The truth, I fear, is that Zoellick's faith in trade agreements has little to do with the underlying economics and like many ideological free traders he is willing to latch on to the economic arguments only when they serve the cause (and to discard them just as easily when they no longer do).A new blog I came across, soc2econ - "a group of sociologists trying to save economics from itself."
Rescue of investment bank Bear Sterns a 'socialist' agenda?!?
William Easterly on why Bill Gates hates his book The White Man's Burden:
Mr. Gates seems to believe that the solution is to persuade for-profit companies to meet the poor's needs by boosting the "recognition" of corporate philanthropy. But the dossier of historical evidence to suggest this would work is as thin as Kate Moss on a diet. First of all, the recognition motive has proven to be awfully weak compared to the profit motive. Otherwise we would have had a lot more than the $5.1 billion of annual American corporate philanthropy to the Third World (as of 2005, which has the most recent reliable figures). That was four one-hundredths of 1% of the $12.4 trillion of U.S. production for the free market. Is it really the poor's only hope that the Gap will donate a few pennies per sexy T-shirt for AIDS treatment in Africa?
Ok, I would link more articles, but I'm just too lazy. Start with these. See if you like 'em.
1 comment:
"That was four one-hundredths of 1% of the $12.4 trillion of U.S. production for the free market. Is it really the poor's only hope that the Gap will donate a few pennies per sexy T-shirt for AIDS treatment in Africa?"
What this idiot William Easterly doesn't realize is that any first world food donation will be expensive because of the cost of transportation. Food is an expensive thing to donate because it is needed everyday for sustenance, thus should be transported every day (or every week or so), thus a big portion of money donations will be spent on fuel and other transportation costs for carrier planes or ships than the food itself.
Vaccines on the other hand (or cheap laptops, machineries, etc.) can be transported once and the benefits will last a long, long time, if not a lifetime. -Trolly from S.
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