5 ms·

Just a caveat, I am not an economist, and am quickly approaching the edge of my knowledge. I think that time is not really a factor here. Institutions like the

Just a caveat, I am not an economist, and am quickly approaching the edge of my knowledge. I think that time is not really a factor here. Institutions like the IMF and WTO passively suppress the economic development of poor countries by withholding incentives unless they behave like rich countries. I don't think this is done out of malice though, because I've met people who genuinely believe that forcing businesses in Mozambique to compete directly with the U.S. economies of scale "creates a level playing field" and doesn't inhibit their growth in certain key industries at all.

laughingman2 8y ago
I think its done out of malice however they dress it up. Ignoring history of how stolen wealth from colonialism and protectionist policies of the west during the colonial era etc when its convenient to do so is nothing but malice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St... President Ulysses S. Grant stated: For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, Gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade. Now America and its lackeys in IMF and WTO want to do the same to the poorer countries.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  If it is done with malice, it's the dumbest, waste of malice evil project ever because nobody really benefits. It is not done with malice. The IMF/WB believe that nations that have basic infrastructure, basic forms of democracy, low corruption and relatively open markets ... will be successfull. This is neither malicious nor entirely naive. It's pragmatically naive when you consider the leader of some nation may take a 10% cut off the loan, hire his buddies to 'build the dam that never gets built' and then of course you have a nation in debt ... but those debts are not advantageous to the West at all, so the conspiracy theories are wrong. Now - where there is actual malice is when a large, Western industrial conglomerate might win a big contract and so they influence, bribe, fake data - and then get the contract to 'totally overbuild' some kind of capacity leaving a nation with way more than they need. That's malice, but it's definitely not the IMF/WB or lending nations that win there.
  - alokrai 8y ago
    Dogmas and ideologies of large organizations are almost as dangerous as their malice. Many of EU & IMF bureaucrats genuinely believed that they were helping the Greek economy recover while they were actually engaged in destroying it.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      Yes, I agree with that, however, their dogma is reasonable. And no the Greeks destroyed their own economy though systematic hard and soft corruption, knowingly hiding irregularities, unwillingness to make any necessary reforms, etc. etc.. The IMF's 'dogma' operates under the assumption that there are conscientious, reasonable and rational actors on the other side of the loan. One might argue that it is this assumption that needs to be revisited ... though what some lament as 'austerity' (required by lenders) to others simply is 'being responsible with the massive loan we are about to take'.
      - alokrai 8y ago
        The fact that the Greek state is incompetent or corrupt was not unknown before the crisis. The banks granted loans to Greece knowing that the Greek state was incapable of paying back because they were certain that ECB (or EU) would guarantee their loans. If you are assigning moral faults, then please do so for the banks too who made their loans knowing the facts & assuming that they would be bailed out by EU if things went bad. A more rational thing to do would have been to force the banks to grant Greece a debt haircut, waiving off 50% of the loans, while helping Greece restructure its economy in a realistic manner. Instead, many people especially at the EU saw the Greek economic problems as a moral failure of all the Greek people for which all of them, including pensioners, must be punished while safely bailing out the banks that originally lent. Somehow, it is unacceptable to blame the banks.
        StavrosK 8y ago
        Not only that, but the average (Greek or not) person has no grasp of even basic economic policy, and can't see farther than "I have a job that pays well, so what if all the politicians are corrupt? It's not like I can do anything about that anyway".
coldtea 8y ago
>I don't think this is done out of malice though, because I've met people who genuinely believe that forcing businesses in Mozambique to compete directly with the U.S. economies of scale "creates a level playing field" and doesn't inhibit their growth in certain key industries at all. It's easy for someone to "genuinely believe" something when their career (as policy advisors, bankers, development "experts", etc) and perks is based upon promoting it and enforcing it upon others. Without "skin in the game" everyone can be a good person with "great intentions".
- laughingman2 8y ago
  Exactly, this is why extending scope of democracy (workplace democracy, more decentralization, liquid democracy, direct democracy etc) is important, intellectual/political/economic/corporate elites with power however much "enlightened" they are , without having skin in the game lead to disastrous policies. One person, One vote is the least flawed way to gather signal from actual people who have skin in the game.
  - ff317 8y ago
    Direct democracy is still pretty awful though, especially for anyone who falls into any kind of true numerical minority category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority .
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Direct democracy is still pretty awful though, especially for anyone who falls into any kind of true numerical minority category That's a generalization its opponents make, but it isn't true. In most places where it was practiced (ancient Athens, short-lived anarchist areas in Spain, egalitarian communities, etc.) it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to "true numerical minorities" than most representative democracies. Heck, the US had segregation in practice up to the 70s, with blacks being a 20% or so of the population (and more in some areas), and gays were persecuted throwout Europe representative democracy or not. Even more, the most horrid persecutions of minorities have happened under elected representatives (like Hitler), or authoritarian regimes (e.g. Stalin), as opposed to any "direct democracy". It's indicative that the arguments in the lemma ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority ) are contrived though experiments and not historical examples. There's no "tyranny of the majority" that's inherent in direct democracy, any more so than it is in representative "democracy". The tyranny lies in an orthogonal axis (namely: the prevalent passions and ideologies of the era), and can be applied regardless of direct or representative democracy.
dempseye 8y ago
Honest question: why would being an economist allow you to competently answer that question? Is knowledge of how to change the mindset and behaviour of a complete country within the purview of economists?
- bvc35 8y ago
  If you ask an economist, he will define economics as the study of human action, making him an expert on nearly (or entirely, depending on the economist) all disciplines, questions, and problems.
thanatropism 8y ago
"You must be at the frontier of what you know and what you don't to be able to say anything at all" said some wise man.

