October 3, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Cry, the beloved country
Yes, that's a cheap title for a post about Zimbabwe. But it's impossible to discuss the country's current state without wanting to weep. In 1998, Zimbabwe had a per-capita GDP of roughly $2,300 (PPP). . . not lavish, but very comfortable for its neighbourhood. More importantly, that was growing every year. This year, the Economist Intelligence Unit expects GDP to clock in around $1,600 . . . and shrinking fast.
Timothy Burke expects things to get much worse:
’m often asked, “What’s going to happen next in Zimbabwe? Are things going to get better?” To which I often say, “No, not really: they’re probably going to get worse”. This surprises some people, because they figure it’s already as bad as it can be. What I think they don’t realize is that Zimbabwe is falling from a relatively high point. The Zimbabwean economy in 1988 was actually relatively strong, with a lot of capacity and potential. There’s a lot of things to wreck and destroy, and even a party with the prodigious ability to demolish their own society is going to take a while to thoroughly mess up everything they can put their hands on.If you read Cross’ entry, you’ll see just how breathtaking the destruction is, however, and how lethal a cocktail of incompetence, malice, and authoritarian sadism is involved. It will not improve magically on the death of Robert Mugabe, assuming that ever actually happens. There are too many other hands with blood on them, too many other petty tyrants. And it’s gone too far at this point for some ZANU-PF member with a secret desire for reform in his heart to emerge smoothly during a transition and pull the country back from the brink. Too much has already been ruined that either cannot be fixed, or can only be repaired through a generation’s labor.
I suspect it will take more than a generation. Zimbabwe has destroyed most of its human capital, which was held by the whites who have fled or been killed. They will not return, even if a better government is put in place.
Human capital is a surprisingly powerful thing. Germany in 1945 was probably poorer than India, certainly than Mexico; its cities lay in ruins, and death, disease and poverty stalked its citizenry daily. By 1955, it was much richer than either country, and the gap was growing wider every day. Ditto Japan. The Marshall Plan was not much more than a pretty band-aid. The real reason that Germany and Japan were able to quickly regain, and then exceed, their economic might, while India and Mexico languished, lay in human capital. And no, not in the glories of whiter skin or superior Teutonic values. Even with her factories in ruins, Germany still had people who knew how to build factories, and run them. It had networks of people who were used to trading with each other. It had bankers who knew how to evaluate loan candidates and calculate interest. It had a citizenry with strong capitalist habits . . . savings and investment, trusting strangers enough to buy from them, a belief and insistence upon the rule of law. These deeply ingrained habits formed the foundation upon which the factories could easily be rebuilt.
Building that kind of human capital is a slow and arduous task, which is why not everyone is as rich as we are. If you look at per-capita GDP around the world, you can see that economic growth disperses rather directly from four points of infection: England, America, Australia, and Japan. The closer you are to one of these countries, the higher your standard of living is likely to be.
Luckily that kind of human capital is hard to destroy; it took the communists almost half a century to do it in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the other lesson of Eastern Europe is that it can be destroyed, if you work hard enough. And it is most fragile in former colonial countries, where the European rulers strove to make sure that as little of this capital as possible rubbed off on the subject peoples. so that when the Europeans left, all the sophisticated economic machinery collapsed.
The Zimbabwean government has made things bad by chasing off all the rich people who owned things, and making it unlikely they will ever return; now it is busy making them worse, by chasing all the other capital out of the country, and slowly destroying the habits of interpersonal trust, and planning (what sort of lunatic plans for the future when inflation is in the quadruple digits?) that support economic growth. Those sorts of habits are not an easy cultural equilibrium to get to (what sort of lunatic buys things from a perfect stranger 1,000 miles away?); once destroyed, they seem just as difficult to regain as they were to build in the first place.
Economically, Viscount Grey's famous quote applies better to modern-day Africa than war-torn Europe: once the lights go out all over Zimbabwe, we may well not see them lit again in our lifetime.
