Comments on: Copenhagen Interpretation

By: NickDanger

NickDanger — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 05:08:01 +0000

In fact, developmental aid is actively harmful. It empowers the parasitic state apparatus of the country getting the aid at the expense of the wealth producing private sector.

By: Lance Boyle

Lance Boyle — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 22:46:40 +0000

Skip the messy difficult tasks of research and implementation and "saving millions of lives". Get a cheap-to-manufacture drug that makes people feel healthy, and an individually-targeted relief package that makes people look healthy. End of problem. More people! More and more people who feel good! About themselves! No matter what! No problem! A major chunk of the current fiasco is the result of those twits in Washington doing mood-elevators. Betcha.

By: Robert Lyman

Robert Lyman — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 22:26:00 +0000

To the extent that the Iraq war is justified in humanitarian terms, it can fairly be compared to alternative humanitarian expenditures such as the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health Proposals. Obviously, it fails. Short term, of course. War is more expensive than just about anything else (which is why fabled “wars over fresh water” will never happen—building desalination plans is ever so much cheaper than even a day or two of war). But long term? Jury’s out. A stable market economy and moderately liberal government—not that we have either yet—in the Arab Middle East could yeild pretty enormous dividends in terms of alleviating human suffering. Which, if the left is right about poverty and terrorism, would also reduce suffering in rich Western countries. And for a smart guy with a 100-year worry about global warming, you seem oddly dedicated to a remarkably short-term evaluation of Iraq. If I were using the same standards you apply to Iraq to judge the climate change debate, I’d be bitching that it’s colder in Washington DC today than last August, so who’s worried about warming? Returning to the point, on the example of Arafat’s PA (and the Oil-for-Fraud scandal), I don’t think there’s any sort of large-scale “development aid” that could have done meaningful good in Iraq.

By: agm

agm — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 21:36:43 +0000

Matt b, I guess that the peril of expecting truth in advertising =). As for whether advertising drives consumption, isn’t that fairly well established? Say for example the accounts of the creation of childhood in the US in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, or the rebuilding of Japan into the uber-consumer culture after WWII (proof that consumption can get much grosser than it is in the US). That all being said, given that you could convice people in the developed world to redirect mroe of their resources from consumption to worthier goals, how do you make sure those resources aren’t used locally instead of moving them to the developing world? I grew up on the US-Mexico border, and it’s easy to see how people could say, “Geez, let’s put some of that money into the county hospital before it closes”, or “The third world is coming here anyways, so we might as well use the money here”. Whether or not these are valid arguments, people would throw them out because it’s not as if there aren’t people starving or lacking medical care here. Complete tangent: Having done so myself, I can sympathize with the comedian who has said regarding those infomercials, “Seventy cents a day? No way, no one could eat that much ramen. … It was really depressing to realize that people in the third world were eating better than I was”.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 21:32:10 +0000

As the discussion indicates, all of the expenditure items in the list have the characteristic that we can’t be sure if we are going to get any return for the money we spend. As regards setting alternative priorities, I’ll start by falling back on that perennial left favorite, military expenditure. To the extent that the Iraq war is justified in humanitarian terms, it can fairly be compared to alternative humanitarian expenditures such as the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health Proposals. Obviously, it fails. But I’ll try to do something more substantial on this before too long.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 21:27:29 +0000

matt, surely you know by now that all advertising is deceptive! (I’m glad someone noticed my little pun here.)

By: Giles

Giles — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:34:44 +0000

On the issue of Charity it is also worth asking – who always benefits from development Aid? If the World Bank or DFID or or US ASID or AusAid had their budgets slashed by half who’s jobs prospects would suffer most? Economists?

By: Matt Brown

Matt Brown — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:17:03 +0000

The subject had me all excited! I thought I was going to see some commentary on CT about the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics.

By: General Glut

General Glut — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:11:07 +0000

Giles has a good point. Here’s my take on it: In many instances our use of the term “development aid” is really just a euphemism for “charity”. This is not a condemnation of the act by any means. It is to recognize, however, that most aid is directed to alleviating human suffering but not in any way to “develop” a people, i.e. close the gap between their standard of living and that of the Global North. We call it “development aid” to mystify it, to tell them and ourselves that through this money and technology and skill we are going to fundamentally transform their society and our world into one more bountiful, more equal, more peaceful, more free. If we call it “charity,” however, we admit that there is no intention of changing their society or our world, only that we aim to alleviate their suffering here and now. That is a good thing in and of itself—but it is far from “development”. Very far, indeed.

