> Ian Murray wrote:
>
> >>>
> >> Yes. Harkin's claim was that the bill would improve conditions in
> >> Bangladesh--would make the Bangladeshi government straighten up and
> >> fly right. He was wrong.
> >>
> >> If Harkin had tied his bill to increased development aid for
> >> Bangladesh, I would think better of him...
> >
> > Brad, would it have gotten out of committee if he and his legislative aids had
> > written it right?
> >
>
> ian, given the point that brad seems to be making, your response does
> not redeem senator harkin, since it implies that he proposed a law
> that made the lives of bangladeshi children worse, because he could
> not get the "right" version of the law out of committee. either the
> measurement of the condition of children in bangladesh today is
> wrong, or their status today is not the result of the law, or the
> result is an unexpected consequence of the law. the latter casts the
> anti-globalism activists' intentions in a good light, if only at the
> cost of making them bad predictors ("the path to hell is paved with
> good intentions" and all that rot), which i guess is krugman's
> point.
============
Ravi,
I'm not trying to redeem Sen. Harkin, I'm only pointing out the perverse logic of
writing aid legislation in the US Congress. The economists aren't too good on
prediction as far as I can tell. I don't think it's a matter of predicting but
reconfiguring ecological-economic priorities.
> or are you arguing that the bad consequences (if true) were a known
> result but part of a larger strategy of taking short term pain for
> long-term gains?
===========
No, I was trying to indicate how hard it is to eradicate [more often than not, tacit]
imperialist premises from US aid and development programs.
>
> while harkin's position may not be defensible, i think the person,
> whom brad was responding to, had a possibly valid critique of
> krugman's logic (the critique being that krugman seems to forget
> that both prevention of child labour and achievement of health and
> education goals are theoretically feasible).
>
> --ravi
==========
Exactly my point. It's just that those laudable goals aren't foremost on the agenda
of those most able to implement policies to make them a reality. At the same time we
need to come up with better ideas on how to eliminate poverty and how to channel
growing public protest to bring those ideas greater publicity for the sake of debate
on the way to feasible implimentation.
Ian
