http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
Finding tremendous mineral resources usually encourages corruption, collapses immature democratic institutions, and hollows out the industrial sector of the economy.
Nigeria, Holland, Congo, Venezuela, the story is always the same. The only country which has managed to avoid this situation is Norway.
And perhaps Britain? But that was before any country had any industrial sector at all, and the Britons used their coal and iron ore to start the original industrial revolution.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/185/40...
PS - Obama if you're reading this, I'm available for hire as PR consultant or Press Secretary. I'm that good.
Afghanistan went from having no chance to a moderate chance. It's no cause for celebration, but it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world either.
If you were a mining engineer, would you want to travel to Afghanistan and spend a year or two setting up a new mine there?
Do they? The Saudi Arabian ruling classes do very well indeed, but how does the average Saudi do? Hint: google "Saudi Arabia inequality" and "Saudi Arabia oppression". It's the resource curse at work.
That's the official line, anyway. The whole issue of who is a citizen, and who has merely been there for years is part of it.
They were desperately poor before they went to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis merely gave them a marginally better option.
the Saudis gave them what looked like a marginally better option.
It's not a difficult issue at all, you're a citizen if the law says so. No one promised guest workers citizenship and I doubt they expected it. Only westerners subscribe to the novel idea that anyone they let into their countries are also owed a part of it (citizenship, welfare etc.).
"the Saudis gave them what looked like a marginally better option."
There are five million guest workers, a lack of horror stories would be surprising. I'm not convinced coercion to stay is widespread before I see some statistics, if coercion to stay is not widespread then I trust that most of the five million guest workers know what is best for them.
Not necessarily. The U.S. economy was built on drugs when it was starting out. Even today most of our famous colleges are named after drug families.
Which famous colleges do you have in mind here?
Yep, now they can join modern, enlightened, resource-rich nations like Saudi Arabia and the Congo.
I don't quite understand how pg's essay applies to the Belgian Congo, is there some specific paragraph you are referring to?
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.htm... http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1713275,00.htm...
My objection is with the after the fact justification of colonialism. Charity was never an objective of colonial efforts, it would be very naive to think otherwise. The fact that the rapid decolonization (which was by no means the end of foreign intervention in Congolese affairs) did not lead to a stable and prosperous independant state, is no argument in favour of colonization either.
I'm honestly surprised of the upvotes these neo-colonial comments are getting.
Look to the Philippines if you want an example of what good can eventually come from U.S. occupation of a fractious country. And, unlike the Philippines, Afghanistan is not an archipelago whose thousands of islands practically define the concept of obnoxious-natural-barrier.
The Chinese influence bodes well too. China practices fair and even-handed oppression, rather than trying to exterminate the One True Enemy.
I don't understand what this has to do with it. Do you mean that absence of Africans and Arabs helps in successfully building up a democracy and mining minerals?
Right?
Go read some history. Specifically, all of it regarding the middle east and africa up until the present day. Heck, you can even just look at a map for a few minutes and marvel at how straight the lines are. Maybe you'll reach some more enlightened conclusions about the way things are.
I bet the answers don't have a lot to do with local rents and food prices. And for Johannesburg and Mecca tend towards infinity.
The way things are is that some people are uncivilized and appear unable to become civilized. This is not racism, just the data as they are. Which is why, in the context of this discussion, Afghanistan need not necessarily turn into the Congo because it did not start out as the Congo, and why the Chinese influence is not so ominous.
I'd much rather live in Harlem than Omaha or Frankfurt. Culture and metropolitanism are far more important to me than the amount of pigment in my immediate neighborhood, and it's very safe these days.
Your definitions of civilized are an opinion. The citizens of Mecca think you're uncivilized for a number of reasons, and I think you're uncivilized for others.
Anyways, I'm just thankful that most people don't think like you do -- I certainly wouldn't want to be lumped into the same category as you for the crime of (presumably) sharing a pigment level. People might conclude it's the natural state of white people to be deliberately ignorant about everything except their own little suburban town in rural America.
Oh, wait.
Look, I'm sure there are countries that might be able to successfully navigate a resource find like this. They'd probably be places with few internal divisions, a relatively homogeneous population, a history of stable government and well established cultural and legal norms for dividing and sharing power. You know, the kind of place where everyone really really believes that if their candidate loses an election, they will not be dragged out into the street and shot by the other candidate's private militia. Afghanistan fails all those criteria. So, if you can find any examples of a country that fails as badly as Afghanistan does successfully avoiding the resource curse, I'd be real interested in studying it.
Do you really expect Afghanistan to turn into Canada or Australia, much less Norway?