Posted by Jane Galt at October 3, 2006 3:03 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksThe real reason that Germany and Japan were able to quickly regain, and then exceed, their economic might, while India and Mexico languished, lay in human capital. And no, not in the glories of whiter skin or superior Teutonic values. Even with her factories in ruins, Germany still had people who knew how to build factories, and run them. It had networks of people who were used to trading with each other. It had bankers who knew how to evaluate loan candidates and calculate interest. It had a citizenry with strong capitalist habits . . . savings and investment, trusting strangers enough to buy from them, a belief and insistence upon the rule of law. These deeply ingrained habits formed the foundation upon which the factories could easily be rebuilt.
"Trusting strangers".... excellent words.
We take a lot of things for granted in the West. One of those things we take for granted (and expect that exists in all nations) is we assume that everyone lives in a civilized society. Unfortunately, civilization does not typically exist (in the way that we know it and expect it) in Eastern cultures.
I read a lot. One author I read quite frequently is Victor Davis Hanson. He wrote a remarkable book called Carnage and Culture. This book detailed 10 pivotal battles between Western Civilization and the "other" and explained very clearly why we in the West have it so good.
The first chapter deals with Salamis, a naval battle between Greece and Persia in 480 BC. The Persians vastly outnumbered the Greeks, but the majority of the Persian fleet was sunk while the Greek fleet sustained almost no casulties. How can this be?
Were the Greek vessels that much more advanced? No. Did they employ weaponry that we far superior? No. So what was it?
Civilization.
The Greeks had Democracy and the Persians had slavery. The Greeks were civilized and the Persians (for all practical purposes) weren't. And that cost King Xerses and his fleet dearly. Specifically how did it hurt them?
The Persians came encumbered. Their ships were much too heavy as they were carrying all the gold and wealth of all the sailors that were on board. Thus, the were heavier, far less seaworthy, and were far easier to sink than the Greek boats. And why did they have to bring all that they had with them? Because Persia wasn't civilized. The "free" Persians didn't live in a culture where they were free to leave their homes and serve their king in battle and expect to come home to find their homes intact. Simply put, whatever they would leave behind, other Persians would simply take it. There were no laws, and what laws they had were not obeyed. There was no trust, no belief in personal private property. If you weren't around to defend some tangible asset with your life, then you lost it. And no one copuld be trusted (no one) to keep it safe. So, Persians carried all that they had with them (right to their deaths.)
The Greeks didn't. The Greeks had trust. They had civilization.
That was 2500 years ago, but things haven't changed all that much. The East is still not civilized. In Iraq in 2003 (after the fall of Bahgdad) our Army corp engineers came across an Iraqi soccer field that was littered with trash and in terrible disrepair. Well, they spent some time cleaning it up, throwing away the garbage, putting up nice nets, laying down dirt and sod, and making it quite nice for the Iraqi children. Within wo days, all the dirt and sod was gone. It was taken by those who lived in the area and they put it in their yards. The dirt and sod was taken (much like all the antiquties in the Bahgdad museums after the fall of Iraq) because no one was there to stand guard and protect it.
The Army Corp of Engineers asked "Who steals dirt?" Savages. Uncivilized savages take whatever they can get their hands on, and they fully epxect that they will have things stolen from them if they are not there to protect it.
Iraqi army personel are paid for every day they serve. But many of them (dare I say all of them?) take time off without pay every other month. Why? Because they don't live in a civilized society. They take time off without pay so that they can take home to their families all the earnings they have accumulated in the time they were serving over those two months. That is the only way they can be sure that their families get the money. There is no direct deposit, no faith in any kind of electronic wire transfer system of money. None of that exists, and even if it did they wouldn't use it because if the money is not in their hands, they assume it is gone.
That is what we are dealing with.
And I'm guessing that Iraq is much better off (from a civilization standpoint) than is Angola.
Yes, it is going to get much worse in Angola. Angolan men who are infected with AIDS often rape young virgin girls in the hopes that the disease will be taken from them. They actually believe that might cure them. They perform clitorectomies in Angola. They don't live in civilization. They live like savages.
A really sad, terrible story.
But look on the bright side- I bet a lot of inequality has disappeared.
Zimbabwe is a crying shame; that malicious fool Robert Mugabe and his goons have killed the country. Yet another heroic guerilla that ends up a curse and a plague on his country. Those with their eyes open in the 1980s can now feel bleakly vindicated. After the killing spree in Matabeleland, he turned out just the way one would have expected.
