national interests without having their economic policies disrupted by either corporate-class or working-class short-term or narrow interests.

Examples in East and Southeast Asia

Some of the best prospects for economic growth in the last few decades have been found in East and Southeast Asia. Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia are developing at high to moderate levels. Thailand, for example, has grown at double-digit rates most years since the early 1980s. China had been the world leader in economic growth from 2001 to 2015. It is estimated that it took England around 60 years to double its economy when the Industrial Revolution began. It took the United States around 50 years to double its economy during the American economic take-off in the late nineteenth century. Several East and Southeast Asian countries today have been doubling their economies every 10 years.

It is important to note that in most of these Asian countries, it is not just that the rich are getting richer, but the poor are becoming less poor. For example, poverty has dropped dramatically in Thailand. Research in the 1960s showed that 60 percent of the people in Thailand lived below a poverty level estimated with cost of basic necessities. By 2004, however, similar estimates showed that poverty there was around 13 to 15 percent. Thailand has been shown by some World Bank figures to have had the best record for reducing poverty per increase in GNP of any nation in the world.

When viewed through the lens of dependency theory, developmentalism is about countries such as Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and increasingly Vietnam, where the governments are able and willing to protect their people from the negative consequences of foreign corporate exploitation. They tend to have a strong government, also called a "developmental state" or "hard state", and have leaders who can confront multinationals and demand that they operate to protect their people's interests. These "development states" have the will and authority to create and maintain policies that lead to long-term development that helps all their citizens, not just the wealthy. Multinational corporations are regulated so that they may follow domestically mandated standards for pay and labor conditions, pay reasonable taxes, and by extension leave some profits within the country.

Specifically, what is meant by a developmental state is a government with sufficient organization and power to achieve its development goals. There must be a state with the ability to prove consistent economic guidance and rational and efficient organization, and the power to back up its long-range economic policies. All of this is important because the state must be able to resist external demands from outside multinational corporations to do things for their short-term gain, overcome internal resistance from strong groups trying to protect short-term narrow interests, and control infighting within the nation pertaining to who will most benefit from development projects.

Thailand

In the late 1990s a study was conducted in which the researchers interviewed people from 24 large factories in Thailand owned by Japanese and American corporations. They found that most of the employees in these corporations made more than the average in Thailand, and substantially more than the $4.40 a day minimum wage in the country at the time. The researchers’ analysis of over 1,000 detailed questionnaires indicated that the employees rate their income and benefits significantly above average compared to Thai-owned factories. They found the working conditions in all 24 companies far from conditions reported about Nike in Southeast Asia.

One answer to the discrepancies found between multinational corporations in Thailand and the conditions described for Nike workers is that companies such as Wal-Mart, The Gap, or Nike subcontract work to small local factories. These subcontractors remain more invisible, making it more easy to bribe local officials to maintain poor working conditions. When multinational corporations set up business in countries like Malaysia, Taiwan, or Thailand, their visibility makes much less likely employees will have wages and conditions below the standards of living of the country.

Thailand is said to fall between the U.S. model where government has little involvement in economic policy, and Japan which has governed with a very heavy hand for more than 100 years. One focus of Thai development policies was on import substitution. Here, a development state must be able to tell multinational corporations that goods will be imported, if at all, with tariffs as high as 80 to 150 percent to prevent these goods from competing with goods made in (at least at first) less efficient infant factories in the poorer country. Only a development state can have the influence to enforce such a policy on rich multinational corporations (and their governments), and only a development state can have the influence to enforce such a policy against the demands of their own rich citizens who want the imported goods and want them then at a cheaper price, not waiting for infant industries to produce suitable products. Thailand began placing tariffs of 150 percent on important automobiles, but at the same time telling the foreign auto industries that if they came to Thailand to create joint ventures with a Thai company to build cars—and thus hire Thai employees, pay Thai taxes, and keep some profits within Thailand—the auto company would get many forms of government assistance.

Thailand continued to protect its economy during the 1980s and 1990s despite the flood of foreign investment the nation had attracted. Thai bureaucrats started rules such as those demanding a sufficient percentage of domestic content in goods manufactured by foreign companies in Thailand and the 51 percent rule. Under the 51 percent rule, a multinational corporation starting operations in Thailand must form a joint venture with a Thai company. The result is that a Thai company with 51 percent control is better able to keep jobs and profits in the country. Countries such as Thailand have been able to keep foreign investors from leaving because the government has maintained more infrastructure investment to provide good transportation and a rather educated labor force, enhancing productivity.

Singapore

Singapore is a relatively young city-state and it obtains a title of developed country. Despite the fact that it has a lack of natural resources and an intensely competitive geographical environment, it has been growing its nation as a developmental state. In 1965, Singapore successfully became independent from Malaysian Federation, and later it changed its Fordism production oriented city state to a developmental city state in less than half a century.

It was claimed by the People's Action Party (PAP), the governing party since 1965, that adopting the developmental state strategy is in Singapore's best interests due to its unique feature of social, political, geographical, and economic conditions. At first, PAP's economic strategy was to provide cheap and disciplined labor and it provides a stable political system; Singapore has only one labor union that is directed by the PAP government. As a result, many multinational corporations (MNCs) invested in Singapore and soon Singapore came to be a solid manufacturing base.

However, the PAP soon realized that if Singapore was to move forward to industrialization then it needed to improve its national education. In the 1960s, Singapore's education was fragmented basically by race, language and habitat lines. Therefore, a series of education projects were launched in the hope of helping Singapore to obtain industrialization. For example, in 1970, the Vocational and Industrial Training Board (VITB) was launched to provide technical education for workers who dropped out of secondary school. Singapore's training programs has a different function from other neoliberal cities; these programs match workers’ skills to the market of economic development. The economy is planned by the government; it arranges the market demand of labor on one hand and provides the supply of labor on the other hand.

