From: Technotranscendence (neptune@superlink.net)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 18:32:03 MDT
On Monday, August 11, 2003 9:22 AM Ron h. Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
>> For instance, the aid from the US to Iraq
>> is being gobbled up by US contractors.
>> This is not unique to the Iraq War. The
>> same thing happened in the Balkans. I
>> bet it happens elsewhere too and with
>> other donor nations.)
>
> Dan,
> I hadn't thought about that. What you
> are saying is that if the US spends money
> to build a road in Iraq and uses a US
> contractor to get it built then we didn't give
> the Iraqis the road. And if we let Bethel (?)
> or someone put out oil well fires because
> they are American the fires aren't out they
> are still burning. Furthermore if an American
> company is paid to restore power in
> Baghdad when they get more power in
> Baghdad than when Sadaam was in power
> then because it is an American company
> they haven't done anything.
Not at all. What I am saying is not that nothing gets done but that a
lot of foreign aid is internal wealth redistribution. I should NOT have
used the Iraq War as an example, since it's too politically charged, so
let me just used a schematic example. Country X allegedly gives aid to
country Y. The aid is for a specific project P. Well connected
interests C inside X lobbied for this specific project and the aid
really amounts to the taxpayers of X pay C to do P. Yes, Y gets P, but
the real pressure to do P did not come the citizens of X per se but from
special interests in X that saw a way to get the aid money transferred
to them.
This kind of thing goes on, I bet, a good percentage of the time when it
comes to foreign aid -- and I'm not focusing on the current Bush
Administration or the US or wartime. There seems to be a good public
choice argument for why this stuff would go on -- the incentive for C (a
tiny minority) to lobby for P is much higher than the incentive for the
rest of X (the ones who, in the end, pay for P) to monitor it or fight
against it. After all, P might amount to thousands or more in profit
for each C while it costs each taxpayer only pennies.
There's also a knowledge problem here too. Since P is going on in a
foreign land, its even more difficult for those taxpayers to monitor.
The same difficulty applies to politicians who sign on to P in the
motherland. (For all we know, P might not really benefit people in Y or
its benefits could be uneven, destabilizing, or even counterproductive.
An example might be food donations that bankrupt many marginal farmers
in Y.)
Later!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Aug 11 2003 - 18:30:31 MDT