Paul - You might want to do a search on hawala.
From wikipedia - The unique feature of the system is that no promissory instruments are exchanged between the hawala brokers; the transaction takes place entirely on the honor system.
I don't know about Eastern Europe -- it looks like it's recovering quite nicely from fifty years of Russian imperialism. Estonia and Hungary both have
GDPs about $16K/capita, which is about four-fifths that of South Korea.
Of course, their human capital couldn't go anywhere for fifty years...
Zimbabwe will get worse before it gets better, but I think you overestimate the time it'll take to recover after it hits bottom. Most of that human capital isn't disappearing entirely, just moving next door to South Africa, which is still growing quite well.
One of the main impediments to developing social capital is tribalism. David Pryce-Jones has a lot of things to say about this for the Middle East in his book The Closed Circle. In tribalism you trust the tribe and are loyal to it. The tribe in turn it gives you security against violence and poverty. And each tribe is in continual conflict with other tribes, with government being whichever tribe happens to have made it to the top of the heap, a position it uses to rob and exploit the other tribes.
It took Europe several centuries to get beyond tribalism and build up people's loyalty to the state. Part of why this has been so hard in Africa is that the colonialists, when they left, divided people in to multi-tribal states, guaranteeing endless ethnic conflict.
I have read that Islam is not very good at building states, as opposed to empires, because its philosophy is that the world should become one giant tribe. However, there may be some help for the Middle East. On NPR's Talk of the Nation Oct 2, 2006, Rami Khouri said young Arabs are developing national consciousness.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?
storyId=6181735
Now if they only build up an effective political movement.
Actually, the Persians lost Salamis because they'd been scammed---Themistokles had told them that he was willing to sell the Greeks out, and the Persians' Phoenician sailors (the Persians, themselves, were _not_ a naval people, to put it _very_ mildly) let themselves get led into a trap.
And the Athenians were also fighting on home turf, while the Persians and their allies were a long way from home. It's a lot easier to leave your stuff behind when you're only a day or so away from home.
If this is a sample of Victor Davis Hanson's writings, S.M. Stirling and Gary (The War Nerd) Brecher are dead right about him.
I'm kinda depressed to think that something I wrote, linked to here, could launch off the comments Paul makes here. Narrowly, I could just observe that it's Zimbabwe we're talking about, not Angola; that clitorendectomy is not practiced in Angola or other parts of southern Africa; and that while there have been reports in southern Africa (though not particularly Angola) of HIV-infected men believing that sex with virgins will cure the disease, there is no sense in which those beliefs (or actions resulting from them) could be given the qualifier "often".
If we're talking about Zimbabwe, the problems with its government strike me as anything but "savage"; they are quintessentially "civilized" and "modern" kinds of authoritarianism. If we're talking about Angola, the same applies: Angola has suffered from a civil war for most of its post-independence era which was centrally structured around Cold War rivalries, and its current problems with corruption and government malfeasance have a great deal to do with the misuse of petroleum revenues, which strikes me, again, as a quintessentially "civilized" problem.
Ah, yes, glorious Zimbabwe, more accurately called "Mugabestan". Another land of "one man, one vote, one time", the jewel in the crown of liberal solutions to colonialism. Where are the liberals that called me a racist back in 1982 or so, for pointing out that Mugabe was a criminal who would run that country into the ground as his personal playground? Where are the liberals who insisted that the near-genocide down in Matabeleland, assisted by North Korean advisors, was overblown? Well, some of them are still around, but they won't talk to me about Africa at all for some reason or other...
But where is Bonohead, the rich, rockin' champion of the oppressed? Why hasn't he flown into Mugabestan on a private jet to help Robert Mugabe? Will Jimmy Carter, who did quite a lot to put Mugabe into power, ever pay a visit to Mugabestan and offer to help build some Habitat for Humanity? How about perpetual scold Kofi Annan, can't he take time from his busy schedule to say a word or three in public about Mugabestan?
