On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 mmotyka@lsil.com wrote:

Oddly enough, this topic came up at home this morning over coffee and pastries on the front porch with someone from a similarly troubled country. Even more oddly, we were in agreement.

Want to begin improving the lives of poor people around the world? For starters it seems to me that everywhere the Spanish colonized is royally fucked-up. Family planning will do more to ease the suffering and improve the lot of the poor than a whole grand canyon full of pious, chanting padres.

It seems to me that anywhere anybody colonized it is royaly fucked up, unless they bought their indepence with blood (and then a case can be made it is only marginally better there/here).

As for the "civil libertarian/anarcho-capitalist challenge" the poor in these areas ( Mexico, SA, Philippines ) barely have resources to feed their children and don't have the energy or the will to think about political philosophy and realization through technology. That is the domain of their masters, the well-off.

A counter point is the amount of business in those regions. If one follows the standard free market or CACL responce then as business moves in you would expect to see a general increase across the board. There's even a comment about 'middle class' in the article. A more 'cynical/real world' view would be that the plight of these people won't improve until those outside begin to hold the economic and political authorities to task for their actions and the consequences to the general population. After all, the rational strategy with respect to increase profit and decrease cost is to 'defect' (in the same sense if not for the same reasons as a PD) with respect to pay and benefits. It also holds itself out as a good example of why the 'information' requisite for 'free market' dynamics isn't a natural of human business enterprise, business puts great stock on knowning something the competition doesn't (in this case competition for the profit margin between the managers/share holders of the company and the employees). -- ____________________________________________________________________ Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Ludwig Wittgenstein The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------