laughingman2 8y ago

I think its done out of malice however they dress it up. Ignoring history of how stolen wealth from colonialism and protectionist policies of the west during the colonial era etc when its convenient to do so is nothing but malice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St... President Ulysses S. Grant stated: For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, Gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade. Now America and its lackeys in IMF and WTO want to do the same to the poorer countries.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
If it is done with malice, it's the dumbest, waste of malice evil project ever because nobody really benefits. It is not done with malice. The IMF/WB believe that nations that have basic infrastructure, basic forms of democracy, low corruption and relatively open markets ... will be successfull. This is neither malicious nor entirely naive. It's pragmatically naive when you consider the leader of some nation may take a 10% cut off the loan, hire his buddies to 'build the dam that never gets built' and then of course you have a nation in debt ... but those debts are not advantageous to the West at all, so the conspiracy theories are wrong. Now - where there is actual malice is when a large, Western industrial conglomerate might win a big contract and so they influence, bribe, fake data - and then get the contract to 'totally overbuild' some kind of capacity leaving a nation with way more than they need. That's malice, but it's definitely not the IMF/WB or lending nations that win there.
- alokrai 8y ago
  Dogmas and ideologies of large organizations are almost as dangerous as their malice. Many of EU & IMF bureaucrats genuinely believed that they were helping the Greek economy recover while they were actually engaged in destroying it.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Yes, I agree with that, however, their dogma is reasonable. And no the Greeks destroyed their own economy though systematic hard and soft corruption, knowingly hiding irregularities, unwillingness to make any necessary reforms, etc. etc.. The IMF's 'dogma' operates under the assumption that there are conscientious, reasonable and rational actors on the other side of the loan. One might argue that it is this assumption that needs to be revisited ... though what some lament as 'austerity' (required by lenders) to others simply is 'being responsible with the massive loan we are about to take'.
    - alokrai 8y ago
      The fact that the Greek state is incompetent or corrupt was not unknown before the crisis. The banks granted loans to Greece knowing that the Greek state was incapable of paying back because they were certain that ECB (or EU) would guarantee their loans. If you are assigning moral faults, then please do so for the banks too who made their loans knowing the facts & assuming that they would be bailed out by EU if things went bad. A more rational thing to do would have been to force the banks to grant Greece a debt haircut, waiving off 50% of the loans, while helping Greece restructure its economy in a realistic manner. Instead, many people especially at the EU saw the Greek economic problems as a moral failure of all the Greek people for which all of them, including pensioners, must be punished while safely bailing out the banks that originally lent. Somehow, it is unacceptable to blame the banks.
      - StavrosK 8y ago
        Not only that, but the average (Greek or not) person has no grasp of even basic economic policy, and can't see farther than "I have a job that pays well, so what if all the politicians are corrupt? It's not like I can do anything about that anyway".

coldtea 8y ago

>I don't think this is done out of malice though, because I've met people who genuinely believe that forcing businesses in Mozambique to compete directly with the U.S. economies of scale "creates a level playing field" and doesn't inhibit their growth in certain key industries at all. It's easy for someone to "genuinely believe" something when their career (as policy advisors, bankers, development "experts", etc) and perks is based upon promoting it and enforcing it upon others. Without "skin in the game" everyone can be a good person with "great intentions".

laughingman2 8y ago
Exactly, this is why extending scope of democracy (workplace democracy, more decentralization, liquid democracy, direct democracy etc) is important, intellectual/political/economic/corporate elites with power however much "enlightened" they are , without having skin in the game lead to disastrous policies. One person, One vote is the least flawed way to gather signal from actual people who have skin in the game.
- ff317 8y ago
  Direct democracy is still pretty awful though, especially for anyone who falls into any kind of true numerical minority category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority .
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Direct democracy is still pretty awful though, especially for anyone who falls into any kind of true numerical minority category That's a generalization its opponents make, but it isn't true. In most places where it was practiced (ancient Athens, short-lived anarchist areas in Spain, egalitarian communities, etc.) it was shown to be more benevolent and inclusive to "true numerical minorities" than most representative democracies. Heck, the US had segregation in practice up to the 70s, with blacks being a 20% or so of the population (and more in some areas), and gays were persecuted throwout Europe representative democracy or not. Even more, the most horrid persecutions of minorities have happened under elected representatives (like Hitler), or authoritarian regimes (e.g. Stalin), as opposed to any "direct democracy". It's indicative that the arguments in the lemma ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority ) are contrived though experiments and not historical examples. There's no "tyranny of the majority" that's inherent in direct democracy, any more so than it is in representative "democracy". The tyranny lies in an orthogonal axis (namely: the prevalent passions and ideologies of the era), and can be applied regardless of direct or representative democracy.

dempseye 8y ago

Honest question: why would being an economist allow you to competently answer that question? Is knowledge of how to change the mindset and behaviour of a complete country within the purview of economists?

bvc35 8y ago
If you ask an economist, he will define economics as the study of human action, making him an expert on nearly (or entirely, depending on the economist) all disciplines, questions, and problems.

thanatropism 8y ago

"You must be at the frontier of what you know and what you don't to be able to say anything at all" said some wise man.