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Originally posted by taxwonk
You actually sound like a McCarthy Republican. I'm not swallowing any "communist line," you're just talking out your ass. What I'm saying is that in Latin America, to take the easiest example, United Fruit came in and entered into contract farming or purchasing arrangements with large landowners. The US companies did nothing to foment the development of a skilled labor/merchant/educated management class. The counrty's economy continued to be run by the existing elite.

None of this did anything for the poor. The host country did not increase the level of public education, nor did they provide health services or build infrastructure in poor rural villages or city slums. The US did not contract with small farmers. They actually created an incentive for the plantation system to grow, squeezing out the land available to squatters or small farmers.

Thus, the only available employment for the poor was in the country, picking fruit for large landowners or in the city, acting as servants or waiters in the growing number of restaurants and nightclubs. Nobody had the opportunity to get an education, and to work their way up through the economic scale. There was no support for small merchants to develop. Ther was no growth of a service industry.

All of these factors led to an increasing concetration of wealth in the hands of a few, and a greater portion of the poor forced off land that had been available for small farms near the rural villages for decades, if not centuries.

Which country was this? That is a nice story but where did it actually happen? Latin America is not a country.

Originally posted by taxwonk Take Brazil as a classic example. There is an article Hunter Thompson wrote for Collier's, years before he became a gonzo journalist, which begins with the image of a wealthy resident of one of the cities, shooting golf balls off his balcony, to land in the slums below. That pne paragraph speaks volumes..

You are quoting Hunter S. Thompson in a discussion about development? A country of over one hundred million people, and a GNP over a trillion dollars and you reduce it to a picture of guy hitting a gold ball?

Originally posted by taxwonk This situation is repeating itself in Brazil today, with thousands of acres of the Amazon rain forest being plowed under to be replaced by large ranches, mines, and natural gas fields. The large companies come in and basically run off the villagers in the area, or they simply destroy the ecosystem they have lived off of for generations, forcing more peasants into the cities. There are no jobs, there is not adequate education or health care.

There is a democracy in Brazil, but I wouldn't call the country democratic, and I certainly wouldn;t describe its economy as a free market. What you have is an oligarchy, and an economy that serves it.

Its new President - Lula - the former union representative - seems to have converted to be neo-liberal economist. I guess it takes someone like him to institute the free market reforms. Kind of like Nixon going to China.

Originally posted by taxwonk You're on the right track. A thriving, free market economy with a strong middle class, supported by small to mid-sized merchants and manufacturers, peopled with entrepreneurs and middle managers is the key to a truly democratic society. But this middle class doesn't simply appear. Someone needs to provide the infrastructure and the financial, police, and political support for it to grow.

The lack of this middle class is a product of, and a support mechanism for the totalitarian regimes of all stripes that populate the developing world.

I agree with that 100%

Originally posted by taxwonk If we really want to spread democracy, we'd be sending in the WHO and AID along with our military.

Actually, in the countries we occupy, we should focus on building the infrastructure, developing the education system, and creating a stable legal system, to creat the environment where a middle class can develop. Isn't that what we are doing in Iraq?