From: Secret Squirrel <nobody@squirrel.owl.de>
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 08:29:51 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Moneychangers and Shylocks
Message-ID: <19961102153422.6553.qmail@squirrel.owl.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


jer+@andrew.cmu.edu wrote:

> "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> writes:

> > and opportunity for me and my family, Arguing
> > that native peoples were better off before the arrival of Europeans is
> > fatuous nonsense--you can't go home again.
> 
> Not true. "Society" has passed through Africa many times, the people
> revert to their previous ways.

I disagree. Only some ways, you don't see them tossing their AK 47s for spears.

> > Further, many of the leftist critiques of "moneylending as exploitation"
> > are similar to past (and current) demonizations of moneychangers,
> > moneylenders, shylocks, and other assorted stereotypes.
> >
> > I don't favor nationalistic lending and borrowing policies, which, for
> > example, involve some central government borrowing money, sending the
> > borrowed funds to personal Swiss bank accounts, and then sticking the
> > nominal taxpayers with the debt. Nothing I have said here endorses
>  this.
> 
> But that's the only way it hapens in the third world. The only time
> foreign aid is not gutted by corrupt beaurocrats is when the
> Westerners go there and manage the projects themselves. This is quite
> different from a loan.

Wrong, and wrong. Lending to individuals is happening, in $100 or so ammounts, without westerners (or their governments' crooked bureaucrats) present, right now.

> > But much lending is useful. It's the way factories get built, the way
> > things get done.
> 
> Heh, have you ever *seen* a third world factory 10 years after it was
> built. Nice bit of scap, that.

Ask of government was involved.

> > Much of the criticism of "moneylenders" is closely related, if you
>  think
> > about it, to criticism of "money launderers." Cypherpunks should relish
>  the
> > rise of new mechanisms for money laundering, moneylending, tax evasion,
>  etc.
> >
> > I took the "Wired" quote about Walter Wriston "sounding like a
>  cypherpunk"
> > to represent this new view, in explicit contrast to his earlier views
>  when
> > he headed Citibank and they had a more statist approach.
> >
> > Your mileage may vary, but tired homilies about lending being exploitati
> on
> > are not very useful in this day and age.
> 
> I dunno, pearls befre swine still applies. It's not that I think
> lending is bad, but large economic development loans to thrild world
> countries continue to support corruption and oppression, and not much
> else.

Because of governments more than banks. You are beginning to see the light.