
jer+@andrew.cmu.edu wrote:
"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> writes:
and opportunity for me and my family, Arguing that native peoples were better off before the arrival of Europeans is fatuous nonsense--you can't go home again.
Not true. "Society" has passed through Africa many times, the people revert to their previous ways.
I disagree. Only some ways, you don't see them tossing their AK 47s for spears.
Further, many of the leftist critiques of "moneylending as exploitation" are similar to past (and current) demonizations of moneychangers, moneylenders, shylocks, and other assorted stereotypes.
I don't favor nationalistic lending and borrowing policies, which, for example, involve some central government borrowing money, sending the borrowed funds to personal Swiss bank accounts, and then sticking the nominal taxpayers with the debt. Nothing I have said here endorses this.
But that's the only way it hapens in the third world. The only time foreign aid is not gutted by corrupt beaurocrats is when the Westerners go there and manage the projects themselves. This is quite different from a loan.
Wrong, and wrong. Lending to individuals is happening, in $100 or so ammounts, without westerners (or their governments' crooked bureaucrats) present, right now.
But much lending is useful. It's the way factories get built, the way things get done.
Heh, have you ever *seen* a third world factory 10 years after it was built. Nice bit of scap, that.
Ask of government was involved.
Much of the criticism of "moneylenders" is closely related, if you think about it, to criticism of "money launderers." Cypherpunks should relish the rise of new mechanisms for money laundering, moneylending, tax evasion, etc.
I took the "Wired" quote about Walter Wriston "sounding like a cypherpunk" to represent this new view, in explicit contrast to his earlier views when he headed Citibank and they had a more statist approach.
Your mileage may vary, but tired homilies about lending being exploitati on are not very useful in this day and age.
I dunno, pearls befre swine still applies. It's not that I think lending is bad, but large economic development loans to thrild world countries continue to support corruption and oppression, and not much else.
Because of governments more than banks. You are beginning to see the light.