USA Is So Lucky
Thanks to Dan’s astute observations regarding communism, I now know that America has been very lucky avoiding any of those magic variables that cause massive civilian death. For example, China’s policy in the 1950’s called the Great Leap Forward had absolutely nothing to do with 40 million people that starved to death.
Rather, China was unlucky to have some magic variable that had nothing to do with their Communistic policies that cause all the death. America truly is lucky going 200 plus years without one of these random magical variables befallen us and kill millions of our people.
Unfortunately the same can not be said about Zimbawe. Apparently Zimbawe was well on its way to affluence.
In the years following independence, Zimbabwe had the second largest economy south of the Sahara and the third highest per capita gross domestic product. In the first two years after independence, the economy grew by 24 per cent. This was followed by 5 per cent annualised growth in the next 15 years. The highest inflation rate was 12 per cent.
But then, some random variable befallen this fine nation, a variable that, according to Dan, is completely independent of government or economic policy. Look at the carnage this magical variable has wrought on Zimbabwe.
Since then, and especially since 2000, Zimbabwe has gone from being a promising country, full of committed, highly literate and skilled people, to a basket case with a population broken by years of neglect and numerous assaults on their ever-dwindling liberties.
Today, 70 per cent of the country’s commercial agriculture has been destroyed by government mismanagement. Only 10 per cent of the winter food crop was planted due to lack of fuel and fertilisers. More than four million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid, 45 per cent of the population is malnourished and unemployment is over 85 per cent. One in four of the population has HIV-AIDS and 350 children in Zimbabwe are orphaned every day due to the disease.
Zimbabwe has the lowest life expectancy in the world. Women can expect to live to 34.
Inflation is running as high as 150,000 per cent. The price of a carton of milk taken from a supermarket shelf can be higher by the time it reaches the checkout.
It should come as no surprise that Zimbabwe has the world’s second highest per capita diaspora, following only Palestine.
I used to think that such outcomes were largely the result of government oppression and poor economic policy. Dan has certainly disabused me of such silly notions and viewing Zimbabwe’s current situation I am ever more grateful, not of democracy, or free markets, but that America has not had this magic variable randomly visit us. Hopefully, god willing their will never be a time when the magic variable comes and ruins millions of American’s lives.
Since these magic variables are beyond our control I can only pray that God will banish this magic variable from Zimbabwe and the people can rebuild and achieve the affluence the US has been lucky to attain.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
“Zimbabwe’s current economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country’s worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed, in varying degrees, to a drought affecting the entire region, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the government’s price controls and land reforms.”
Indeed, Zimbabwe has “the world’s highest rate of AIDS[1] infection”.
Yes, HIV/AIDS and droughts are ‘magic variables’.
I assume the fact that “[b]illions were spent in the country’s involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”, and the severe economic sanctions placed on the country are also ‘magic variables’, that are completely random and outside of anyone’s ability to control?
Also, your earlier argument that relies on democratically elected governments and capitalism being essentially the same thing is silly, and Zimbabwe is one of many examples of why:
“Elections in March 1990 resulted in another overwhelming victory for Mugabe and his party, which won 117 of the 120 election seats.”
“In September 2005 Mugabe signed constitutional amendments that reinstituted a national senate (abolished in 1987) and that nationalised all land. This converted all ownership rights into leases. The amendments also ended the right of landowners to challenge government expropriation of land in the courts and marked the end of any hope of returning any land that had been hitherto grabbed by armed land invasions. Elections for the senate in November resulted in a victory for the government.”
During the early 1980’s, following its formation as a country, Zimbabe implemented socialist policies: “Economic inequality within the population decreased and provision of education and healthcare became more widespread. During the 1980s GDP per capita increased by 11.5%.”
Zimbabwe’s economy was growing, albeit at a subpar rate, in the 1980s, before the government decided to pursue more free-market policies:
“By the end of the 1980s there was increasing agreement amongst government elites that new economic policies needed to be implemented for the long term survival of the regime. The new policy regime designed by the government and its advisers.[4] It set out to encourage job-creating growth by transferring control over prices from the state to the market, improving access to foreign exchange, reducing administrative controls over investment and employment decisions, and by reducing the fiscal deficit. It had wide local support and was introduced before the economic problems had gone out of control. A 40 per cent devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar was allowed to occur and price and wage controls were removed.[5]
The liberal experiment in Zimbabwe produced far worse results than its predecessor.[4] Growth, employment, wages, and social service spending contracted sharply, inflation did not improve, the deficit remained well above target, and many industrial firms, notably in textiles and footwear, closed in response to increased competition and high real interest rates.[2] The incidence of poverty in the country increased during this time.[5]”
Let’s be clear on this: the economy -began- degrading -during a period of liberal, free-market reforms-.
“In the 1990s Zimbabwe’s economy began to deteriorate due to mismanagement and corruption. Economic instability led several members of the military to try to overthrow the government in a coup d’état.”
Political instability, which resulted from the economic instability of the 1990’s (the period of liberal reform), is a major factor preventing the government from being stable enough to manage the country effectively.
Racism might have also been a significant factor. There was “a large scale eviction of white farmers”.
Yes, there are elements within the government now attempting to re-establish the socialist policies of the ’80s and doing so in an extremely incompetent fashion, and I do not doubt that this is aggravating a bad situation. Is that the -only- factor causing Zimbabwe’s current situation? Heck no.
Oh, in regard to the life expectancy change, declines in life expectancy have been observed in much of sub-Saharan Africa, with the degree of life expectancy decline correlating closely with the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Factors contributing to HIV/AIDS are not ‘magic variables’, but unsafe sexual practices, ritual scarification, superstition regarding condoms, HIV denialism, ect. In other words, people are failing to listen to the experts telling them how to avoid spreading HIV. Unless you care to explain to me how communism, rather than the factors I mentioned above, is the real cause of the spread of HIV?
Finally, unemployment often is associated from the fact that people infected with AIDS and tuberculosis are unable to work: “AIDS has intersected with drought, unemployment and other sources of stress to create what Alan Whiteside and Alex de Waal have called “new variant famine,” characterized by the inability of poor, AIDS-affected households to cope with the demands of securing sufficient food during a time of food crisis.” Worse yet, many healthy people may have to quit their jobs just to care for infected relatives. “The social impact of HIV/AIDS is most evident in the continent’s orphans crisis. Approximately 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to be orphaned by AIDS. These children are overwhelmingly cared for by relatives including especially grandmothers, but the capacity of the extended family to cope with this burden is stretched very thin and is, in places, collapsing.”
But I guess HIV/AIDS is just a magic variable, and the fact that people in the US listened to their experts in regards to controlling the disease is really just because we’re a capitalist nation.
“For example, China’s policy in the 1950’s called the Great Leap Forward had absolutely nothing to do with 40 million people that starved to death”
How nice, you set up a strawman position. It’s okay, that’s a common tactic for people who know they are losing and are desperate to feel better about it. What I actually said was that economic policy was one of many factors, and there must be other contributing variables.
Regarding China: If the starvation deaths of the late 1950s and early 1960s were just because of communism and nothing else played a role, I’d like you to explain how communism caused the other mass deaths in China over the years, such as Sino-Japanese war, the Warlord Era, the fall of the Ming dynasty, or the Mongol Conquests. Good luck.
Oh, and just to drive home the point that socialism doesn’t cause HIV/AIDS, Sweden has one of the largest public sectors of any country in the world, largely to support its tremendous welfare state, and fewer than 100 AIDS deaths have occurred there.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Quoting Dan:
Thats whole a lot of text for not caring.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Eh, most of it’s block quotes. Besides, people do all sorts of things for amusement.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Steve, you’re taking it to etremes and are exceptionally cynical about this “magical variable”, but you’re not convincing me here in outlining that “communism” is the sole factor responsible for the miseries in the world. Rather, I’d just go along with Dan’s position, namely, that there are multiple interactions involved in the process of a country deteriorating. How absurd is it to make a countries economical ideology (and here, you use that oversimplificating communism-free market economy dichotomy) responsible for the immediate well-being of the population. It is as absurd as if I would blame capitalism for the increased rates of HIV-infections on the Phillipines (where all the sex-bombers out of the US and other prospering countries pay a heck of a lot of their acquired money in fucking prostitutes in need and thereby spreading the HIV-virus deliberately… I could dumbly argue that if those jerks didn’t have the money, the ladies in the Philipines were better of…)
Well, then, what do you say to the fact that economic growth, caused by “capitalist” developments in third world-countries INCREASES the numbers of death related to civilization-illnesses: Ever since McDonals invaded the African continent, obesity rates, diabetes numbers, are skyrocketing…. I personally would never blame “capitalism” as THE SOLE cause for these trends, I would rather, and that’s what I recommend you to do, see it as one factor among others.
March 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
I would argue that catching an STD is an occupational hazard of choosing prostitute as a profession and that providing her the option of accepting that risk in exchange for the money isn’t harming her. An argument that would be more convincing for me would be the suggestion that this situation can cause infection of children if the HIV-infected prostitutes procreate.
I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is a sex-bomber?
March 10th, 2008 at 1:01 am
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is a sex-bomber?”
I am sure the following information is not helping the argument at hand, but the term “sex-bomber”, as used in my native languages’ colloquial vocuabulary, is referring to an airplane fully loaded with sex-tourists who chose to spend their acquired wealth in engagaging in sexual activities with prostitute professionals in third world countries. That’s what a “sex-bombers” is.
In a sense I was not using it correctly in the above context, I was meaning to say that not the sex-bombers pay, but rather the people travelling IN those sex-bombers do. Sorry for this confusion…:)))
Sex-bombs, however, are defined as…
In addition, the US-planes that flew to Berlin after the second-world war to provide this town with groceries were called “raisin-bombers”. Germans obviously like the term “bombers” in different usages, for some reason. Strange.