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NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 3 - Less Wrong
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Creeping rationality: I just heard a bit on NPR about a proposed plan to distribute the returns from newly found mineral wealth in Afghanistan to the general population. This wasn't terribly surprising. What delighted and amazed me was the follow-up that it was hoped that such a plan would lead to a more responsive government, but all that was known was that such plans have worked in democratic societies, and it wasn't known whether causality could be reversed to use such a plan to make a society more democratic.
Such plans work in societies with rule of law, and fail miserably in societies that are clan based and tribal. A quarter of Afghanistan's GDP may go to bribes and shakedowns. A more honest description from NPR would be that historically, mineral wealth when controlled by deeply corrupt governments like Afghanistan's, is primarily used for graft and nepotism, benefiting a few elites in government and industry while funding the oppression of everyone else.
In other words, Afghanistan is more like Nigeria than Norway.