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.)

And RAH replied:

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.

Well, what about Shanghai, Guangzhou, and a bunch of the other coastal Chinese cities? No doubt they're clearly hammering their way out of any "slum" status, and oddly enough with CCP help. (Of course, there aren't any communists left in the Chinese Communist Party.) Well, 'help' is possibly tto strong a word...the Communist Party has basically been backing out of daily life for 20 years or so. One could also argue that Mumbay/Bombay has a shot of de-slumming. At least, this seems to be one Indian city where the effects of an exploding Indian middle class are more easily seen. In general, I agree. The big slum cities seem to remain slums and get bigger. But the existence of sizable cities where de-slumification is happening indicates this is not the inevitable fate of big slum cities. (Or perhaps there's some slum-line beneath which it becomes exponentially more difficult for cities to crawl out of.) Hey wait...I just forgot about the most obvious counter-example, literally underneath me: New York! (Though 1970s slum-NYC had a lot more character than the present day-washed out self-simulacrum its becomming.) -TD

From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com> To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: On the permanence of poverty in the face of property and progress (was Re: "Stay Behind" strategies in Iraq) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 13:06:54 -0400

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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

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-- ----------------- 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'

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