XPost: soc.culture.nordic
From: ddfr@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com
In article ,
Anton wrote:
> David Friedman kirjoitti:
> > In article ,
> > Anton wrote:
...
> >> Most capitalist countries consider < 1% of their annual budget too
> >> expensive to give as aid to developing countries. If the economy can't
> >> afford < 1% of "tithe" to the poor how could it afford to pay "tribute"
> >> to the mean, nasty, bully?
>
> > Is that intended as a serious argument, or is the pattern of "if you
> > don't have an argument, find an irrelevant insult instead" spreading
> > beyond one poster? The fact that a country doesn't spend 1% of its
> > income on gifts
>
> There is a difference between gift and aid. Aid can be much more than a
> sack of dough handed out.
In practice, much less. My guess is that the extraordinarily murderous
history of Africa in the post-war world is in part a product of foreign
"aid." It consisted of payments to governments, thus increased both the
value of being the ruler, hence the stakes in struggles for power, and
the ability of rulers to pay for the resources to oppress their subjects
and so remain rulers. There is a practical limit to how oppressive a
poor country can be, since people who are spying or coercing mostly
aren't producing.
> > to foreign governments, purportedly intended to aid
> > their citizens, tells us nothing at all about whether it could afford
> > to.
>
> You can discuss that with the US government, or the Finnish government,
> or any other government of a industralized, 1st world country. They all
> basically rationalize it in that same way as above. It is not something
> I have made up on my own.
If you have somehow formed the opinion that I take public statement by
governments as good evidence of what is true, either I have been
expressing myself very unclearly or you have serious difficulty with
reading comprehension.
> While you are at it, and eagerly throwing yourself to the very core of
> this issue you can also dig up the solid proof to the tribute claim
> regarding Finno-Soviet trade. When you have done that, we can continue
> to analyze this foreig aid subject further.
I haven't made a tribute claim, as you can easily check by actually
reading what I have been writing. I've been arguing that the evidence so
far presented doesn't let us distinguish between the tribute claim and
the bribery claim, which seem to me to be the two most plausible
explanations of what was happening. It's other people, including Eugene
and (I think--but it's hard to keep track of who said what) you, who are
confident that they know what happened, on the basis of factual claims
some of which have turned out to be false.
> > There are lots of ways in which I could afford to spend parts of my
> > income and don't.
> You probably rationalize it in that because you don't feel a need to,
> not because you can't afford to.
And the governments of most developed nations don't feel a need to spend
one percent of their national income in payments to the governments of
poorer nations--which tells us nothing about whether they can afford to.
Wouldn't it simplify things if, when you make an argument that it is
obvious to you is wrong, you simply admitted it, instead of trying to
convert it into something else? Your original claim was that the failure
of developed countries to spend a percent of their income on foreign
"aid" showed that Finland could not have been prosperous if it had spent
such a sum on tribute. That's obviously false, you know it is false, yet
you are somehow unwilling to say so.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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