From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Jun 20 2003 - 01:06:58 MDT
At 11:14 PM 6/19/03 -0700, mez wrote:
>Why not bribe the politicians of developing countries to establish the
>rule of law and clamp down on corruption?
>Call them "Economic Leadership Grants".
Here's a foolish question to which the economically-sophisticated might
care to respond:
What happens to the vast hoards of loot misappropriated by those despots,
corrupt bureaucrats and (at last, a chance to use this word!) their ilk?
I assume they don't stock their swimming pools with greenbacks and swim in
money like Unca Scrooge.
Presumably a lot of it is used on military purchases, which doesn't help
their own economies develop but must be useful to the Swedes, the Brits,
the French and other nameless arms manufacturers and dealers. So the wealth
doesn't *vanish*, a lot of it supports First World manufacturing, and
presumably our economies (although in a less useful way than if it was
spent on intelligent matter compilers, but not worse than if it were spent
on porn and action DVDs, chewing gum, hamburgers, fat fantasy trilogies and
hair styling).
Much must be spent on fawning retinues and standing armies or the like,
which means at least those people are being fed and housed, although at a
colossal waste of human productive capacity (but maybe also constraining
the nastier impulses of many people who otherwise would run about setting
fires and rampaging and killing in an uncontrolled rather than contained
manner).
Even if the despots spend a lot of their ill-gotten gains on closets of
shoes and tasteless bedroom art and whores, you hit a limit on that kind of
expenditure fairly quickly, I imagine.
On humanitarian grounds, it's obviously offensive that any of it at all is
spent on stocking and running torture chambers, spy networks, etc. But
that's a different topic, I think.
I'm rambling, sorry. Anyone have anything definitive to add to this?
Damien Broderick
[holy fool du jour]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 01:13:53 MDT