The Singapore government has noticed the country's weakness and its special geographical location. It is because that the population of Singapore was much less than other surrounding countries, so soon its manufacturing status would be replaced by other Asian countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, China, etc. Also, other Asian countries could provide relatively cheaper and greater labor force and more raw materials of production could be exploited. Therefore, Singapore was vulnerable of facing such surrounding threats. However, the Singapore government has adopted a special view of new international division of labor; it has placed itself as a global city in the Southeast Asian region. According to Saskia Sassen's "global cities", they are cities where headquarters which are committed in participating of globalization networks and they are the result of strong integration of urbanization and globalization.

South Korea

South Korea has undergone rapid economic development since the 1961 Military coup which brought Park Chung-Hee to power. Park, a Japanophile who studied at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy during WWII as a Manchukuo Army Officer, viewed Japan's development model, in particular the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Keiretsu, as an example for Korea. Park emulated MITI by establishing the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and the Economic Planning Board (EPB) that controlled and manipulated the market system, while organizing the private enterprises into massive export oriented conglomerates which came to be known as the Chaebol's.

Korean government implemented various economic measures in order to pursue export oriented growth. Korea at the early 60s was lacking capital and technological basis, so the only competitive advantage the country had was the low wage. Therefore, Korea first penetrated the global market with cheap labor in the light industry sector such as wigs and cotton spinning in 50s~60s. Korean industrial policy moved towards the heavy and chemical industries in the 70s and 80s, mobilizing the state's financial resources for the rapid growth of industries such as steel and shipbuilding.

During those developmental periods, the government granted various forms of subsidies to the industries. Long-term loans and credits were given for higher competence in global market, thereby increasing export. Foreign exchange rates were often manipulated to stimulate export or import the raw materials at lower cost. Due to such subsidies on exports and manipulation by the government, the relative prices in Korean industry diverged from the free market equilibriums. Such interventions by the state are termed as "deliberately getting relative prices wrong"(Amsden, 1989), which means that the prices are intentionally deviated from the ‘right’ prices, the market equilibrium. Big business groups in chosen industries were supported and invested by the government, thereby forming intimate economic and political ties. Such groups grew to account for a large portion of GNP and became the Chaebols.

South Korea's GDP per capita grew from $876 in 1950 to $22,151 in 2010. Industrial production in South Korea was 9% in 1953 but reached 38% in 2013. Korea first adopted an ISI but followed a developmental state growth strategy. Korea after their independence in 1945 lead to end of economic ties with Japan which they were heavily relied upon. During the Korean war, the country was devastated both physically and mentally. After the Korean war, South Korea focused on exporting primary products such as crops, minerals while imported manufactured goods from US. In the beginning of ISI era, Korean industries were successful in textile and light consumer good industries (Charles, 1975). South Korea eventually focused on an export oriented industries through direct government involvement. South Korean state has more autonomy over the regulation of economy, the state created conditions favorable for rapid economic growth, for example, the state provided long-term loans for industries with higher competence in global market which eventually increased the exporting sector (Chibber, 2014). Under Park Chung Hee's leadership, South Korea in 1960's created Economic Planning Board (EPB) which unified previously divided industries and created a centralized decision making state.

Korea has been called one of "Asia's four little dragons" or Four Asian Tigers with its prominent economic growth (The other three being Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore). Korea's GDP per capita in 1980 was $1,778.5, which was only a fraction of Japan's per capita ($9,307.8). In 2014, Korea's GDP was $25,977.0, having shown dramatic growth in the past decade.

Japan

Japan also experienced rapid economic growth after World War II making Japan own a title that is 'Japanese Economic Miracle'. Such an event happened because the government plays the main role in promoting the economy by focusing on industrialization, making policy focusing on economy growth and others that are align with developmental theories

Local developmental state

While the developmental state is associated with East Asia, it has been argued that after 30 years of many negative experiences with the Washington Consensus, similar structures began to appear in Latin America. The "Latin American" approach is different, however, as it often takes place at a city/municipal level, rather than at a state level and places a great emphasis on tackling social exclusion. One pioneer in this experience has been Medellin, whose experience with a local development state has been highly praised by researchers at the Overseas Development Institute. Medellin's city administration used its ownership of city's main energy provider Empresas Publicas de Medellín (EPM) and diverted 30% of EPM's profits to fund municipal spending. The spending went partly on a variety of infrastructure projects, such as the city's metro, bus network and a cable car system connecting the poorer barrio communities to the city centre. However, the city also developed a program of cash grants called 'the Medellín Solidaria' programme that are very similar to Brazil's highly successful Bolsa Familia that provide support for poor families. Additionally, the city developed the Cultura E programme that established a network of 14 publicly funded business support centres known as CEDEZO, Centros de Desarrollo Empresarial Zonal. The CEDEZOs are found in the poorest areas of Medellin and support the poor in developing business by providing free-of-charge business support services and technical advice. Also, as part of Cultura E, there is Banco de las Opportunidades that provides microloans (up to $2,500 at a cheap interest rates 0.91% monthly). This has helped create more equal opportunities for all and overcome the barriers to entry to business for poor entrepreneurs with good ideas, but lacking capital, skills and connections. It has also helped develop the local economy with new micro-enterprises. However, several mayoral candidates for the October 2011 elections have argued the Banco de las Opportunidades's interest rates are too high, loan maturity is too short and it should have grace periods. They therefore suggest a new small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) development bank to complement the Banco de las Opportunidades.

Difficulties

There are difficulties with the local development state model. Despite claims at the end of the 1980s by some, such as Hernando de Soto (1989) that micro-enterprises would lead economic growth, this has not come to pass. For instance, in Medellín the informal sector has seen a huge growth in micro-enterprises, but the impact on poverty and development has been minimal. Almost none of these microenterprises have evolved into informal small or medium businesses, as the demand does not exist to absorb increased production. In other words, a successful ice-cream producer producing 30 ice-creams per day at home may sell all their product and make a livelihood out of it, but transforming it into a business, incurring the costs of mechanisation in order to produce perhaps 300, may not be worthwhile if there is no demand for so many ice-creams. Failure rates are very high and the debt incurred by owners becomes unmanageable. Recognising which micro-enterprises have a high potential is extremely difficult and the costs involved in providing business support and advise are very high. There is a great difficulty in identifying demand, especially on a global level and demand patterns are constantly changing. The limited ability of city administrations to gather enough resources to support businesses and make sound investments can be problematic.

Public recognition

Despite all the evidence of the importance of a development state, some international aid agencies have just recently publicly recognized the fact. The United Nations Development Program, for example, published a report in April 2000 which focused on good governance in poor countries as a key to economic development and overcoming the selfish interests of wealthy elites often behind state actions in developing nations. The report concludes that “Without good governance, reliance on trickle-down economic development and a host of other strategies will not work.”

Japanese economic miracle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle

The Japanese economic miracle (Japanese: 高度経済成長, romanized: Kōdo keizai seichō) refers to a period of economic growth in post–World War II Japan. It generally refers to the period from 1955, around which time the per capita gross national income of the country recovered to pre-war levels, and to the onset of the 1973 oil crisis.

Before the war, Japan had achieved industrialisation from the second half of the 19th century, but light industry and agriculture remained the backbone of the economy, and poverty was widespread among the working class and farmers. Heavy industry was primarily focused on the military, such as aviation, shipbuilding, and military vehicles, rather than the production of civilian goods. The Second World War resulted in the loss of all its colonial possessions, and both the mainland's industrial capabilities and population were heavily damaged. After the war, the government was deep in debt, while the people suffered privation of vital supplies, which inevitably caused hyperinflation.

Under the Allied Occupation Forces, Japan's economy underwent significant structural changes, which initially included the dissolution of all major zaibatsu and the weakening of heavy industries and scientific research, so as to deprive the country of the ability to wage war ever again. The government and the Bank of Japan had to deal with hyperinflation while rebuilding the economy under these restrictions. However, along with West Germany, Japan later benefited from a fundamental shift in US policy, which now tried to help rebuild these former enemies in a democratized form, rather than weakening them, in an effort to prevent the spread of communism in their respective regions.

Japan's economy gradually recovered to regain pre-war standard of living towards the mid-1950s, around which time the 'economic miracle' started. During this period, Japan's economic growth was driven by its heavy industries and the expansion of the middle class, which provided both a large domestic consumer market and bank savings. These savings were, in turn, lent to companies to invest in fixed capital. The Japanese government's interventionism also played a role, most notably through the Income Doubling Plan, conceived by Osamu Shimomura and implemented by prime minister Hayato Ikeda. Japan also benefited from the Bretton Woods system, which pegged major currencies, including the yen, to the United States dollar. During the economic boom, Japan rapidly became the world's third-largest economy, after the United States and the Soviet Union. Japan joined the OECD as an early member in the 1960s, and became a founding member of the G7. By the 1970s, Japan was no longer expanding as quickly as it had in the previous decades despite per-worker productivity remaining high.

History

Recovery stage (1946–1954)

1946 American newsreel on life in Japan: extreme inflation, housing problems, and shortages of food and other vital supplies are mentioned.

Although SCAP banned all military-related activities including research, such as aviation, their foundations survived and became the basis for the resurgence of Japan's heavy industries in the 1950s.

The Japanese economy was in ruins following the end of World War II. Moreover, by 1946, Japan was on the verge of a nationwide famine that was averted only by American shipments of food. The virtual destruction of the Japanese standard of living, combined with the military threat presented by the Soviet Union, compelled the United States to support a wide-reaching economic recovery. Every country experienced some industrial growth in the post-war period, but those countries that achieved a heavy drop in industrial output due to war damage such as Japan, West Germany and Italy, achieved the most rapid recovery. In the case of Japan, industrial production decreased in 1946 to 27.6% of the pre-war level, but recovered in 1951 and reached 350% in 1960. By the end of the American occupation of Japan in 1952, the United States had successfully reintegrated Japan into the global economy and rebuilt the economic infrastructure that would later form the launching pad for the Japanese economic miracle.

Arguably, one reason for Japan's quick recovery from war trauma was the economic reform by the government. The government body principally concerned with industrial policy in Japan was the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. One of the major economic reforms was to adopt the "Inclined Production Mode" (傾斜生産方式, keisha seisan hoshiki). The "Inclined Production Mode" refers to the inclined production that primarily focuses on the production of raw materials including steel and coal. Textile production occupied more than 23.9% of the total industrial production before the economic miracle. Moreover, to further stimulate growth, the Japanese government encouraged women to enter the labor market. The legislation on recruitment contains three components: the restriction placed on regional recruitment and relocation of workers, the banning of the direct recruitment of new school leavers, and the direct recruitment of non-school leavers under explicitly detailed regulations issued by the Ministry of Labour.

