Subject:
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Re: From Richard: "It's all bad news - Chaos is my fault"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 28 May 2004 18:43:25 GMT
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Viewed:
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1712 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Parsons wrote:
> Its about <takes a deep breath> the ever expanding disparity in first and third
> world per capita wealth created each and every bright new day by the policies
> and coercion of the first world, an international trade system that
> systematically rapes third world countries' resources in the name of free trade
> and leaves them powerless to ameliorate the obviously anti-free trade and
> defensive barriers the first world imposes to protect itself from the pain of
> free trade, an international financial system that turns perfectly serviceable
> third world economies into basket cases by dictating policies for developing
> economies that next to no first world economy applied while developing and that
> only work now to the benefit of first world economies and the advantage of first
> world currency speculators, that taunts poorer governments with foreign
> investment as a benefit and route to national and personal prosperity only to
> deliver a net transfer of wealth out of the country and debt that can never be
> repaid, an international justice system that only works to right wrongs for the
> sensibilities of the first world states and ignores the evident injustices the
> first world and its people commit against the third, an international
> intellectual property system designed to ensure that the third world is locked
> into royalty payment slavery to the first world forever, and a global superpower
> that espouses democracy and freedom for all, yet rigourously stifles and stunts
> international 'democratic' organisations to ensure that they can not possibly
> pose a threat to its national interest and limits freedom with an enthusiasm
> that other more barbaric epochs could only admire.
Bollocks.
Most of the problems of the third world countries that are doing poorly are
attributable to lack of the rule of law, and lack of enforceable property rights
in those countries. Claiming it's the first world's fault is, frankly, a bunch
of warmed over socialist claptrap.
The world needs more (good) globalization, not less. Ask the South Koreans if
they'd like to go back 40 years or so...
Now, if you want to talk about the failed policies of the IMF and the World Bank
and how they contribute to the problems of debtor countries by stifling economic
growth, or if you want to talk about the hypocrisy of first world countries
talking about free trade while protecting their local agriculture (and thus
denying markets to third world ag producers) via high subsidy, well then sure.
But cut the rhetoric.
But spare the "systematically rapes" bit, unless you're willing to dig into how
that came about, exactly... most of the IMF and World Bank policies are layable
at the feet of the so called more 'progressive' administrations of 30 or 40
years ago rather than the reactionary ones of late. (Bush's idiotic steel tariff
notwithstanding)
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