omohayek:

Yes. It's extremely unlikely that government bureaucrats are going to do a better job than the market of picking winners, even in the best of circumstances, let alone in a country like Nigeria with such incompetent and venal leadership.

To illustrate just how bad even the most honest and intelligent bureaucrats are at picking winners, Japan's MITI was staffed by the very best and brightest from the country's most selective universities, and yet they failed completely to see the rise of microcomputers, the crucial importance software would have, or recently, the importance of the internet: Japan has failed to produce a single company to match Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Amazon - none of which were ever singled out for US government aid. Worse yet, in the meantime the South Koreans have completely eaten Japan's lunch in the hardware space, to the extent that the only arenas Japanese companies still rule are in video game consoles and digital SLR systems. The "5th Generation Computing" initiative MITI bureaucrats thought would be the future turned out to be a complete dead end, a failure now made obsolete by deep learning methods originated by mostly Canadian researchers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun (for more, see this Fifth generation computing initiative Wikipedia article).

Add Nigeria's endemic corruption into the mix, and there's no way I could ever support such government interference, as the only goal it could possibly serve would be to tilt the playing field towards particularly favored insiders. The last thing Nigeria needs is more rent-seekers like Dangote, who gets every single Nigerian to pay him several multiples of the international price for a low-tech commodity like cement, thanks to his close ties to every ruler since Obasanjo
in the 1970s.

I also believe the market is best at picking winners.

The problem with Nigeria trying to pick winners, the country goes for a product it has no comparative advantage, bans the product or place punitive duties on the product and forces the masses to pay premium prices for a,product it has almost no plans to export.

You mentioned cement. The new or is it old kid on the block is now rice!

grandstar:


I also believe the market is best at picking winners.

The problem with Nigeria trying to pick winners, the country goes for a product it has no comparative advantage, bans the product or place punitive duties on the product and forces the masses to pay premium prices for a,product it has almost no plans to export.

You mentioned cement. The new or is it old kid on the block is now rice!

For such retrograde thinking to pass for "policy" is all the evidence one needs that Buhari has probably never even heard of the term "comparative advantage", let alone attempted to understand it. I'm guessing there probably aren't more than 3 or 4 members of Buhari's entire cabinet who would know what comparative advantage means (Fashola, Osinbajo and a few others), and in any case they clearly have little influence on Buhari's decision-making, so it wouldn't really matter if they did. 4 more years of Buhari's poorly informed leadership will see Nigerian living standards drop to a level last seen in the Obasanjo era, that's how bad it is.

I wish I could hope that an Atiku victory (unlikely as it is) would make a big difference for the better, but in his case I don't see any greater understanding of business and economics translating into a significant improvement in the average Nigerian's standard of living, even if the annual GDP growth numbers rise to 7% or more. I say this because I fully expect most of any such gains to be captured by Atiku and the tiny clique surrounding him, through shady privatizations that grossly undervalue assets, the facilitation of yet more oligopolies like the ones Dangote already has in cement and rice, the expansion of "import substitution" schemes that allow a privileged few to make risk-free profits at the expense of the general public, etc. I simply don't believe it's possible for a 72-year old man whose entire fortune is built on corruption, and who relies heavily on the support of crooks like Saraki, to suddenly turn a page and start seriously working for East Asian style broad-based growth - especially not when he basically bought his nomination as the PDP standard-bearer. A President Atiku will be wanting a health return on his "investment", which means any "good" policies he enacts will likely be subverted to primarily enrich him and his supporters.

In short, I think Nigeria is doomed to another 4 years of economically subpar policy-making as long as Atiku and Buhari remain the only serious choices.

grandstar:


I also believe the market is best at picking winners.

The problem with Nigeria trying to pick winners, the country goes for a product it has no comparative advantage, bans the product or place punitive duties on the product and forces the masses to pay premium prices for a,product it has almost no plans to export.

You mentioned cement. The new or is it old kid on the block is now rice!

Even though comparative advantage can change over time in favor of local production, your point about how we employ half measures in policy development and implementation is still valid. Yea, if we have "no plans to export," import substitution is a half measure!

omohayek:

Yes. It's extremely unlikely that government bureaucrats are going to do a better job than the market of picking winners, even in the best of circumstances, let alone in a country like Nigeria with such incompetent and venal leadership.