Another reason that accounts for Japan's recovery from WWII in the early 1950 was the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. The war was fought in a territory that had been a Japanese colony until 1945, which was later divided between the Soviet-backed North and the US-backed South. As a result, the US had to procure military supplies from Japan to support the war effort in Korea. The country's heavy industries, which were on the verge of bankruptcy, were saved by orders to repair thousands of damaged planes and military vehicles, while car companies such as Toyota flourished with orders for numerous lorries and other military vehicles.

High increasing stage (1954–1972)

Consumer electronics shops in Tokyo in 1971: consumer electronics and cars became symbols of the Japanese middle class

After regaining its pre-war standard of living in the mid-1950s, Japan's economy soared until the early 1970s. Between 1957 and 1973, the country saw an annualised growth rate of around 10% in terms of GNP. In 1964, Japan joined the OECD, which had been established three years earlier and has been widely regarded as one of the primary indicators of developed nation status. At the time, Japan was the only member from the Pacific Asia and Oceania region until Australia joined in 1971, followed by New Zealand in 1973 and South Korea in 1996. That same year, Japan hosted the Tokyo Olympics, and large infrastructure projects such as the Shinkansen and expressways were completed to accommodate the increased demand for transport brought about by the event.

The Japanese Economic Yearbooks from 1967 to 1971 witnessed a significant increase. In 1967, the yearbook said: the Japanese economy in 1966 thus made an advance more rapidly than previously expected. In 1968, the yearbook said that the Japanese economy continued to make a sound growth after it had a bottom in the autumn of 1965. The words "increase", "growth" and "upswing" filled the summaries of the yearbooks from 1967 to 1971. The reasons for Japan to complete industrialization are also complicated, and the major characteristic of this time is the influence of government policies of the Hayato Ikeda administration, vast consumption, and vast export.

Influence of government policies: Ikeda administration and keiretsu

In 1954, the economic system MITI had cultivated from 1949 to 1953 came into full effect. Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda, whom Chalmers Johnson calls "the single most important individual architect of the Japanese economic miracle," pursued a policy of heavy industrialization. This policy led to the emergence of 'over-loaning' (a practice that continues today) in which the Bank of Japan issues loans to city banks who in turn issue loans to industrial conglomerates. Since there was a shortage of capital in Japan at the time, industrial conglomerates borrowed beyond their capacity to repay, often beyond their net worth, causing city banks in turn to over-borrow from the Bank of Japan. This gave the national Bank of Japan complete control over dependent local banks.

The system of over-loaning, combined with the government's relaxation of anti-monopoly laws (a remnant of SCAP control) also led to the re-emergence of conglomerate groups called keiretsu that mirrored the wartime conglomerates, or zaibatsu. Led by the economic improvements of Sony businessmen Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, the keiretsu efficiently allocated resources and became competitive internationally.

Japanese coal- and metal-related industry experienced an annual growth rate of 25% in the 1960s, with the steel plant of Nippon Steel Corporation in Chiba Prefecture being a notable one.

At the heart of the keiretsu conglomerates' success lay city banks, which lent generously, formalizing cross-share holdings in diverse industries. The keiretsu spurred both horizontal and vertical integration, locking out foreign companies from Japanese industries. Keiretsu had close relations with MITI and each other through the cross-placement of shares, providing protection from foreign take-overs. For example, 83% of Japan's Development Bank's finances went toward strategic industries: shipbuilding, electric power, coal and steel production. Keiretsu proved crucial to protectionist measures that shielded Japan's sapling economy.

Keiretsu also fostered an attitude shift among Japanese managers that tolerated low profits in the short-run because keiretsu were less concerned with increasing stock dividends and profits and more concerned about interest payments. Approximately only two-thirds of the shares of a given company were traded, cushioning keiretsu against market fluctuations and allowing keiretsu managers to plan for the long-term and maximize market shares instead of focusing on short-term profits.

The Ikeda administration also instituted the Foreign Exchange Allocation Policy, a system of import controls designed to prevent the flooding of Japan's markets by foreign goods. MITI used the foreign exchange allocation to stimulate the economy by promoting exports, managing investment and monitoring production capacity. In 1953, MITIs revised the Foreign Exchange Allocation Policy to promote domestic industries and increase the incentive for exports by revising the export-link system. A later revision-based production capacity on foreign exchange allocation to prevent foreign dumping.

Vast consumption: from survival to recreation

During the time of reconstruction and before the 1973 oil crisis, Japan managed to complete its industrialization process, gaining significant improvement in living standards and witnessing a significant increase in consumption. The average monthly consumption of urban family households doubled from 1955 to 1970. Moreover, the proportions of consumption in Japan was also changing. The consumption in daily necessities, such as food and clothing and footwear, was decreasing. Contrastingly, the consumption in recreational, entertainment activities and goods increased, including furniture, transportation, communications, and reading. The great increase in consumption stimulated the growth in GDP as it incentivized production.

Vast export: Golden Sixties and shift to export trade

The period of rapid economic growth between 1955 and 1961 paved the way for the Golden Sixties, the second decade that is generally associated with the Japanese economic miracle. In 1965, Japan's nominal GDP was estimated at just over $91 billion. Fifteen years later, in 1980, the nominal GDP had soared to a record $1.065 trillion.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Ikeda, former minister of MITI, the Japanese government undertook an ambitious "Income Doubling Plan" (所得倍増計画). The plan called for doubling the size of Japan's economy in ten years through a combination of tax breaks, targeted investment, an expanded social safety net, and incentives to increase exports and industrial development. To achieve the goal of doubling of the economy in ten years, the plan called for an average annual economic growth rate of 7.2%. In fact, Japan's annual growth averaged more than 10% over the course of the Plan, and the economy doubled in size in less than seven years.

