| The IMF and other financial institutions are supposed to be Kenneysian. But when the receiving countries are asking for help from them, they have no means in getting any sort of state ran protective economy. Sure it'd be great, protectivism has rehabilitated the economies of Japan, France and Germany at ridiculously fast rates after WW2 and China is doing so now, but countires in South America or Sub sahara Africa simply can't afford any sort of other alternative to the Washington Consensus (opening the market to corporations, lowering taxes and barriers). Yet without these institutions, the receiving countries would have even less funds to spend in aleveating poverty.
Cash crops are bad, but an economy needs to diversify its resources and that has to start somewhere. If the governemnt puts everyone at work for food, then what if there's a drought? Plus, even without drougths, eventually someone will start cashcrops and grow to take even more land. At least these fields pay salaries to people.
If we’d put the Pentagon in charge of protecting the ozone layer, they would have stockpiled chlorofluorocarbons as bargaining chips. |