scholar_vit

Я тут давеча рассказал анекдот про цыгана и лошадь в применении к рыночным фундаменалистам. Ну посмеялись и ладно. Ан нет. Я должен был помнить, что на нашей планете шутить нельзя вообще: каждая шутка немедленно оказывается правдой.

Читаю в субботней New York Times передовицу о голоде в Нигере. И пожалуйста, результат слишком рьяного следования рыночной идеологии:

Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, has long lived at the mercy of an unforgiving climate, and the destruction of last year's crops through drought and crop-eating locusts is the main cause of its present plight. The usual contributors to famine elsewhere, like war, dictatorship or crackpot economic theories, are notably absent. Niger's government is democratically elected and President Mamadou Tandja's orthodox budget-balancing and market-opening policies are regularly praised by Western leaders and international lenders.

Regrettably, Mr. Tandja has an unhealthy tendency to take that orthodoxy too far, to his people's detriment. In April, with the famine already gathering force, he imposed food tax increases as part of a budget-balancing package. Amid widespread protests, he later backed off. But in an interview with the BBC last week, he insisted that his people "look well-fed" and that reports to the contrary were "false propaganda" being spread by aid agencies to attract funding.

For the historically minded, his bizarre insensitivity to his people's suffering evokes parallels with Ireland's deadly famine of more than a century and a half ago, where the rigid laissez-faire ideology of the ruling British authorities made the bad problem of a failed potato crop needlessly worse. Then, locally grown grains were sold abroad for profit while millions of Irish peasants were allowed to starve. Today, market stalls in Maradi, a major trading center of Niger, are piled high with food for the few who can afford it, while elsewhere in the same city thousands of starving and desperate people jostle for scarce relief supplies.

Я, кстати, не знал, что ирландский голод был связан с laissez-faire. Заглянул в Британнику. И действительно:

The British government's efforts to relieve the famine were inadequate. Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel did what he could to provide relief in 1845 and early 1846, but under the Liberal cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, the emphasis shifted to reliance on Irish resources and the free market, which made disaster inevitable.

Так что шутить нельзя. Эта идеология уже приводила к массовой смерти от голода.