Ikeda introduced the Income Doubling Plan in response to the massive Anpo protests in 1960 against the US-Japan Security Treaty, as part of an effort to shift Japan's national dialogue away from contentious political struggles toward building a consensus around pursuit of rapid economic growth. However, Ikeda and his brain trust, which most notably included the economist Osamu Shimomura, had been developing the plan since mid-1959.

Under the Income Doubling Plan, Ikeda lowered interest rates and rapidly expanded government investment in Japan's infrastructure, building highways, high-speed railways, subways, airports, port facilities, and dams. Ikeda's government also expanded government investment in the previously neglected communications sector of the Japanese economy. Each of these acts continued the Japanese trend towards a managed economy that epitomized the mixed economic model.

The Income Doubling Plan was widely viewed as a success in achieving both its political and economic objectives. According to historian Nick Kapur, the plan "enshrined 'economic growthism' as a sort of secular religion of both the Japanese people and their government, bringing about a circumstance in which both the effectiveness of the government and the worth of the populace came to be measured above all by the annual percentage change in GDP."

Besides Ikeda's adherence to government intervention and regulation of the economy, his government pushed trade liberalization. By April 1960, trade imports had been 41 percent liberalized (compared to 22 percent in 1956). Ikeda planned to liberalize trade to 80 percent within three years. However, his liberalization goals met with severe opposition from both industries who had thrived on over-loaning and the nationalist public who feared foreign enterprise takeovers. The Japanese press likened liberalization to "the second coming of the black ships," in reference to the black ships Commodore Matthew C. Perry had sailed into Tokyo Bay in 1853 to open Japan to international trade via a show of military force. Accordingly, Ikeda moved toward liberalization of trade only after securing a protected market through internal regulations that favored Japanese products and firms, and never achieved his ambitious 80 percent goal.

Ikeda also set up numerous allied foreign aid distribution agencies to demonstrate Japan's willingness to participate in the international order and to promote exports. The creation of these agencies not only acted as a small concession to international organizations, but also dissipated some public fears about liberalization of trade. Ikeda furthered Japan's global economic integration by negotiating for Japan's entry into the OECD in 1964. By the time Ikeda left office, the GNP was growing at a phenomenal rate of 13.9 percent.

The end of the Japanese economic miracle (1973)

Japan's economic miracle ended in 1973, when the first oil-price shock struck Japan (1973 oil crisis). The price of oil increased from 3 dollars per barrel to over 13 dollars per barrel. During this time, Japan's industrial production decreased by 20%, as the supply capacity could not respond effectively to the rapid expansion of demand, and increased investments in equipment often invited unwanted results—tighter supply and higher prices of commodities. Moreover, the Second Oil Shock in 1978 and 1979 exacerbated the situation as the oil price again increased from 13 dollars per barrel to 39.5 dollars per barrel. Despite being seriously impacted by the two oil crises, Japan was able to withstand the impact and managed to transfer from a product-concentrating to a technology-concentrating production form.

The transformation was, in fact, a product of the oil crises and United States intervention. Since the oil price rose tenfold, the cost of production also soared. After the oil crises, to save costs, Japan had to produce products in a more environmentally friendly manner, and with less oil consumption. The biggest factor that invited industrial changes after the oil crises was the increase in energy prices including crude oil. As a result, Japan converted to a technology-concentrating program, ensuring the steady increase of its economy, and standing out beyond other capitalist countries that had been significantly wounded during the oil crises.

Government contributions

The Japanese financial recovery continued even after SCAP departed and the economic boom propelled by the Korean War abated. The Japanese economy survived from the deep recession caused by a loss of the U.S. payments for military procurement and continued to make gains. By the late 1960s, Japan had risen from the ashes of World War II to achieve an astoundingly rapid and complete economic recovery. According to Knox College Professor Mikiso Hane, the period leading up to the late 1960s saw "the greatest years of prosperity Japan had seen since the Sun Goddess shut herself up behind a stone door to protest her brother Susano-o's misbehaviour." The Japanese government contributed to the post-war Japanese economic miracle by stimulating private sector growth, first by instituting regulations and protectionism that effectively managed economic crises and later by concentrating on trade expansion.

Role of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) was involved in Japan's post-war economic recovery. According to some scholars, no other governmental regulation or organization had more economic impact than MITI. "The particular speed, form, and consequences of Japanese economic growth," Chalmers Johnson writes, "are not intelligible without reference to the contributions of MITI" (Johnson, vii). Established in 1949, MITI's role began with the "Policy Concerning Industrial Rationalization" (1950) that coordinated efforts by industries to counteract the effects of SCAP's deflationary regulations. In this way, MITI formalized cooperation between the Japanese government and private industry. The extent of the policy was such that if MITI wished to "double steel production, the neo-zaibatsu already has the capital, the construction assets, the makers of production machinery, and most of the other necessary factors already available in-house". The Ministry coordinated various industries, including the emerging keiretsu, toward a specific end, usually toward the intersection of national production goals and private economic interests.

MITI also boosted the industrial security by untying the imports of technology from the imports of other goods. MITI's Foreign Capital Law granted the ministry power to negotiate the price and conditions of technology imports. This element of technological control allowed it to promote industries it deemed promising. The low cost of imported technology allowed for rapid industrial growth. Productivity was greatly improved through new equipment, management, and standardization.

MITI gained the ability to regulate all imports with the abolition of the Economic Stabilization Board and the Foreign Exchange Control Board in August 1952. Although the Economic Stabilization Board was already dominated by MITI, the Yoshida Governments transformed it into the Economic Deliberation Agency, a mere "think tank," in effect giving MITI full control over all Japanese imports. Power over the foreign exchange budget was also handed directly to MITI.

MITI's establishment of the Japan Development Bank also provided the private sector with low-cost capital for long-term growth. The Japan Development Bank introduced access to the Fiscal Investment and Loan Plan, a massive pooling of individual and national savings. At the time FILP controlled four times the savings of the world's largest commercial bank. With this financial power, FILP was able to maintain an abnormally high number of Japanese construction firms (more than twice the number of construction firms of any other nation with a similar GDP).

Quantum suicide and immortality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality

Quantum suicide is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics and the philosophy of physics. Purportedly, it can falsify any interpretation of quantum mechanics other than the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, from the cat's point of view. Quantum immortality refers to the subjective experience of surviving quantum suicide. This concept is sometimes conjectured to be applicable to real-world causes of death as well.

As a thought experiment, quantum suicide is an intellectual exercise in which an abstract setup is followed through to its logical consequences merely to prove a theoretical point. Virtually all physicists and philosophers of science who have described it, especially in popularized treatments, underscore that it relies on contrived, idealized circumstances that may be impossible or exceedingly difficult to realize in real life, and that its theoretical premises are controversial even among supporters of the many-worlds interpretation. Thus, as cosmologist Anthony Aguirre warns, "[...] it would be foolish (and selfish) in the extreme to let this possibility guide one's actions in any life-and-death question."

History

Hugh Everett III did not mention quantum suicide or quantum immortality in writing; his work was intended as a solution to the paradoxes of quantum mechanics. Eugene Shikhovtsev's biography of Everett states that "Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: his consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death". Peter Byrne, author of a biography of Everett, reports that Everett also privately discussed quantum suicide (such as to play high-stakes Russian roulette and survive in the winning branch), but adds that "[i]t is unlikely, however, that Everett subscribed to this [quantum immortality] view, as the only sure thing it guarantees is that the majority of your copies will die, hardly a rational goal."

Among scientists, the thought experiment was introduced by Euan Squires in 1986. Afterwards, it was published independently by Hans Moravec in 1987 and Bruno Marchal in 1988; it was also described by Huw Price in 1997, who credited it to Dieter Zeh, and independently presented formally by Max Tegmark in 1998. It was later discussed by philosophers Peter J. Lewis in 2000 and David Lewis in 2001.

Thought experiment

The quantum suicide thought experiment involves a similar apparatus to Schrödinger's cat – a box which kills the occupant in a given time frame with probability one-half due to quantum uncertainty. The only difference is to have the experimenter recording observations be the one inside the box. The significance of this thought experiment is that someone whose life or death depends on a qubit could possibly distinguish between interpretations of quantum mechanics. By definition, fixed observers cannot.

At the start of the first iteration, under both interpretations, the probability of surviving the experiment is 50%, as given by the squared norm of the wave function. At the start of the second iteration, assuming a single-world interpretation of quantum mechanics (like the widely held Copenhagen interpretation) is true, the wave function has already collapsed; thus, if the experimenter is already dead, there is a 0% chance of survival for any further iterations. However, if the many-worlds interpretation is true, a superposition of the live experimenter necessarily exists (as also does the one who dies). Now, barring the possibility of life after death, after every iteration only one of the two experimenter superpositions – the live one – is capable of having any sort of conscious experience. Putting aside the philosophical problems associated with individual identity and its persistence, under the many-worlds interpretation, the experimenter, or at least a version of them, continues to exist through all of their superpositions where the outcome of the experiment is that they live. In other words, a version of the experimenter survives all iterations of the experiment. Since the superpositions where a version of the experimenter lives occur by quantum necessity (under the many-worlds interpretation), it follows that their survival, after any realizable number of iterations, is physically necessary; hence, the notion of quantum immortality.

A version of the experimenter surviving stands in stark contrast to the implications of the Copenhagen interpretation, according to which, although the survival outcome is possible in every iteration, its probability tends towards zero as the number of iterations increases. According to the many-worlds interpretation, the above scenario has the opposite property: the probability of a version of the experimenter living is necessarily one for any number of iterations.

In the book Our Mathematical Universe, Max Tegmark lays out three criteria that, in abstract, a quantum suicide experiment must fulfill:

• The random number generator must be quantum, not deterministic, so that the experimenter enters a state of superposition of being dead and alive.
• The experimenter must be rendered dead (or at least unconscious) on a time scale shorter than that on which they can become aware of the outcome of the quantum measurement.
• The experiment must be virtually certain to kill the experimenter, and not merely injure them.

Analysis of real-world feasibility

In response to questions about "subjective immortality" from normal causes of death, Tegmark suggested that the flaw in that reasoning is that dying is not a binary event as in the thought experiment; it is a progressive process, with a continuum of states of decreasing consciousness. He states that in most real causes of death, one experiences such a gradual loss of self-awareness. It is only within the confines of an abstract scenario that an observer finds they defy all odds. Referring to the above criteria, he elaborates as follows: "[m]ost accidents and common causes of death clearly don't satisfy all three criteria, suggesting you won't feel immortal after all. In particular, regarding criterion 2, under normal circumstances dying isn't a binary thing where you're either alive or dead [...] What makes the quantum suicide work is that it forces an abrupt transition."

