with a little tough love for everybody,
Targetted military interventions [long story; read the article, but, yes, there seem to be idealizations] … basic standards for developing nations to follow, in the fields of natural resources transparency, democratization, budget transparency, investment and the management of post-conflict situations … lowering of OECD trade barriers towards bottom billion nations and barriers between bottom billion nations … rethinking of the reciprocal nature of the WTO — bottom billion countries shouldn’t be striking bargains with rich nations.
a little wishful thinking,
Apologies to Mr. Collier and others that may get roped into my generalizations … I have no idea if Mr. Collier has bucked the conventions of his discipline and lives in reality. Perhaps he has.
We need a disclosure statement for economists … “I believe in the laws that govern physical reality and my research is conducted to comply with the operational constraints of our universe.”
and a critical discovery:
Collier hoped that the spread of democracy would help some of these [bottom-bracket] nations. “And democracy has sigificant effects. But they’re adverse effects — democracies make even more of a mess of these booms than autocracies.” While Collier tells us he was tempted to give up his research at this point, he made a critical discovery. Democracies involve both elections and checks and balances. “It’s the electoral competition that does damage, but strong checks and balances make booms good.”
wait. are we still talking about africa…?
ps. if you want a strategy, or an intended part of, for energy and pollution — not here, brothers and sisters. not here.
pps. but there are definitely some good seeds.
It’s odd to read an article on development economics that excludes ferocious regulation of the transnats. $10,000 and a satellite phone doesn’t do a wannabe much good if the call lands the CEO in prison for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. I understand that’s “idealistic” and something a “hippy” might say, but even free range wingnuts — rugged individualists, as they can tell you in unison — understand that one large white collar crime can harm a number of countries at the same time.
It would also help to rethink the intellectual property rights privateers, who use global enforcement resources to preempt independent replication of the results they purchase from state-funded researchers.
Etc. . .
Rather than this well-meaning focus, and I assume the best intentions, on the problems of the poor benighted people, why not clean our own house first.
I have a little homily to share.
When I was a young reverend, I traveled quite a bit. People would come up to me and shyly confide things like, “you know, Rev, we don’t need to be kidnapped and sodomized in order to understand democracy. . . Our children dislike white phosphorous . . . Please don’t sell guns to evil dictators.” The simple eloquence of this convinced me. I saw the light! And I’d love to help economists see it too.
on the whole i am downright terrified that a Moslem Crusader Agent of AL Q might end up being the nominee of one of the major political parties of the free world! Thank Bush that we have McCain - otherwise America would end up falling into the hands of Al Qists.
corruption is the fault of the government because the government is what distorts markets. that’s what it says on the handle of my silver spoon.
if he’s serious about the last three of the four, more power to him, i say. that package would be very helpful to people in a situation where the international community is disinclined to prosecute. the thing is i think his group is irrelevant now. the non-aligned states are more likely to help build that stuff.
now, as for you, terrified-in-tulsa, the terrorists know where you vote. stay home and watch the returns on television if you value your life.
they don’t need to get hooked into the global capital flow but they do need friends and partners and legal defenders of those relationships
http://www.wie.org/j38/bright-green.asp
To be clear(er), my criticism was directed at the economist, not World Changing.
ah! i did it again! i was just sticking something to the wall. should’ve stuck it to the post instead. i’m not context-sensitive.
ps. that is unfortunately, unquestionably correct. it’s just so sad.
pps. i always assume it’s the economist getting trashed.
We should cook them and eat them! It’s the only way they’ll ever learn.
they wouldn’t. to the last moment they’d be explaining how backwards we were for choosing inefficient food.