Sunday 17 April 2011

How rich countries vacuum the life out of poor countries

How closed borders kill people, and also make us poorer:

In Richland, a typical worker earns $10 per hour.
In Poorland, a typical worker earns $1 per hour.
A typical product takes 10 hours to make.
Poorland works 100 hours to buy 1 Richland product.
Richland works 1 hour to buy 1 Poorland product.

So whenever they trade, Richland sucks value out of  Poorland at 100 times the rate that Poorland can get value out of Richland. ONE HUNDRED TIMES! Poorland never has a chance. Anything of any worth gets sucked out, the people stay poor, some of them starve, they die of easily preventable diseases, and so on. Richland is just a giant vacuum cleaner sucking the life out of Poorland.

Obviously the answer is for the good folks of Poorland to come and work in Richland: with superior technology they become more productive, and so THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF WEALTH CREATED INCREASES. It's up to the government to allocate this wealth so that everyone benefits, especially those who temporarily lose jobs.

But instead of letting everyone benefit, Richland puts up big fences at the borders, and watch as their poor neighbors starve to death. Then we maybe spend maybe 0.5% of our budget on "aid" and see ourselves as being sooooooo generous.

Bottom line: we hate making money, we love bleeding people to death, it's much more fun.

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