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On 8/2/2013 12:43 AM, Thomas de Groot wrote:
> On 2-8-2013 9:37, scott wrote:
>
>> I said I didn't know for sure whether it would be better or worse, but
>> suspected it would be better overall. The point I made that seemed to
>> cause so much resistance was that giving out free clothes (to people who
>> could afford them anyway) is not as bad as you think, because the people
>> will still spend the money, just not on clothes.
>>
>
> I know that I am grossly generalizing as there is more to the problem
> than this, but sadly enough, if what you say were true, Africa would
> have been out of the problems half a century ago...
>
> Thomas
The way it has generally worked in Africa is - someone comes in to
provide "basic" help, with the idea that, actually fed, and clothed, the
people would be able to actually produce some sort of industry. Only,
various local warlords then steal what ever those people now have, and
resell it, someplace else, to make themselves rich, and the people
everyone was trying to help are, if anything, worse off than they where
before, because now the asses in control have more resources, to help
them oppress/steal from those people.
Frankly, the problem is that there are always warlords, even if they
call themselves something else. The US economy was, at one time, about
food, and other simpler things, like gold, being shipped out to other
places, only, the people on the receiving end had all the control over
who, and by how much, the producers where payed. This led to certain..
hard feelings. lol
Then we had industry. And, everything got better, unless you where part
of the child labor, or someone working for the warlord, while living in
his castle, eating his food, and buying his clothes. I.e., the whole,
"sold soul to the company store", thing. Someone was still being
screwed, and treated as replaceable furniture.
Now, industry, and its exploitations, have mostly moved to "cheaper"
places. Which is a bloody irony, given that the replacement is a
"service industry", where half the people working in the services can't
afford to buy them, and, again.. the warlords have ways to make sure
they scrape in as much as they can, and give the workers as little as
they can get by with, all while, presumably, waiting for the next big
shift in the market, so they can somehow shift all the services to
someplace cheaper, and replace the resulting lost jobs with... something
else.
Yet, at each stage, we have, never the less, still ended up with a net
gain, even as we have seen massive losses in certain classes of jobs. I
doubt this can continue, but.. at the moment, the instability is
predicated on the fact that other nations are willing to let us exploit
their workers, to produce goods and services, which they can no more
afford than we can. At some point.. this isn't going to keep working,
and either they run out of places to sell the stuff, because no one can
buy it, or the costs of making it here, as apposed to there, shift
enough that the current excuse for doing all the manufacturing some
place else disappears.
But, then.. there is always the interesting "DIY/3d Printing/Small scale
manufacturing" trend starting.. And, in that fun case, if everyone is a
warlord (i.e. they can all make and sell things, easily), then... the
warlords may finally find themselves in deep trouble.
But, overall, the next result has been a gain. Its just.. there is
always the subset of people, gaming the system, at everyone else's
expense, and.. they always have the money to buy the law, on some level.
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org> wrote: