Crooked Timber has an article from economist Peter Griffiths on badly-run World Bank programs causing famine. I'll just copy the same excerpt as xnerg did:
I read it incredulously. It was a formal agreement that the Government of Sierra Leone would immediately stop importing food -- and this in a country where Government imported half its staple food. The Government would also stop subsidizing food -- when a quick look round the streets made it obvious that very few people were getting enough to eat even when food was subsidized. Government was also forbidden to keep a stockpile. Nothing I had read or heard could give any support for this, but neither the World Bank nor the Ministry of Commerce appeared to have made any effort to base their Agreement on logic or analysis. Neither of them had consulted the Ministry of Agriculture, which was responsible for food production, or me, the only person with the responsibility for examining food policy.
I sat down and did my analysis. The country was importing half its staple food, rice. People could not buy enough to live on at the subsidized price, so it could be argued that removing the present 25% subsidy would push prices beyond the means of half the population. But the reality was much worse than this. Over the last year, the leone's value had collapsed against the dollar to a tenth of its previous level. The rice currently on sale in the markets had been bought when the leone was strong. Any new rice imports would have to be paid for with a very weak leone. This meant that any new imports would have to be sold in the markets at more than ten times today's price in leones. But wages and salaries had not gone up, so nobody would be able to buy unsubsidized rice. And this obviously meant that no private trader would import rice that they could not sell. I visited them all to check and they told me vehemently that they would not touch rice imports with a bargepole.
The unavoidable conclusion was that when present stocks ran out, in four months time, there would be no imports. The country people would keep the rice they grew, so there would be no rice at all for the urban population. Starvation would start immediately. How many people would die before emergency aid could be arranged? Quarter of a million? Half a million?
In short, a country with a failing economy and mass poverty that was far from agricultural self-sufficiency was ordered to quit importing or subsidizing food and destroy its food stores. Griffiths was able to get his message out and get the agreement cancelled, but not without facing pressure:
The threats were serious. Everyone in the aid business was well aware that only four years before Steve Lombard had been sacked from his FAO job in Tanzania after he prevented a famine. He was running an early warning project, and alerted the Ministry to the danger, so they could get food aid well before people started to go hungry. The Ministry sat on the information and did nothing. The food was running out and a famine situation was imminent, one where some people would make a lot of money. Steve got the information to the World Food Programme who told a very surprised President that a famine was imminent. He also leaked the information to the BBC World Service who told the Tanzanian people. Action was taken, just in time. The Tanzanians sacked Steve. FAO and the World Bank stood back and let them do it. A shocked Steve drank himself to death over the next three years.
This is why people oppose "globalization" and "free trade". Open markets and deregulation are valued higher than pragmatic competence or equitable distribution of opportunity and resources. In the laissez fairerers' theories, the open markets and deregulation are supposed to immediately create the most equitable distribution of resources, but any glance at economic history or minimal understanding of extramarket pressures and market reaction time shows this to not always be the case, especially in undeveloped economies with crippled information and goods flow.
I've also seen an undercurrent view, popular among debate-thread amateurs at least, that those who starve are weak willed and chose to die since they would survive if they'd just work harder. It is incorrect and inhumane.
From the "you gotta be kidding me" department: Bush's budget not only doesn't include significant known costs, it includes revenues from non-existent programs. In other words, it's about in line with the accuracy of his last four budgets. When Congress spends the money for necessary progams (like Iraq!) that Bush forgot to request and doesn't receive the money for non-existent programs that Bush did include, Bush will point at the difference and accuse big-spending Congress of ruining the balanced budget he sent them. It amazes me that people still think he's anything other than a lying sack of horse manure. This information must not be getting out.
I wonder what would happen if a pissy Congress passed a budget that didn't allocate a dime for our soldiers in Iraq. It would be an amusing tempest in Washington and the media, but I presume Bush would come out on top of it.
The US Commission on Civil Rights removed 20 reports from its website.
Robert Jeffers at Eschaton has yet another story of US torture of prisoners. It's getting to the point where this stuff isn't news anymore -- and most people still think it was all less than a dozen "bad apples" in a single prison.
The Economist has a poll on political attitudes in the US
The Koufax Awards for left-leaning blogs are on. Follow the link at the top to the categories for good reading.
[Edit 5:02 PM 2/14/05 by Tang: fixed some punctuation]
Posted by Warrior Tang at February 13, 2005 12:43 PM
