Indonesian dogs have the answer to the mystery of capitalism

Independent.co.uk ^ | 02 September 2002 | Simon Carr

[Cicero]

Funny. This guy can write. I wonder how he ended up writing for the Independent.

[July 4th]

The problem? The assets owned by the poor aren't legally held. Ownership rights aren't documented. Titles aren't registered. Property can't be traded or used as security for a loan, or as a share for investment.

It's an interesting argument, and a better place to start than where the UN and EU always look, first blaming the West for poverty, then asking for money.

[RLK]

It's a marvellously reassuring book for wealthy Westerners because it tells us thet poverty in the Third World isn't our fault.

-----------------------------

If the United States and any/all other countries supposedly responsible for third world poverty would disappear or have never developed, the third world would be just as poor as it is now, or has ever been.

[doc11355]

"If the United States and any/all other countries supposedly responsible for third world poverty would disappear or have never developed, the third world would be just as poor as it is now, or has ever been. "

Much, much poorer, I believe. However, they would be spared their envy of the Western countries that drives so much hatred towards us.

[Leisler]

Well of course they ask for money. How are they going to drive the Range Rovers, type unread reports on their laptops and take vacations in Spain, you twit! They're fight'n poverty fer crying out loud. How dare you! Now, back to work, shut up and hand over that tax money.

[Big Bunyip]

What's so innovative about advocating property rights?

[dcwusmc]

Advocating the recognition of property rights. Something not often done. Even here property rights are abrogated regularly at all levels of gooberment. Think what it must be like where they have never BEEN recognized....

[RLK]

Much, much poorer, I believe. However, they would be spared their envy of the Western countries that drives so much hatred towards us.

-----------------

You put your finger on it exactly. The problem is not that the U. S. has created poverty in third war nations. The problem is that the difference in economic levels has created angry cryptically stated demands for redistribution of the American economic level throughout the degenerate world.

[nicollo]

Where are the radicals, where are the revolutionaries? What the world's poor (bastards) need is Jefferson, not Bono.

For every stupid yelp at America a kid is shot in the head in the third world by infested water, spoiled bags of grain, a stolen ballot, or a Swiss bank account. The Third World needs political clarity, not American charity, a local tax cut, not American tax dollars. And so on, straight into the Bill or Rights.

Instead...
- There's Chavez, sucking dollars through a syphen hooked up to American gasoline tanks, bad-mouthing his lifeline...
- There's Jiang showing off China's first Supercomputer, INTEL INSIDE, worshipping the virtues of his broken nation, whose only salvation he knows is to turn to the American example of property rights, guarantee of contract, etc. (none of which will ever be secure without a free press and an armed citizenry...)...
- There's Chirac demanding a tax on American superiority in order to cover his national sense of guilt and inferiority...
- There's Kofi, hiding his ass behind UN floor votes to cover up his joined and upright palms...
- There's Saddam, pissing on his foot, counting grains of sand in fear of that one that marks the cruise missile aimed at his head, wondering exactly why he thought he could turn on his masters...

When will our college adolescents, doped on dissent, scurrying about in their Nikes like traders on the NYSE floor on a bad day in August, following the nearest raised fist, smoke a genuinely radical thought? Try this: "We hold these truths to be self evident..." Instead they ride about in metric, scream in international sign, and cower behind poetry and truly bad music. Meanwhile, the car loans are signed in English. (There's a good reason we're the last bastion of inches and pounds, a most ridiculous and sublimely stupid system that even Arab princes have to suck on when they're giving us our money back in Las Vegas.)

American greed has spared more lives than were squashed by Stalin, Mao, and Hitler combined. Start with Morse's codified revolution that shrunk continents, Carnegie's tempered steel that framed every modern life, the Wright flying machine that made man a god, Henry Ford's cheap cars and tractors that salvaged the world from horse manure, go to the clean water needed to brew Coca-Cola, the advertising dollars spread about by Phillip-Morris, cheap-ass wages five times the local rate paid by Nike, or the tonics peddled by Bristol-Meyers, unlike despots, communists, and fools, Americans don't advance themselves by killing off their client base.

I can't wait for the morons to show up at the next IMF meetings and protest capitalism. I'll be there at the front lines, my sign high calling the IMF, the World Bank, and the multinationalists cowards for selling money so expensive when good ideas are overstocked and cheap, right here at the corner store.



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Damn, I feel better now.

[Jim Robinson]

Wow! Me too.

[nicollo]

I felt like Jesse Jackson for a minute there, Jim, (rhyming, too!). Think it'll keep me out of jail, too?

---
Gonzo: you motoring fool, this one's for you! How'r you and the Matta Momma?

[x]

Peter Bauer and others made some of the same points twenty years ago. There was some enthusiasm for markets in Latin America afterwards. Certainly something must have changed during those years years. Someone should do a survey of what's happened since then. I suspect Latin American countries did start to do better when they turned towards the free market in the '80s and '90s. But 1) political traditions and temptations are too strong too overcome and 2) when there's a downturn, somebody takes the bump. It's inevitable that most people who go into government will want more government, and that most people concerned with "development" will want to get jobs and money out of it. There's also some nostalgia for leftism in cultures where it's been strong in the past.

