On the permanence of poverty in the face of property and progress (was Re: "Stay Behind" strategies in Iraq)

[R. A. Hettinga]

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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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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'