Helping the Poor
Sep. 15th, 2005 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenite0What's the best thing we can do for poor people in the Third World? How about buying what they grow or make:
Bush Urges End of Trade Tariffs, Subsidies
That's also a really bold move on the domestic front. The various farm subsidies an inexcusable drain on the budget, but nobody's ever had the clout to eliminate them. It's a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem. The benefit of a subsidy goes to a few people who'll fight hard. Canceling it would benefit everyone else, but not enough for it to be worth the work to make it happen. Wiping out all of them at once, that might be doable. Especially with a global agreement hanging on it.
On the global level, not only will this let people work themselves into prosperity, but with luck free trade will support the trend toward other freedoms as well.
Bush Urges End of Trade Tariffs, Subsidies
That's also a really bold move on the domestic front. The various farm subsidies an inexcusable drain on the budget, but nobody's ever had the clout to eliminate them. It's a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem. The benefit of a subsidy goes to a few people who'll fight hard. Canceling it would benefit everyone else, but not enough for it to be worth the work to make it happen. Wiping out all of them at once, that might be doable. Especially with a global agreement hanging on it.
On the global level, not only will this let people work themselves into prosperity, but with luck free trade will support the trend toward other freedoms as well.
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Eh.
Date: 2005-09-15 07:03 pm (UTC)Say Nation X exports commodity 3 to consumers in empire USofA under some sort of quota enforced by tariffs etc. The reason for the quota may have been to protect 3-farmers and 3-traders in USofA; but the consequence, intended or otherwise, is to promote 3 production in nations Y, Z, W, and elsewhere, too.
When the quota is abolished and the tariffs lifted, the dominant 3 producer benefits. Probably nation X. Nations Y,Z, and W start looking for some other comparitive advanatage product.
If they find one, great. But ...
Have you read PJ O'Rouke's essay on the Bangaladeshi "jute" industry? Just because you are better at making jute than anything else you may possibly do (comparitive) -- even if you are the best in the world at growing jute (absolute or competitive advantage), it doesn't mean that the world is going to want to buy very much jute.
Right now for many many MANY commodities 3, (1, 7, 9, 182, 451, ...) nation X is China. And nations W,Y,Z, etc are all whipsawed at once trying to adapt.
Now me, this seems another example of Shrub doing a theoretically correct thing in a particularly abrupt and unpersuasive fashion. Better than maybe what an alt-universe President John Edwards might have done, but
eh.
Re: Eh.
Date: 2005-09-15 07:49 pm (UTC)Will it benefit Bangladeshi Jute growers? Nope. Some things are hopeless (and PJ is great at pointing them out). But if they decide to grow something else they'd have a shot at selling it.