[farmfriend]

ping

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Taking a break from your bartending duties I see. Thanks for the ping and the good read.

[joanie-f]

Thanks for the ping, nicollo.

Mike and John, this thread's for you. :)

Reading your description of college adolescents brought me back to my own days on campus, when the majority of my friends and classmates were busy studying how to protest/complain/gripe/assert/tear down (while most of their parents were shelling out big bucks in order for them to pass their time in such a constructive manner), and I, for the most part, had my head in my books (with a once or twice a week night out on the town inserted to keep insanity at bay), studying math (with the eventual outcome being a personal involvement in designing fuel elements for nuclear reactors … which I wisely kept under my hat at the time, for fear of being the first victim of a campus lynching, should my aspirations become known). The ‘freedoms’ that many of my friends and classmates were resolved to ‘defend’ fell within narrowly defined parameters, and those of us who envisioned a somewhat different future were not covered under their particular umbrella.

Aside from the obvious cost in human lives and freedoms, it’s the (so-called) radicals’ and revolutionaries’ double-speak that makes their ‘cause’ so unpalatable. (The ‘do as I say, not as I do’, ‘some animals are more equal than others’, ‘it’s for the children’ stuff ….)

And so it continues …. college students (at least those who have occupied our campuses during the past forty years, and with few exceptions) are blank slates (having not received the rudimentary foundation upon which to base even a semblance of critical/evaluative thought before setting foot on campus). Mix that blank slate status with predominantly Marxist/anti-individual-liberty slate writers and higher education exists as the font from which catechism-reciting indoctrinaires (who think they know everything, but only ‘know’ that which their handlers have siphoned into their eager psyches) flow.

And until the system, and the family, see to it that the ability to discriminate/discern is a part of child rearing/public education (are any of us holding our breath?), higher education will simply continue to dispense anything but.

Your reference to Henry Ford’s cheap cars puts me in mind of the Broadway show ‘Ragtime’ (whose music I adored, so whose stage performance I went to see a couple of years ago). The show was touted to be a potential blockbuster, and, after sitting through but fifteen minutes of it, I understood why (and we left the theater shortly thereafter). As I should have known, its (subliminal, but strongly there nonetheless) message was that Ford and his disgusting ilk were opportunistic, inhuman pigs, and Emma Goldman and her feminist/socialist ilk, if not suppressed by the pigs and their wealth, could have saved the world from the scourge of capitalism. (The show closed after less than two years, because of outcries that blacks were not being portrayed in enough of a politically correct light. The reason may have been wrong, but the closing was received as a blessing in my particular corner of the world…..).

I'll be there at the front lines, my sign high calling the IMF, the World Bank, and the multinationalists cowards for selling money so expensive when good ideas are overstocked and cheap, right here at the corner store.

Trouble is, good ideas aren’t worth a damn in their playbook. They’re roadblocks/speed bumps, actually. (It’s the old give them a fish vs. teach them to fish advice). Adept fishermen make poor followers.

[KC Burke]

I recently recieved my copy of this book that I ordered some months back. As some may recall, the PBS series Commanding Hieghts which analyzed the conquest of the Hayek view of world economics featured De Soto discussing the missing ingrediant to successful capitalism in Peru...his home base as I recall.

While the writing in the article is interesting, it makes the book appear less serious and thoughtful than it really is. I have just started my reading so I will post something later on about my full impressions.

It appears, however, that De Soto makes clear that an economic system, alone, will not be sufficient to make a society properous...you must have the Rule of Law and a firm Defense from Arbitrary Power. In other words, Whiggish tradition as exemplified in Anglo-American success copied in some of Western civilizations but not others. Prescriptive Property Rights being the foundation of how such a Whiggish system relates to Capitalism's ability to harness broad based participation legitamacy.

[KC Burke]

See my post at 17, but your point as to why the Free Market is faulty in Peru or elsewhere is exactly what prompted De Soto to do the studies outlined in his book. Be sure to view Commanding Heights in replay or on-line if you haven't seen it.

[PsyOp]

"Damn, I feel better now."

Great rant. Smoke 'em if you got 'em and pour yourself a nice tall Cuba-Libre... you deserve it!

[Billy_bob_bob]

This is the guy who wrote the article that helped me realize the one single, overriding and overwhelming difference between the rich and poor nations of the world. That difference is the fact that the "rich" nations of the world have the social and legal infrastructure required for the creation and protection of wealth.

If you have a culture that says "those who have nice things are pigs, and we the people have the right to kill them and take those things for ourselves" then you end up with a country like Zimbabwe. If you have a society that says "the police pay for their badges and then shake down everyone they run across for their income" then you end up with a nation like Mexico.

The funny thing about this viewpoint is that it makes perfect sense to someone with any inclination towards understanding enviromental studies. First you need the social and legal infrastructure (the "environment", if you will), and then the growth follows. Those who focus on creating the environment for growth are rewarded with harvests of plenty. Those who focus on redistributing the products of wealth produced by others are doomed to harvest sorrow.