First Impressions... 17yrs Later
From west to east, south to north, past to future...
“A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future, the future to which Europe is likely to come if it escapes economic disaster. On the other hand, when he goes to Asia he sees the past. In India, I am told, he can see the Middle Ages; in China he can see the eighteenth century.”
~ Bertrand Russell, from Skeptical Essays (1928)
Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...
Step by step, line by line, Note by Note, we continue our journey through time and space. From west to east, south to north, known unknowns to unknown unknowns, we fall straight backwards... and into the future.
Barely a month and a half into our travels, the only thing we know for sure is that we know less than when we started (relative to our questions pending).
Along the path we notice, if only by accident, a dazzling world of opposing forces. They are the profound powers and megatrends that shape the world around us politically... economically... culturally... for better and for worse.
Birth and death... growth and decay... nations emerging and submerging... whatever the price of admission, this earthly spectacle is worth every penny.
We begin with life, everywhere struggling forward, its tenacious tendrils unfurling through every available crack and crevice. In some places, the path toward sunlight is more difficult than others.
Men, Women and Children
When we departed Australia, for example, we left behind a relatively empty continent, one of the least populated places on the planet.
At just 26 million people, Australia’s population is roughly the same as Florida’s (if Florida counted all its illegal immigrants... and annexed part of Georgia.) With a total area of 7.7 million square kilometers, the Great Southern Land is about the size of the continental US (if Trump wins in November and California secedes from the union.)
That equals an Aussie population density only slightly higher than Iceland, lower than Mongolia and about the same as Namibia. Which is to say, practically empty.
Here in Southeast Asia, however, we find a strikingly different story. The Indonesian island of Java, over which we flew en route from Bali to Kuala Lumpur this week, is home to 145 million men, women and children, about half the entire country’s total roll call (of 275 million).
That’s more than 5.5 times Australia’s entire population... all on a landmass barely twice that of Tasmania. (Or about the size of Mississippi, pop. 3.3 million, for our American readers.)
Where Australia counts scarcely three people per square kilometer... Java piles 1,100, give or take. And here in Malaysia’s throbbing capital, that density vigorously (ahem) sextuples... to almost 6,900 people per square kilometer.
“Where is everybody?” said nobody in this region, ever.
From one of the most deserted places on the planet, to one of the most densely peopled... from empty beaches to concrete jungles... the developed world, to the developing... the contrast is arresting.
17 Years Later…
But the sheer volume of humanity is only part of the story... and not even the most interesting. It is quality, rather than quantity, that really counts. To the (conspicuously) foreign observer, this is a land brimming with internal contradictions, swirling paradoxes and dizzying ambiguities.
Outside our window tonight, so close we can almost touch them, we see two giant towers, marvels of modern engineering and elegant design, reaching into the heavens. Down below, meanwhile, calls to prayer sing out over the city’s minarets. Islam’s adherents believe their religion to be the complete and universal version of a primordial faith, one that stretches back to the beginning of time.
Past and future, tradition and ambition, linking arms across the ages, in a strange place caught somewhere between the two.
It’s been 17 years since your wanderlusting editor last visited this “muddy confluence” (the literal translation of “Kuala Lumpur”)...but it might well have been another planet altogether. In fact, the country we visited back in 2007 was not half the country we see before us today... literally.
At 5% annual GDP growth, which Malaysia has averaged since the turn of the century, it takes just 14.4 years for an economy to double in size. In other words, this economy has tripled in size since 2000. Last year alone it grew by 8.65%. The change is astonishing, but hardly surprising. In the 50 years following independence, in 1957, the Malaysian economy averaged a whopping 6.5% annual growth... meaning it multiplied in size 23 times over.
It is indeed true that no man can step into the same muddy confluence twice.
Old World New
The bamboo-like growth here is even more impressive when contrasted with the mature markets in the west. Since the beginning of the century, Australia has grown at 2.7% annually. And that includes the massive 1999-2008 commodity super bull market, of which Australia was an enormous beneficiary. The US, meanwhile, has grown at an average 2.1% annually. This, too, factors in the massive fracking revolution in US energy and the mega-growth of the tech giants.
There is, of course, a certain “logarithmic dependence” at play here, whereby larger economies encounter more resistance with each additional unit of growth. But this concept we’ll have to leave for a future installment. For now, we pause merely to observe that change is constant... and constantly changing.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. Thanks again to our dear Notes members, old and new. We’re ever grateful for your generous and ongoing support. Owing to your support, we’re now #24 in World Politics here on Substack, a mighty run having only began our little project this year!
The higher our ranking, the more eyeballs we reach and the further we can spread the word of free markets… free minds… and free people.
If you’d like to support our work and join our growing community of independent thinkers, intellectual renegades and fringe-dwelling ne-er-do-wells, please consider becoming a Notes member today. Cheers ~ JB
Yes Joel, as you and Bill pointed out today, most of the world is thriving and developing, as America and most of the west are focused on bullshit social issues, mass illegal immigration, inflation and other self inflicted problems. I’m pretty sure we here know where all this is headed, but need more information, knowledge and support of world travelers like yourself to help guide us blind fools through the coming storm…
Human density is plaguing more cities than just K L.
Heretofore, Calcutta was the foremost example of how charm, crime and cost are affected by cramming evermore people into a defined amount of space within which no more roads can be built.
Now cities as small as two US cities, Arlington VA and Alexandria VA - both framed by rigid boundaries - are discovering limits to human density.
Their current solution - now subject to costly lawsuits - is to replace single family homes possessing off street parking with multi-family dwellings whose many residents will have no choice but on-street parking
And cities as large as Mexico City, which has more residents than some countries have citizens, are running out of water
Interesting, costly and contentious times a-coming