The "human capital", or "farmers able to farm, ranchers able to ranch, competent doctors, etc. and etc. and etc." are very unlikely to return to Zim. Those that are in the RSA are likely looking to emigrate further, to Australia/New Zealand/Canada. But not to the United States, nossir, can't be letting any of those white devils from Southern Africa into the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
The culture of trust that was at best a veneer on top of older, tribal based cultures, is gone. It won't come back anytime soon. Mugabe and his thugs are a more advanced "cargo cult", except rather than chanting to models of airplanes, they give each other big titles such as "Minister of the Treasury", and wave stacks of paper "money" around, while chanting crypto-Marxist anti-Colonialist slogans, as if that will bring the good times back. But it will not bring the good times back. After Mugabe leaves this mortal coil, one of his henchmen will take up his heroic, anti-Colonial cause and drive the country even further into abased poverty, for years and years to come.
Perhaps in another generation, when western liberals have finally gotten over their post-colonial guilt, and have given up their Rousseauian "noble savage" fantasies, it will be possible for some people of drive and competence, or "human capital" as it is put on this weblog, to go back to that beautiful land and make something of it. But for now, the pillaging will go on as long as there is something to pillage...even if it's only UN food relief packages piled up at an airstrip. Because the combination of Marxism and tribalism will make it so...
It's easy to assume that Mugabe is a tyrant who has alienated almost all of the population and holds onto power solely through force. Strangely enough, that isn't true. A fair chunk of the population still supports him, mostly those from Harare and other cities and also from Mugabe's tribe.
Another thing that's helped Mugabe stay in power is the fact that many people opposed to him have chosen to emigrate rather than stay and fight. Most of the white farmers have gone to Mozambique, which has welcomed them and provided free or low-cost land. Urban and other educated blacks have mostly gone to Britain and to a lesser extent other Commonwealth and European countries, while rural blacks have fled en masse to South Africa - those who haven't been eaten by lions along the way, that is.
Speaking of South Africa, it's been burdened greatly by the influx of Zimbabwean refugees, as well as by the sense that as a regional power it should be doing something about the chaos next door. South Africa has been unwilling to put too much pressure on Mugabe, partly because of a lingering sense of racial solidarity and partly because many South Africans have tribal ties with Mugabe's supporters.
Liberian history is supposedly "tragic," which is newspaper code for "funny as Hell." -- War Nerd
"A fair chunk of the population still supports him, mostly those from Harare and other cities and also from Mugabe's tribe." In other ones, the people that those UN relief shipments actually reach...
"If we're talking about Zimbabwe, the problems with its government strike me as anything but "savage"; they are quintessentially "civilized" and "modern" kinds of authoritarianism."
By modern, do you mean 20th century? Marxism was considered modern and civilized (at least by some slow learners) a few decades ago. But surely if there's one big lesson from the 20th century, it's how horrendously savage and uncivilized Marxism actually is, in practice. And as ellipsis pointed out, this is Marxism mixed with tribalism, which sounds even less modern to me.
Note that I'm not agreeing with Paul's comments on Africans being savage. But I don't see anything particularly modern or civilized about hunting down and killing rich people in order to steal from them, even if it's dressed up with outdated Marxist justifications.
About the comments of how Eastern Europe human capital was destroyed, I am willing to quibble here.
First of all, economically speaking, Eastern Europe has always been behind the west (Prussia and perhaps some parts of the Baltic states excepted.) So comparing, say Eastern Europe to Western Europe would always require the east to be judged at a bit of a disadvantage. This is especially true of Russia-- remember that the human capital of Russia before Communism was the Czar and (I believe) the vestiges of serfdom, not exactly a position of relative strength. So even if one posits that there was absolutely no damage done by Communist authoritarianism, one would still expect Eastern Europe to not fair as well as the West.
And now, I am not sure if Eastern Europe is as disadvantaged as "the human capital has been destroyed" would imply. Countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, the baltic states, Poland, etc. seem to be muddling along just fine. Maybe they aren't as strong as say England, but they are not slouches, (esp. the great libertarian example, latvia).
I am not claiming there wasn't damage-- a glance at GDP/capital does imply some retardation. I just think that the language there was unjustifiably strong.
