Re: Land Ownership in Latin America (was Help with a Minimum Wage Model)

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Apr 11 2003 - 00:49:14 MDT

  • Next message: Andrew Clough: "Re: IRAQ: Predictable catastrophes of human stupidity"

    Lee Corbin wrote:
    > Samantha writes
    >
    >
    >>[Lee wrote]
    >>
    >>>[Damien S. wrote]
    >>>
    >>>>Such as one where one person owns all the land? Or would
    >>>>redistribution there still be a violation of the sacred
    >>>>rights of property?
    >>>
    >>>That's exactly the right question, and it was the one asked
    >>>by a number of American administrations in the 1950s - 1980s,
    >>>when they were doing whatever they could---hang preconceptions
    >>>and ideology---to keep nations in Latin America and Africa
    >>>from falling into the hands of the Russians.
    >>
    >>In some cases they were doing all they could to keep the nations
    >>out of the hands of the nations' own people and their duly
    >>elected representatives.
    >
    >
    > For what motive? That is, in your model of reality, what would
    > the motive of the U.S. have been to avoid having the land fall
    > into the hands of a nation's own people?

    Simple. If it was not in our economic and geo-political
    interest to have them be independent and sometimes uncooperative
    with us we sometimes apparently decided to oust their duly
    elected government. I am not making this up. Do you want
    chapter and verse quoted? It is not up to me to say why we did
    this. Especially since I don't understand the "why". I simply
    point out that we did do this.

    >
    >>From earlier postings, I get the feeling that you just believe
    > U.S. foreign policy to be intrinsically wicked, so that it would
    > of course immediately follow that it would have as its first
    > priority the detriment of the people, which ignores incentives,
    > and is a dumb reading of history.
    >

    This is an exceedingly dumb reading of what I have said. Like I
    say, I did not make this up. I am going on vacation starting
    tomorrow but if you want a list of such events, just say the word.

    >
    >>I do not believe that all of this was only about keeping
    >>the Russians from grabbing these countries.
    >
    >
    > Well, then, which country's land distribution would you
    > like to discuss first?
    >

    Land distribution? Do you want to reduce our actions
    interfering with other countries to only that issue? Why?

    >
    >>I especially do not believe when our policies did not
    >>become more hands-off after the fall of the USSR.
    >
    >

    It may be a week before I get to go into detail on this and some
    other current issues as I hope to not be around computers much
    for about 7 days or so.

    - samantha



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 11 2003 - 00:51:41 MDT