Re: Moneychangers and Shylocks

[Jeremiah A Blatz <jer+@andrew.cmu.edu>]

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"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> There've been a couple of "you must be trolling us" responses to my point
> about the First World spending money in the Third World not being
> exploitation ("and we give them worthless trinkets like penicillin,
> schools, and roads").
> 
> I happen to believe economic development is a positive good. Were I living
> in a shantytown or favelo on the outskirts of some Third World town, I
> would want at least the _chance_ of eventually having running water,
> electricity, health care,

Not that you can really know... I have been to East Africa (Tanzania),
and have seen the conditions of both the rich, the poor, and the
rural. First off, it's at best difficult to compare happiness. I mean,
at the extreme you have the Taoist philosophy that happiness is
constant, which has more than a kernel of truth to it. If you're
living out in the sticks, you don't expect to live past 35, so what's
the biggie if you don't? However, I'm not quite that nihilist, and so
I try to make some judgements about who is happier than who.

To start off with, you say you want the chance of getting a "better"
life. Here there's some difficulty in defining a reasonable chance.
The chance of someone in a Dar Es Salaam shanty being able to move
into better accomodations in the city is zero. Really, truly, zero.
Those who are in power have no interest in letting somone take their
power away. The elite is closed. The best that a shanty resident can
do is hope to be able to support one more child. (This is not as
unimportant as it might seem to some westerners. It's a big thing to
have many {male} children in most of Africa.) So, it could be argued
that the presence of wealth just taunts the underclass in that sort of
situation.

My impression was that rural folks are the happier. They have a more
supportive society, less crime, and don't really have much of a
shorter lifespan thant the city folk.

> and opportunity for me and my family, Arguing
> that native peoples were better off before the arrival of Europeans is
> fatuous nonsense--you can't go home again.

Not true. "Society" has passed through Africa many times, the people
revert to their previous ways.

> Further, many of the leftist critiques of "moneylending as exploitation"
> are similar to past (and current) demonizations of moneychangers,
> moneylenders, shylocks, and other assorted stereotypes.
>
> I don't favor nationalistic lending and borrowing policies, which, for
> example, involve some central government borrowing money, sending the
> borrowed funds to personal Swiss bank accounts, and then sticking the
> nominal taxpayers with the debt. Nothing I have said here endorses this.

But that's the only way it hapens in the third world. The only time
foreign aid is not gutted by corrupt beaurocrats is when the
Westerners go there and manage the projects themselves. This is quite
different from a loan.
 
> But much lending is useful. It's the way factories get built, the way
> things get done.

Heh, have you ever *seen* a third world factory 10 years after it was
built. Nice bit of scap, that.

> Much of the criticism of "moneylenders" is closely related, if you think
> about it, to criticism of "money launderers." Cypherpunks should relish the
> rise of new mechanisms for money laundering, moneylending, tax evasion, etc.
> 
> I took the "Wired" quote about Walter Wriston "sounding like a cypherpunk"
> to represent this new view, in explicit contrast to his earlier views when
> he headed Citibank and they had a more statist approach.
> 
> Your mileage may vary, but tired homilies about lending being exploitation
> are not very useful in this day and age.

I dunno, pearls befre swine still applies. It's not that I think
lending is bad, but large economic development loans to thrild world
countries continue to support corruption and oppression, and not much
else. 

Jer

"standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew
 why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole

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