🚀 go-pugleaf

M Holmes wrote:
> You didn't, but it's a reasonable deduction that if subsistence farming
> is better for Africans than producing luxury goods they can sell on
> international markets then it's also better for us.

Assuming no other differences.

> Or is there some key difference between us and Africans that says we
> should get luxury goods and they shouldn't?

Er... who was talking about getting luxury goods. But assuming that you 
knew what you meant the difference is simple. We have the WTO who (under 
our guidance and instruction) put in place trade restrictions that we 
call Free Market (Note the capitalisation!). Under our Free Market, we 
can trade on (reasonably) equal footing with other WTO controllers, and 
can dictate terms to those who don't have the same representation.

> Huh? Surely the whole point of producin them is that they earn *mor* than
> just producing food. Thus you can buy the food and have cash left over.

That would be the idea, but the Free Market (Look folks... it's back 
again!) has been set up to prevent this.

> It works here. Why wouldn't it work in Africa?

Bizarrely enough, you've answered your own question later in the same 
post; "Could be that all they need is a fair crack at trade in genuinely 
free markets".

> They're unprofitable luxury goods? Why are they producing luxury goods
> that people don't want? (at the price it takes to produce a return on
> investment) 

They are producing luxury goods that people do want. But the people that 
want them have the power to dictate the price. Thus we get the luxuries, 
for a fraction of the cost. The producers are obliged to continue 
producing as a desperate attempt to keep their economies in sight of 
breaking even.

> Who's this "we" paleface? I'm not stupid enough to buy bonds from a
> country in Africa.

"We (The lenders)". The developed world. The people that lent them the 
money in the first place. Britain being one of them. Thus being British, 
does (to a greater / lesser extent) make you one of the lenders.

> If we're really so good at the Evil Capital Exploiters game, how come we
> let so many asian countries escape our Cunning Trap?

China was simply too terrifying to consider, and America was doing a 
fine job of making mini-Americas out of Japan, the Philipines and South 
Korea. Being attached to the soviet mainland, probably made them a 
higher priority for the teaching of American ideals. "We shall not give 
one inch" and all that!

> "When couched in trendy leftist terms and ignorance of economics it's
> called <cue f/x of giant sneering sound> 'capitalism'" is closer to your
> intended meaning I suspect.

You call it capitalism and refer to a free market, yet at the same time 
acknowledge that the market is anything but free. If you are at the 
sharp end of such a market, you are not competing as a capitalist, you 
are surviving as a slave.

> Ah, *we* can sell at a profit and they can't? That wouldn't have
> anything to do with the tendency there to adopt marxist policies would
> it? I only ask because funnily enough, the same thing happened to the
> Soviet Union.

No. It would have a lot to do with the WTO dictating who can trade, what 
and where.

> I don't share your ignorance of economics, so trust me: 9% growth per
> annum is very much the fast track. It's so fast that the government
> there are actually *struggling* to slow growth down. Would that Africa
> had their problems eh?

Already covered, but you do appear to be incapable of comprehension. See 
below.

> Could be that they don't need patronising gits like us to show them
> anything at all. Could be that all they need is a fair crack at trade in
> genuinely free markets and a goodly number of capitalist governments.

It depends. A wiser man than either of us one said "If I have seen 
further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". Each 
generation builds upon the knowledge of the previous without recovering 
the same ground. Application of this principle to developing nations 
would allow them to "fast track" to the same level, without the need to 
make the same mistakes. And a good many observers have noted that China 
appears to be making some of the very same mistakes that we made in our 
past.

But in essence, you have your ideas and I have mine. I still (naively) 
believe that man can progress beyond our current state, but progress on 
these levels involves cooperation. While we hold on to our WTO 
restrictions, our subsidies for local industry and the viewpoint (that 
you seem to hold) that it is "all their own fault", we are not going to 
make that progress. It'd be a real shame if this is as far as we can come.

Jon