By: Leonard

Leonard — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:52:07 +0000

You can easily reduce the amount of advertising consumed by Americans (assuming you are one). How? Turn off the TV. Don’t watch the programs which are supported by commercial advertising. Don’t watch Buffy, or those reality TV shows that you love to hate. Don’t even watch public TV, with all that “underwriting”. Turn off the radio. Don’t listen to music which is supported by commercial advertising. Buy a CD and a CD player, or do without. If you are unwilling to do that—to stop watching the commercial TV shows that you like—then please stop whining about how you don’t like commercials. The fact is, you are revealing your preference for them, by watching them. The fact is, you do, actually, value them (for making possible the programs that come with them), more than you value food for poor people. Instead of watching an hour of TV, work an extra hour and donate the money to OxFam. Stop being a hypocrite, or, own up to the fact that you value the things that you do. NB: I do watch a small amount of TV. But I am not a hypocrite. Every evening, I have the choice whether or not to watch that TV, or work for the poor, and I choose to watch TV. I value it above feeding the poor. I am responsible for what I do. What about you?

By: Alex R

Alex R — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:31:31 +0000

While I’ll agree with m. gordon that advertising does raise the overall level of consumer demand, I nonetheless get the impression that most advertiser dollars are spent in an “arms race”—the selling companies feel that they have to buy ads because their competitors do—and if it were possible (and legal) to negotiate decreased ad spending with their competitors, they would be happy to do so. As for the effects of a decline in consumption spending (an increase in savings rate), well that depends on whether or not there is enough capital to finance enough production to meet consumer demand. If not, a decline in consumption/increase in savings might very well improve the economy by financing more (and more efficient) production, increasing supply, and lowering prices so that more goods can be consumed with fewer dollars. I can’t say whether or not this holds true in, say, the U.S., but seems quite possible in principle, especially considering that the “personal savings rate” is near historic lows.

By: Matt Brown

Matt Brown — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:22:58 +0000

The subject had me all excited! I thought I was going to see some commentary on CT about the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics.

By: Robert Lyman

Robert Lyman — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:14:48 +0000

Surely a more appropriate response to the theft issue is to call for more effective oversight and greater transparency, rather than to question the value of development aid? Well, yes and no. Your post mentions public-health successes; I’m glad to hear of them. But that’s a little different from “development” aid, which I at least would have catagorized more as infrastructure boondoggles, money for “modernization,” etc. It would take a lot to convince me that, for instance, the aid provided to the Palistinian Authority was doing any real good. Also, theft isn’t the only issue; the introduction of lots of foreign money and goods distorts the local economy in ways that can prevent long-term self-sufficiency. But, taking your reflective suggestion seriously, I should ask John: Surely a more appropriate response [to one particular prioritization of issues] would be to make your own examination of the issues and identify successful programs to be expanded (and failures to be disbanded), rather than reflexivly calling for more, more, more spending?

By: sennoma

sennoma — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 18:39:23 +0000

As a second point, you call for increases in development aid, and implicitly, in public-health aid. Any evidence that these do any good? Plenty. I’ll just grab two examples that relate to my own research experience. Schistosomiasis has been eradicated from St Lucia by a combination of public health education and sanitation development, and there is good reason to believe that similar success could be had in, say, the Philippines (also an island environment) and even mainland China, Africa and South America. Second, AIDS related public health campaigns have resulted in dramatic drops in the rate of new infections in Brazil, and when properly tailored to local target audiences similar campaigns have had good success in Southeast Asia and Africa. That’s not to say that development and public health aid couldn’t be more carefully, less wastefully, spent: it could; but there are successful models to follow. That some fraction of the money will be stolen is inevitable, since for starters it is passing through government hands, but that fraction which reaches its target does help people who need help. Surely a more appropriate response to the theft issue is to call for more effective oversight and greater transparency, rather than to question the value of development aid?

By: Giles

Giles — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 18:00:13 +0000

A second problem with this post is that it implicitly assumes that aid is beneficial. In fact as many, such Bill Easterly, have argued, there is no conclusive evidence that aggregate aid actually improves the incomes of the poorer countries. And there is evidence that some types of aid may actually lower GDP in developing countries. So the only thing that we can say for certain is that aid may be beneficial to the emotional wellbeing of rich countries, but its effects on the poorer countries are a questionable. So the last thing we need to be doing is be “making more noise, more of the time, about the need to increase development aid”. The first thing we need to do is evaluate objectively what works and what doesn’t work in terms of aid, trade and development and then we can start thinking about allocating aid, liberalizing trade etc. This is what the Copenhagen consensus attempted to do