Posted on 08/28/2002 10:14:15 AM PDT by gubamyster
The United States in America launches space shuttles with such boring regularity that it doesn't even make the news anymore. Hearing this country criticized by some guy from a country where the people still pee in their drinking water is comical.
I'll send a message to RJayneJ, nominating it for "Quote of the Day."
That's a very short-sighted viewpoint. No, our wealth didn't come at the expense of the third world, that's correct. But our wealth DID come from the heavy use of America's natural resources. The United States had/has abundant forests, most of which were removed for farmland on the entire East Coast. The incredibly rich topsoil of the Great Plains allowed the most intensive farming anywhere in the world. Coal, oil, gas extracted from the U.S., starting in Pennsylvania and heading west provided abundant energy for U.S. economic expansion. Extensive mineral resources provided the raw material for iron and steel. Combined with the awesome synergistic power of freedom and unfettered capitalism (which sometimes had to be reined in -- anybody remember the Teapot Dome scandals, or "trust-busting"?), the U.S. became a powerful economic engine. And the free world survived because of it, particularly in World War II.
But unless the North American continent is not part of the global environment, this economic prosperity did come without some expense to the global environment. And things were getting so bad in the 1960s, clean water- and clean air-wise, that most of the nation was behind the acts which finally started to do something about it. The marked improvements in our air and water quality date from 1970. The United States did something about the environmental effects of its economic prowess; the Clean Ai and Clean Water Acts are models for environmental law in countries around the world.
What the writer forgets is that many other Third World nations do not have what the United States had. A great example is India, which was a British colony until the middle of the 20th century! India's economy didn't benefit from its natural resources, Britain did. And the same applies to Africa: about 3/4 of the continent was colonial at least into the first third of the 20th century. So now they need to expand economically using their own natural resources, but not in the same profligate and environmentally damaging manner that the United States did. And the United States can best help not by providing aid, (most of which gets stolen by corruption) but by exporting knowledge (technology), the tenets of capitalism, and the advantages of freedom. We have the capability to do that; we should do it.
Unfortunately, we waste the advantages of our esteemed position when we appear to be insular in protecting our wealth and less-than-connected to the problems of the Third World. I think that's the chief failing of Bush Administration foreign policy in this arena; not demonstrating through dialogue that our system is the one that works best. If the U.S. showed better engagement on building the economies of developing nations, we would be in a much better position to export the advantages of democracy and freedom.
Respectfully disagree. It's not up to the US to shore up nations that have chosen bad politcal systems that are the root cause of their poverty.
Do Western companies go in and steal the natural resources of other companies? I don't believe so. Western companies sign extensive contracts to develop resources and pay large sums of money for the natural resources. They pay money in exchange for goods. That is the capital market concept.
Now, it is not the fault of the West or the Western companies that this money usually ends up in some dictator's hands and not the hands of the people of the country. The dictator steals the money from his people and then spends the money on himself rather than investing or lending the funds to the citizens to build a capital market system. That is where the system breaks down - n the third-world country (where there is no capitalism), not in the capitalist marketplace.
As a matter of fact in most instances the Western companies build roads, hospitals and extensively contribute to charitable causes in the third-wold countries. It's not that they'd rather just wallow in wars or foolish (and bloody) land redistribution, it's that we hav a hold of the only resources they could use to get out of the rut.
You are correct. The citizens of third-world countries do not want to wallow in wars or foolish land redistribution. It is their despot leaders who would rather steal from the citizens and live in luxury. The U.S. or the West does not have hold of their resources. We pay money to purchase their resources. Do you think Western oil companies just land in some third-world country and start drilling and exporting the oil for free? They pay the government for the right to drill, for every drop they take out of the ground and many other fees. Most of those countries do not have the equipment or technology to get the resources out, and the resource would remain in the ground if it were not for capitalist West.
It is the dictators who have a hold of the countrys resources. They take the money paid by Western companies and never invest in their own people or country.
It is a complicated problem, Zimbabwe is an example of where the Western man is being taken out of the picture, but now the country is rapidly descending into starvation and chaos.
It's not just capitalism third world countries need to grasp, but responsible government as well. Once they learn how to manage themselves properly, they can practice restrained forms of protectionism to prevent the stronger nations from exploiting them without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. At the moment, they're just coming off as jealous whiners to me.
Nonsense. Africa could keep all of its resources and it would still be a sh!thole.
Heck, they don't even want their own resources. They want Western products instead. The corrupt African despots all want to drive around in fancy Western SUV's, fly fancy Western aircraft, watch fancy Western TV and movies, as well as use fancy Western computers and software.
Oh gee, then after they notice that they've spent all of "their" money from selling their nautral resources, they start complaining that it's all the West's fault that Africans have polluted their own drinking water, confiscated productive farms in order to give them away to their own political cronies, let their Western-built roads, ports, and infrastructure crumble, and finally notice that their own people are diseased, starving, uneducated, and dying.
So we should give them more money, they beg. Besides, that new Gulfstream V would look great in the Royal hangar, er, I mean all of that money would sure feed a lot of our starving masses...
I'm confused about one thing.....When some poor soul is being necklaced with a tire and a pint of petrol for not giving up half his pay to the local war-lord, who exactly is it in the industrialized west that is preying on the weak?
How about extractable energy resources? In the case of Brazil they're probably a lot harder to find than in the U.S.; I'm not so sure about Argentina. I think that American industrialization was enabled to a great extent by the "easy" availability of oil and coal. There's no doubt that the czars and then the Communists squandered Russia's natural resources.
The rising tide of American pollution which you correctly describe as being curbed from about 40 years ago stems directly from the interplay of market forces -- and representative government. The market penalizes excessive pollution, once these costs are manifested, and strives to reduce them. Legal liabilities are a cost. Cleanup is a cost.
Excellent point! Our representatives did act in accordance with public sentiment on these issues, and that changed the way that many industries could conduct business.
None of these costs are properly priced in command or corruption based economies like China or Brazil. Hence the despoilation will continue in these countries until their systems change.
In the case of China, it's a heavy Communist push for development; Brazil is still beset with a poor agricultural sector and limited developmental prospects.
China is in an interesting position; because of their population they are still "developing" (much lower per capita income than U.S.), but they are already heavy industrialized. The "brown cloud" you mention shows that. I've been to China once, and I think that the U.S. needs to offer cleaner technology on one hand, and disallow imports from polluting industries that are not penalized like U.S. industries on the other, to move China toward cleaner development. (However, this would probably mean that my toddlers would have a lot fewer cheap toys made in China.)
That point can only serve to deceive.
Sure, it's somewhat true, but what it misses is that even a domestic African company would not be under First World regulations, either. Thus, whether the company is African or European, it is still going to result in pollution to extract resources in Africa.
Thus, your point is meaningless on its face - and it can only serve to deceive, perhaps by convincing casual bystanders that Africans are at something of a disadvantage to Western firms, which is entirely untrue. In fact, it is only because Western firms do business in Africa that Africans have any sort of infrastructre and economy. They certainly aren't building it on their own.
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