To illustrate just how bad even the most honest and intelligent bureaucrats are at picking winners, Japan's MITI was staffed by the very best and brightest from the country's most selective universities, and yet they failed completely to see the rise of microcomputers, the crucial importance software would have, or recently, the importance of the internet: Japan has failed to produce a single company to match Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Amazon - none of which were ever singled out for US government aid. Worse yet, in the meantime the South Koreans have completely eaten Japan's lunch in the hardware space, to the extent that the only arenas Japanese companies still rule are in video game consoles and digital SLR systems. The "5th Generation Computing" initiative MITI bureaucrats thought would be the future turned out to be a complete dead end, a failure now made obsolete by deep learning methods originated by mostly Canadian researchers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun (for more, see this Fifth generation computing initiative Wikipedia article).

Add Nigeria's endemic corruption into the mix, and there's no way I could ever support such government interference, as the only goal it could possibly serve would be to tilt the playing field towards particularly favored insiders. The last thing Nigeria needs is more rent-seekers like Dangote, who gets every single Nigerian to pay him several multiples of the international price for a low-tech commodity like cement, thanks to his close ties to every ruler since Obasanjo
in the 1970s.

Confluence among Yorubas isn't going so well? It appears Christians Yorubas dominate the progressive economic wing of Yorubaland. There's needs to be an economic system administrated by Yoruba Muslims. Truthfully Christians have never developed Africa. The Islamic Africans built Timbuktu under Musa Mansa. Timbuktu was the largest university in world history. Take away Arab culture and add your own indigenous culture and Islam will inspire peace and prosperity. I can go on and on about near to Kemetic culture embedded in Islam. Islam has strict law with sometimes accurate judgement. I'm not promoting end of Islam only the slavery that comes with Christianity and their Freemason Jesuit controlled leaders. Too many cults with their hands in the pie of charity. Philantrophy is a principle of religion which money collected from the people be used to lift them up. A temple is under the king not the other way around.


Ase

omohayek:

For such retrograde thinking to pass for "policy" is all the evidence one needs that Buhari has probably never even heard of the term "comparative advantage", let alone attempted to understand it. I'm guessing there probably aren't more than 3 or 4 members of Buhari's entire cabinet who would know what comparative advantage means (Fashola, Osinbajo and a few others), and in any case they clearly have little influence on Buhari's decision-making, so it wouldn't really matter if they did. 4 more years of Buhari's poorly informed leadership will see Nigerian living standards drop to a level last seen in the Obasanjo era, that's how bad it is.

I wish I could hope that an Atiku victory (unlikely as it is) would make a big difference for the better, but in his case I don't see any greater understanding of business and economics translating into a significant improvement in the average Nigerian's standard of living, even if the annual GDP growth numbers rise to 7% or more. I say this because I fully expect most of any such gains to be captured by Atiku and the tiny clique surrounding him, through shady privatizations that grossly undervalue assets, the facilitation of yet more oligopolies like the ones Dangote already has in cement and rice, the expansion of "import substitution" schemes that allow a privileged few to make risk-free profits at the expense of the general public, etc. I simply don't believe it's possible for a 72-year old man whose entire fortune is built on corruption, and who relies heavily on the support of crooks like Saraki, to suddenly turn a page and start seriously working for East Asian style broad-based growth - especially not when he basically bought his nomination as the PDP standard-bearer. A President Atiku will be wanting a health return on his "investment", which means any "good" policies he enacts will likely be subverted to primarily enrich him and his supporters.

In short, I think Nigeria is doomed to another 4 years of economically subpar policy-making as long as Atiku and Buhari remain the only serious choices.

Just as he setup Mikano (power), Faro (water), and ABTI (education), for himself during his last time in power, he is coming in this time to set up mining, agriculture, construction, and telecommunications companies for all his children.

Buhari does not value knowledge on economics and Atiku is too criminally inclined. Only God will see Nigeria through the next 4 years

Truth is powerful

true