-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 12:42 PM -0700 4/10/03, amid a veritable ejaculation of gleeful pro-totalitarian paranoia, oddly prefaced with some economic sense, Tim May wrote:
(Because a slum of a few million people has essentially nowhere in the world ever climbed out of poverty, even in well-developed countries with strong free market systems. At least not in the past several decades. Reasons left as an exercise.)
Okay, I'll bite. There is a counter-example: Sao Paulo, Brazil, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Actually, now that I think about it, it isn't an exception, it's proof of a new rule. The solution to the above "exercise" is private property, which is what's happening to Brazil's favellas, in spite of a recently elected communist government, which, as we discovered with our own Clinton administration was more show than go. Like entropy, you can't unwind progress, boys and girls, particularly economic progress, which, like financial to political cryptography, is the only progress that matters. Knowledge is persistent. More and more former slums are being reclaimed because of private property. (I hate the word "capitalism", because it's a Marxist code-word for "economics".). Think about what happened in Chile, or the the South Bronx, or what's happening right now in Calcutta and Bombay. Or Mexico City. See Hernando DeSoto, for, um, more exercise. Wishfully thinking that we're going to end up with an economic inversion, with the US the last socialist country on earth, is probably not going to happen either. The world is not a static place. Static models, and static assumptions, do not apply. The above sample of von Misian "calculatory" thinking is what topples hierarchical totalitarians everywhere, and we shouldn't engage in it here, of all places. I think that people in Iraq will make more money than their other Arab brethren and laugh their totalitarians out of the room, just like we did here in the US to the Weather Underground, or the Symbianese Liberation Army, or, soon enough, ANSWER. It'll happen even faster if the US can keep the UN, and other "non-government" government organizations, out of Iraq. At least Tim's right about them. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com iQA/AwUBPpb16cPxH8jf3ohaEQIRJACfd/LQtfl59fuvNhtRKzJ5WfPHDQ4AoIJQ 37/YVcOiVnFkG3IlbAC0NGhA =WZBg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'