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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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anything that would actually solve it

Where does 'Marshall-Plan class program to bring the Third World Global South up to standard so that the inhabitants won't feel the need to move' fit in this?

That belongs in the same category as the "use technology from the Roswell crash site to end energy scarcity" or "Construct a fake airport out of sticks to summon great cargo from the land of the ancestors" approaches.

The Marshall Plan is absurdly overrated. Europe recovered from the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic Wars and WW1 without any Marshall Plan just fine. It was European institutions and human capital that allowed the recovery. Things you can't create in the Global South with piles of money.

Observationally, nation building failed completely in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan alone received something like 10x more money than Europe did on a per capita basis. All that money was set on fire and accomplished nothing.

Up to what standard? I had understood that residents of impoverished countries actually become more likely to emigrate as the countries become wealthier.

It seems pretty clear the idea is to improve them up to a near-western standard so the incentive to move isn't there.

I doubt it's the poverty that keeps Germans from moving to Bulgaria en-masse.

Right, if that's the idea, the proponent should do the budget math to figure out what it would cost to raise the entire rest of the world up to first-world standards, because it's obviously a fantasy even if you assume that wealth can be delivered via wire transfer irrespective of the human capital in the recipient country.

I'm all for it in theory. In practice, I look at the giant money pit that was Afghanistan, and worry that any such Marshall Plan would meet a similar fate.

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