David Lewis' commentary and subsequent criticism

The philosopher David Lewis explored the possibility of quantum immortality in a 2001 lecture titled "How Many Lives Has Schrödinger's Cat?", his first academic foray into the field of the interpretation of quantum mechanics – and his last, due to his death less than four months afterwards. In the lecture, published posthumously in 2004, Lewis rejected the many-worlds interpretation, allowing that it offers initial theoretical attractions, but also arguing that it suffers from irremediable flaws, mainly regarding probabilities, and came to tentatively endorse the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber theory instead. Lewis concluded the lecture by stating that the quantum suicide thought experiment, if applied to real-world causes of death, would entail what he deemed a "terrifying corollary": as all causes of death are ultimately quantum-mechanical in nature, if the many-worlds interpretation were true, in Lewis' view an observer should subjectively "expect with certainty to go on forever surviving whatever dangers [he or she] may encounter", as there will always be possibilities of survival, no matter how unlikely; faced with branching events of survival and death, an observer should not "equally expect to experience life and death", as there is no such thing as experiencing death, and should thus divide his or her expectations only among branches where he or she survives. If survival is guaranteed, however, this is not the case for good health or integrity. This would lead to a Tithonus-like deterioration of one's body that continues indefinitively, leaving the subject forever just short of death.

Interviewed for the 2004 book Schrödinger's Rabbits, Tegmark rejected this scenario for the reason that "the fading of consciousness is a continuous process. Although I cannot experience a world line in which I am altogether absent, I can enter one in which my speed of thought is diminishing, my memories and other faculties fading [...] [Tegmark] is confident that even if he cannot die all at once, he can gently fade away." In the same book, philosopher of science and many-worlds proponent David Wallace undermines the case for real-world quantum immortality on the basis that death can be understood as a continuum of decreasing states of consciousness not only in time, as argued by Tegmark, but also in space: "our consciousness is not located at one unique point in the brain, but is presumably a kind of emergent or holistic property of a sufficiently large group of neurons [...] our consciousness might not be able to go out like a light, but it can dwindle exponentially until it is, for all practical purposes, gone."

Directly responding to Lewis' lecture, British philosopher and many-worlds proponent David Papineau, while finding Lewis' other objections to the many-worlds interpretation lacking, strongly denies that any modification to the usual probability rules is warranted in death situations. Assured subjective survival can follow from the quantum suicide idea only if an agent reasons in terms of "what will be experienced next" instead of the more obvious "what will happen next, whether will be experienced or not". He writes: "[I]t is by no means obvious why Everettians should modify their intensity rule in this way. For it seems perfectly open for them to apply the unmodified intensity rule in life-or-death situations, just as elsewhere. If they do this, then they can expect all futures in proportion to their intensities, whether or not those futures contain any of their live successors. For example, even when you know you are about to be the subject in a fifty-fifty Schrödinger’s experiment, you should expect a future branch where you perish, to just the same degree as you expect a future branch where you survive."

On a similar note, quoting Lewis' position that death should not be expected as an experience, philosopher of science Charles Sebens concedes that, in a quantum suicide experiment, "[i]t is tempting to think you should expect survival with certainty." However, he remarks that expectation of survival could follow only if the quantum branching and death were absolutely simultaneous, otherwise normal chances of death apply: "[i]f death is indeed immediate on all branches but one, the thought has some plausibility. But if there is any delay it should be rejected. In such a case, there is a short period of time when there are multiple copies of you, each (effectively) causally isolated from the others and able to assign a credence to being the one who will live. Only one will survive. Surely rationality does not compel you to be maximally optimistic in such a scenario." Sebens also explores the possibility that death might not be simultaneous to branching, but still faster than a human can mentally realize the outcome of the experiment. Again, an agent should expect to die with normal probabilities: "[d]o the copies need to last long enough to have thoughts to cause trouble? I think not. If you survive, you can consider what credences you should have assigned during the short period after splitting when you coexisted with the other copies."

Writing in the journal Ratio, philosopher István Aranyosi, while noting that "[the] tension between the idea of states being both actual and probable is taken as the chief weakness of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics," summarizes that most of the critical commentary of Lewis' immortality argument has revolved around its premises. But even if, for the sake of argument, one were willing to entirely accept Lewis' assumptions, Aranyosi strongly denies that the "terrifying corollary" would be the correct implication of said premises. Instead, the two scenarios that would most likely follow would be what Aranyosi describes as the "comforting corollary", in which an observer should never expect to get very sick in the first place, or the "momentary life" picture, in which an observer should expect "eternal life, spent almost entirely in an unconscious state", punctuated by extremely brief, amnesiac moments of consciousness. Thus, Aranyosi concludes that while "[w]e can't assess whether one or the other [of the two alternative scenarios] gets the lion's share of the total intensity associated with branches compatible with self-awareness, [...] we can be sure that they together (i.e. their disjunction) do indeed get the lion's share, which is much reassuring."

Analysis by other proponents of the many-worlds interpretation

Physicist David Deutsch, though a proponent of the many-worlds interpretation, states regarding quantum suicide that "that way of applying probabilities does not follow directly from quantum theory, as the usual one does. It requires an additional assumption, namely that when making decisions one should ignore the histories in which the decision-maker is absent....[M]y guess is that the assumption is false."

