Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site mnetor.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!mnetor!sophie From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: Re: Re: Better DEAD than RED Message-ID: <1049@mnetor.UUCP> Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 10:36:31 EDT Article-I.D.: mnetor.1049 Posted: Wed Jun 19 10:36:31 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 11:09:40 EDT References: <893@mnetor.UUCP> <5642@utzoo.UUCP> <896@mnetor.UUCP>, <972@mnetor.UUCP> <5703@utzoo.UUCP> Organization: Computer X (CANADA) Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada Lines: 53 > > Don't fool yourself, we enjoy a higher standard of living because we > > support dictatorships in developping countries who support big western > > multinationals who plunder their resources and use their people as slaves. > > It is fashionable, particularly in developing countries, to blame the > big bad developed countries and the big bad multinationals for the woes > of the rest of the world. This overlooks major factors such as cultural > issues (e.g., involvement in commerce considered a mark of low status) > and government mismanagement (e.g., monopolization of resources and > capital by the small elite that runs most "developing" countries [not > just the right-wing dictatorships, either!]). Multinationals are popular > scapegoats because they divert attention away from the need to make > disruptive and unpopular changes to overcome internal problems. This is all a chicken and egg debate. Most developping countries are badly managed (often by a minority of their own who don't care about the majority, witness the likes of Idi Amin, Bokassa and co.). Some of these were just as badly managed before colons even settled in, so colonisation cannot even always be blamed for setting a precedent of corrupt management. Some were not even ever colonised, such as ethiopia. However, multinationals do take advantage of the corruption that is already in place with the result that we, in the developped world are all the richer for it. Therefore my point is still valid. Multinationals (or multinational interests) sometimes do play an active part in maintaining that corruption, therefore they are not innocent. Multinational interests were the cause behind the reinstatement of the Shah in Iran when he had been replaced by a (more) democratic government. Multinational interests were the cause behind the Chilean coup in 73 when the democratically elected government of Allende was ousted to be replaced by a military dictatorship. They are the cause behind the pressure that is now being applied on Nicaragua, whose government is at least as democratically elected as other governments in the region are. > > The western nations did not reach their position of economic and cultural > dominance by trampling others (although once they reached it there was If colonialism is not trampling, I don't know what is. Before colonialism, it wasn't quite clear that the western nations were economically dominant. > indeed quite a bit of trampling). They reached it by a form of natural > selection: they developed a culture that was better suited to rapid > progress and internal economic growth than the world's other cultures. > The undoubted evils perpetrated against some developing societies by > some western entities should not blind us to this. > -- > Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology -- Sophie Quigley {allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie