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Originally Posted by FibrillatorD
So the entire third world has bad government?
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Yep. That's why it's "the Third World".
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You just kind of casually coughed up this one-to-one relationship between your idea of "bad" government and poverty.
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I stand ready to be moved off of my generalization though. What are some poor countries that have good governments?
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What about China? They're a third world communist country that's experienced unprecedented sustained growth. Should they give all their wealth back because they're people are subjected to communist authoritarianism?
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I would argue that China is still a poor country, although there may be certain Chinese who are wealthy.
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The 90s were hell on Russia -right after it liberalized, politically and economically. How did that happen?
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Because it was a period of flux and chaos. The teens and 20s were hell on Russia too as it moved into a bad government.
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Of course China has more weight to throw around than a Liberia or Bolivia. And it was lucky to be able to catch on to 40 years of GATT agreements that benefited manufacturing nations, where for a long time the US and Europe had the competitive advantage.
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Good. I don't want China to catch up yet.
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The Uruguay Round's "grand bargain" never happened. The agricultural subsidies are still in place, still keeping out third world imports while driving down global prices, and the non-tariff barriers are still effective. Meanwhile third world nations are checked against reneging on their commitments to rigged intellectual property games and tariff reduction because any economic retaliation will hurt us so much less than ours would hurt them. Retaliation against violators by the wronged nation is only as effective as the nation is big and (already) rich. A good method in theory, in practice it hasn't been so just. At least it has nothing to do with "bad" domestic politics.
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I am certainly relatively ignorant of trade and tarriff arrangements, but taking it all as written, I am still relatively unconcerned. And I don't see what your point is about "rigged intellectual property games". Something is yours or it's not. If it's not, you have to pay to use it - I don't see a problem.
And it seems to me that if agro subsidies were not in place prices would
fall which would reduce the need for third world food product even further. Not that I am in favor of farming subsidies - I say get rid of them.
-dale