If this is a sample of Victor Davis Hanson's writings, S.M. Stirling and Gary (The War Nerd) Brecher are dead right about him.
And yet, when Victor Hanson has asked Stirling and Brecher to debate him in an open forum, they have refused. I'm not surprised and you shouldn't be either. That is because they are cowards/chickensh*t and do not want to be carved up in a debate the way VDH carved Arrianna Huffington and Jared Diamond. Hanson made Diamond and Huffington look like a pair of ignorant fools. The exact same thing would happen to Brecher and Stirling.
We have troops in Iraq, 7000 miles away from all the assets, and none of them are concerned that they would lose any of it. That is because they live in a civilized society.
Just so you know, Paul, I've never read Hanson's books, but most historians call the trait of being able to trust your neighbors (mostly) a "civil society". It's quite different than merely being civilized. Both the Greeks and the Persians clearly had civilizations.
The Athenians did have better social technology, in the form of said civil society and democracy, which gave them (mostly to the point) better leadership (see Themistocles pulling the wool over the Persians' eyes, and his strategically excellent use of it). They also had better naval technology and more confidence on the water because democracy makes technological progress and trading easier.
While we're talking technology, note that the Persians had very high technology for their times. It just wasn't as good as the Greeks'.
> The East is still not civilized.
Oh, yes, we know how uncivilized Japan and the East are. That's why their cars are better than ours, and why most computers are made there. You might want to revisit that point a bit.
Actually, right now, there are civil societies scattered all over the globe, literally in all parts of the world. We're quickly getting to the point where most people live in civil societies.
And yet, when Victor Hanson has asked Stirling and Brecher to debate him in an open forum, they have refused.
There's some doubt whether Gary "The War Nerd" Brecher actually exists. He may just be the nom de plume of Mark Ames, the publisher of the Exile, the alternative newspaper in which the columns appear.
Oh, yes, we know how uncivilized Japan and the East are. That's why their cars are better than ours, and why most computers are made there. You might want to revisit that point a bit.
Don't tell me you think Japan actually still lives in an Eastern culture. They may have been Eastern at one time, but no longer. They are West as the West can be, with dangerously low interest rates, beer, baseball, Disneyworld Japan, new cars every two years, and the lowest birthrate in the industrialized world. They took Western culture, and went far beyond where we are today. We are trying to catch up...
We're quickly getting to the point where most people live in civil societies.
I hope you are right.
It's easy to assume that Mugabe is a tyrant who has alienated almost all of the population and holds onto power solely through force. Strangely enough, that isn't true. A fair chunk of the population still supports him, mostly those from Harare and other cities and also from Mugabe's tribe.
Members of the Communist Party went to their deaths supporting Stalin, who often had personally signed their death warrants. People condemned to death by the Zulu king Shaka were observed to literally shout and sing his praises even after the process of impalement had begun. The "cult of personality" appears to be a feature of the way humans think. It proves nothing about the merit of the object of such a cult, though.
Since Stalin was the only one who could revoke those death warrants and he was (occasionally) affected by sucking up, sucking up to him by those he condemned wasn't completely irrational.
Folks in Zimbabwe are in a variation of the prisoner's dilemma. Unless "enough" people oppose him, opponents are worse off than supporters.
I think the problem for the white man in Africa has always been the nut cases like our American friend who mix a racist attitude into their views. The importance of human capital goes to the very heart of the problem. If that human capital is not prepared to integrate and become Zimbawbian in heart and head then it is easy to see that there can be no long term future. It is vital for all who love Zimbawbe and Africa to root out the racists who have undermined our case from UDI onwards.Africans are not stupid and the condecending attitudes of the past have done much damage.Those who can leave this baggage behind can contribute still to this benighted country.
The reason Zimbabwe is a mess is Envy.
One big attraction of Marxism is the patina of science it puts on envy, and justifies a destructive rage of the poor against anybody richer than they are ... in the name of "social justice."
Mugabe's envy is not so different from most US Dem Party envy, and that is why it's such a big mistake to vote Dem (as I noted in a more recent post.)
I quite like ellipsis questions about Bono, and all other "end Ian Smith's Rhodesia now!" previous talkers.
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