Tegmark now believes experimenters should only expect a normal probability of survival, not immortality. The experimenter's probability amplitude in the wavefunction decreases significantly, meaning they exist with a much lower measure than they had before. Per the anthropic principle, a person is less likely to find themselves in a world where they are less likely to exist, that is, a world with a lower measure has a lower probability of being observed by them. Therefore, the experimenter will have a lower probability of observing the world in which they survive than the earlier world in which they set up the experiment. This same problem of reduced measure was pointed out by Lev Vaidman in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In the 2001 paper, "Probability and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory", Vaidman writes that an agent should not agree to undergo a quantum suicide experiment: "The large 'measures' of the worlds with dead successors is a good reason not to play." Vaidman argues that it is the instantaneity of death that may seem to imply subjective survival of the experimenter, but that normal probabilities nevertheless must apply even in this special case: "[i]ndeed, the instantaneity makes it difficult to establish the probability postulate, but after it has been justified in the wide range of other situations it is natural to apply the postulate for all cases."

In his 2013 book The Emergent Multiverse, Wallace opines that the reasons for expecting subjective survival in the thought experiment "do not really withstand close inspection", although he concedes that it would be "probably fair to say [...] that precisely because death is philosophically complicated, my objections fall short of being a knock-down refutation". Besides re-stating that there appears to be no motive to reason in terms of expectations of experience instead of expectations of what will happen, he suggests that a decision-theoretic analysis shows that "an agent who prefers certain life to certain death is rationally compelled to prefer life in high-weight branches and death in low-weight branches to the opposite."

Physicist Sean M. Carroll, another proponent of the many-worlds interpretation, states regarding quantum suicide that neither experiences nor rewards should be thought of as being shared between future versions of oneself, as they become distinct persons when the world splits. He further states that one cannot pick out some future versions of oneself as "really you" over others, and that quantum suicide still cuts off the existence of some of these future selves, which would be worth objecting to just as if there were a single world.

Analysis by skeptics of the many-worlds interpretation

Cosmologist Anthony Aguirre, while personally skeptical of most accounts of the many-worlds interpretation, in his book Cosmological Koans writes that "[p]erhaps reality actually is this bizarre, and we really do subjectively 'survive' any form of death that is both instantaneous and binary." Aguirre notes, however, that most causes of death do not fulfill these two requirements: "If there are degrees of survival, things are quite different." If loss of consciousness was binary like in the thought experiment, the quantum suicide effect would prevent an observer from subjectively falling asleep or undergoing anesthesia, conditions in which mental activities are greatly diminished but not altogether abolished. Consequently, upon most causes of death, even outwardly sudden, if the quantum suicide effect holds true an observer is more likely to progressively slip into an attenuated state of consciousness, rather than remain fully awake by some very improbable means. Aguirre further states that quantum suicide as a whole might be characterized as a sort of reductio ad absurdum against the current understanding of both the many-worlds interpretation and theory of mind. He finally hypothesizes that a different understanding of the relationship between the mind and time should remove the bizarre implications of necessary subjective survival.

Physicist and writer Philip Ball, a critic of the many-worlds interpretation, in his book Beyond Weird, describes the quantum suicide experiment as "cognitively unstable" and exemplificatory of the difficulties of the many-worlds theory with probabilities. While he acknowledges Lev Vaidman's argument that an experimenter should subjectively expect outcomes in proportion of the "measure of existence" of the worlds in which they happen, Ball ultimately rejects this explanation. "What this boils down to is the interpretation of probabilities in the MWI. If all outcomes occur with 100% probability, where does that leave the probabilistic character of quantum mechanics?" Furthermore, Ball explains that such arguments highlight what he recognizes as another major problem of the many-worlds interpretation, connected but independent from the issue of probability: the incompatibility with the notion of selfhood. Ball ascribes most attempts of justifying probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation to "saying that quantum probabilities are just what quantum mechanics look like when consciousness is restricted to only one world" but that "there is in fact no meaningful way to explain or justify such a restriction." Before performing a quantum measurement, an "Alice before" experimenter "can't use quantum mechanics to predict what will happen to her in a way that can be articulated – because there is no logical way to talk about 'her' at any moment except the conscious present (which, in a frantically splitting universe, doesn't exist). Because it is logically impossible to connect the perceptions of Alice Before to Alice After [the experiment], "Alice" has disappeared. [...] [The MWI] eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now."

Philosopher of science Peter J. Lewis, a critic of the many-worlds interpretation, considers the whole thought experiment an example of the difficulty of accommodating probability within the many-worlds framework: "Standard quantum mechanics yields probabilities for various future occurrences, and these probabilities can be fed into an appropriate decision theory. But if every physically possible consequence of the current state of affairs is certain to occur, on what basis should I decide what to do? For example, if I point a gun at my head and pull the trigger, it looks like Everett's theory entails that I am certain to survive—and that I am certain to die. This is at least worrying, and perhaps rationally disabling." In his book Quantum Ontology, Lewis explains that for the subjective immortality argument to be drawn out of the many-worlds theory, one has to adopt an understanding of probability – the so-called "branch-counting" approach, in which an observer can meaningfully ask "which post-measurement branch will I end up on?" – that is ruled out by experimental, empirical evidence as it would yield probabilities that do not match with the well-confirmed Born rule. Lewis identifies instead in the Deutsch-Wallace decision-theoretic analysis the most promising (although still, to his judgement, incomplete) way of addressing probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation, in which it is not possible to count branches (and, similarly, the persons that "end up" on each branch). Lewis concludes that "[t]he immortality argument is perhaps best viewed as a dramatic demonstration of the fundamental conflict between branch-counting (or person-counting) intuitions about probability and the decision theoretic approach. The many-worlds theory, to the extent that it is viable, does not entail that you should expect to live forever."