Nick's Place

Nicholas Barnard Tropical Gangsters and Shrub Reaction 5/31/2001

In reading Tropical Gangsters I found Kitgaard's neutrality refreshing. In recent months I have felt that all the analisies that have been presented to me about the United States economy its relations with other governments, and political climate have been heavily slanted depending on the source of the information. While I have been aware of the author's purposes and agendas for presenting information for a long time, I have found that these slants have become more extreme and intolerante of the oposite party. The liberals make the conservatives out to be neo-faschists, and the conservatives make the liberals out to be hippies or communists. Kitgaard approaches his writing and his work from the view of an economist with a mission. He has the unrelenting goal of reforming the economy. While his goal is shaped by the prevailing times he, makes an implicit acknowledgement of this by reviewing Equatorialguinea's history, and stating that his goal is to bring it into the modern economy.

Molly Ivins on the otherhand is in my mind a realistic liberal. While in her writing it is clear she is writing from the perspective that George W. Bush is one who has played the games of politics for the benefit of corporations, she uses reasonably concrete facts to make and support her argument. I find this invigorating. I am a unabshed liberal myself, but I often find liberal writings to be full of holes and ignorant of the fact that readers who disagree too strongly with a piece will either stop reading it, or read it with the mission of discrediting everything that is said. Ms. Ivins' instead lays out the facts, to allow all who wish to dispute them the chance.

While I was reading Tropical Gangsters I thought at first that intead of rehabilitating the whole economy by direct intervention it might be better to entice, using various monetary tools, several transnational corporations to set up divisions in Equatorialguinea, which would be required to buy locally, and hire locally. My originally intentions with this were to set up a stabalizing force within the economy. The businesses would demand certain standards from their employees and suppliers as a matter of course. They would generate exports for the economy, give employees active hands on training in western styles of business, and infuse the banks with capital. These few businesses would work a ripple effect thruout the economy and get money flowing throuout the economy.

I thought of this idea before I read about all of the corruption, and unreasonable demands on businesses. Equatorialguinea found itself in a bit of a Catch-22. Businesses found the governmental costs (official and unofficial) to be out of line with what they were willing to pay, but the costs were high because very few companies were doing buisness in the country, and country officials thought it necessary to keep high taxes and bribes to maintain the country. In honesty companies balk about the bribes and other inducements that are needed to “grease the wheels” in a country like equatorialguinea, but think nothing about spending much larger sums in the United States and other first world countries to accomplish their aims.

In comparing the Equatorialguinean corruption system with the current US corruption system, as described in Molly Ivins' article I found the Guinean system to be much more efficent than the American system. The American system depends on organizations or businesses to utilize part of their profits to lobby lawmakers and policymakers to achieve their aims, the functions of policy maker and business make are upheld. This division allows each to uphold a reasonably public face that they both exist to service the people of the country, while in actuality they corporations feed the politicians need for money and the politicians feed the corporations need for friendly policies that increase profits. Thus in many ways these two entities work as a team to accomplish their common goal to be profitable. In equatorialguinea the politicians have cut out the extraenous flow of cash (perhaps because of the scarcity of the currency) and entered into business for themselves. Thus they create policies that benefit the “businesses” they run. Thus pocketing the profits, albeit reduced by the lack of economic efficency, of both businessperson and politician.

As a theatrical artist I often strive to find the common stories within people's experiences. We theatrical artists often call these human stories, they are stories that everyone can relate to. In contrasting the story of the political climate of Equitorialguinea with that of the Texas, we can realize the common thread that societies corrupt. People with power are obsessed with maintaining it, even if it involves sacrificing their principles of freedom and neutrality. Thus as the saying goes, absoulte power corrupts absoultely. This concept also extends as a continum, those with less power have less corruption, and those with no power, have nothing to corrupt with. This common characteristic of people to corrupt with power is something that unites us as human beings, but divides our individual cultures.