[p2p-research] Tick, tock, tick, tock… BING

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 1:58 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> burn the tractors assumes they are there in the first place; it's rather a
> choice of where to direct the investment ... social peace has certainly
> something to do with it; and so is cheap labour ... but definitely a
> different social contract than in the West, and according to some a form of
> social capitalism more like Europe than like the US ...


They have tractors, or at least people willing to invest in tractors,
but you are required to employ a village to do a slower, more
dangerous, and less efficient manual version of it.  One of the
reasons the roads are so terrible in many places is that they are
built this way, never mind the negative economic impact of adding many
years to the development of rudimentary infrastructure. There is very
little that is positive about this, it papers over the very serious
problems that made it necessary in the first place.

Realize also that in many parts of the developing world, you basically
have a quasi-feudal system. It is worth noting that this is not
imposed so much as it is the system most beneficial to the poor given
the prevailing conditions; one of the reason communist land
redistribution schemes have failed is that the peasants rebuild the
old system shortly thereafter given the choice.


-- 
J. Andrew Rogers
realityminer.blogspot.com