Economics Explained

What led to Lebanon's devastating economic crisis, causing a shrinking population and half of its GDP to vanish? Why did it collapse, and what are the implications for other developing nations facing similar challenges?

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We've talked about some incredibly poor countries on this channel before, but perhaps nothing as bad as the small East African country of Eritrea. This country is a complete military dictatorship, and has been called the North Korea of Africa. There are no free markets. No trading partners. Their debt to GDP ratio runs very high for one reason only: their country is in a critical region of the world for international shipping. But life really couldn't be much worse in Eritrea.

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Capitalism is the system that has helped the world become infinitely more wealthy than it has ever been in human history, but there are problems. A disregard for the drawbacks of production like waste, pollution and inequality are often cited by people who want capitalism to be replaced by social democracy, communism or even anarchy. But even communist countries like the USSR and China have reluctantly returned to capitalism. So, is capitalism inevitable? 

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The Davos Summit of the World Economic Forum (WEF) draws a lot of attention every year. Started by German engineer Klaus Schwab, the WEF the stated mission to "engage business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” It's no wonder there are a lot of conspiracy hypotheses about the real motivations of such an organisation. But despite their image as the club of the wealthy elites, the reality is much less sinister, but could somehow be worse than the conspiracy theories about lizard people...

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Apparently us guys think about the Roman Empire 5 times a day, but from an economic Perspective it's hard to see why. While they did build a lot of architectural monuments, their economy was actually rather pathetic by almost all metrics. Why was Rome, which had a large empire and notoriety throughout Europe for millennia after its demise, actually a very weak economy?

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France's problems arguably go back 200 years to their slow and steady approach to adopting industrialisation. While many other countries can learn from France's strong protection for workers' rights, at the moment this has made France a very uncompetitive country with some of the worst brain drain across the EU. Why work in France for lower wages when they can make so much more in the UK, Germany and the US. Is France stuck at just being the place with fancy handbags and perfumes, or can it change it's economy to stay internationally competitive?

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There is no more deadly area in the world than the DMZ between North and South Korea. Millions of mines, guns and surveillance prevent anyone from crossing. But if tensions were to somehow stop and North and South Korea reunite into one country, it would still be almost impossible to combine their economies. Why would we not be able to use the lessons learned by the reunification of East and West Germany?

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Japan's economy has been stagnant for 2 decades, and while some economists look at this as an outlier, it might be something that just happens to all advanced economies, and Japan just got there first. After suffering the "lost generation", can Japan come back and recover growth, or is their fate one we will all eventually reach?

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Australia's biggest export is natural resources, and as we have talked about on the channel many times, this isn't always a great thing for an economy. Resources don't provide much value to the local economy, especially in Australia where mines are thousands of miles from residential centres, and they don't employ all that many people for the massive wealth they create. Australia lags far behind technological centres like the US, but somehow has a strong economy. How has it done this and what can we learn from a country that just digs holes and builds homes?

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