Dean's World

A. Nany Moose posted an important comment that helps explain much about Africa, and which I did not pay enough attention to in my series on Mortacracies, most of which are in Africa. Because of its importance, and as a way of indexing it for search engines, I include it here.

Moose wrote:

Culture accounts for so much when we consider the problems of contemporary Africa. I was intrigued by this comment from Friday's blog:
"What evidence is there that any sort of humanitarian aid will ever do any good in Africa? If you read books like Michael Maren's 'The Road To Hell,' it becomes clear that it's no use giving a man a fish or even teaching him to catch them if his fish are merely going to be taken away by the next gunman to come along."
This comment made me think of a story told by friends who recently visited Africa. They stayed with an American couple who own a successful chicken farm in Zimbabwe. Most of the farm staff are tribal folk, and the American couple have, on several occasions, tried to set up the more promising staff members in their own chicken farming businesses. On these occasions they offered space for the chicken coops and runs at nominal cost, provided chickens on loan, and taught the staff members standard business practices. In every case the operations were successful--they became profitable nearly immediately, and everyone was delighted for a short while. Nevertheless, the new chicken farming entrepreneurs invariably failed within a year or two.

(Continued here)

(link)

Aziz (mail) (www):

Rudy, you are on to something with the observation that tribal culture tends to undercut the assumptions required for traditional capitalism to succeed. However I think that your prescription, ie that these tribal cultural mores need to be encouragged to change, is somewhat backwards.

The basic problem is the Tragedy of the Commons. The key here is to redefine the way that the commons is accessed by the members of the society so as to be compatible with the cultural foundation.

For example, let's take the example of a chicken coop. Why not set up a system whereby the profits are distributed in part to all members of the tribe? If 50% of the gross is set aside for redistribution, 40% for re-investment into the enterprise, and 10% to the entrepeneur (for savings), then the collective self-interest is redefined. Such a scheme would of course horrify a traditional capitalist who sees no reason why he should subsidize a cousin's sloth with his own labor. But the neccessity of convincing people to see the greater good runs in both directions.

Fundamentally, solutions to liberty in Africa will rest on an economic foundation - improve poverty, and liberty will also take root. But getting there requires working along the cultural grain, not against it.

5.31.2006 11:42am

Tom Hawkson:

Good point, Aziz.

5.31.2006 2:31pm

Foobarista:

The problem is that the bureaucracy would eat 95% of the "shared" profit, and the cousin would get 5% or less. The lesson the cousin would learn is that it's better to be a tax-farming bureaucrat than a chicken farmer.

5.31.2006 4:30pm

foobarista, you misunderstood. the redistribution is not to the goivernment, only to the tribe. think of it like shares of stock. bt the tribe members are all automatically shareholders of any venture started by a member of the tribe.

5.31.2006 4:36pm

The tribe *is* the government. If African tribes were well-defined entities - and relatively small - this sort of thing may work. But these tribes aren't a few people living in villages - they are ethnic groups with thousands or millions of members. Even family groups will have dozens or hundreds of members.

In a sense, the point made here is that Africa is a textbook example of the "Laffer Curve" - the "tribe tax" is close to 100% if you are above some level that is defined as "richer than most", so there's no incentive to work beyond that level.

5.31.2006 4:51pm

foobarista, be sure to read Rudy's link. His example demonstrates that the tribe is a local unit, not a federal or even state one.

5.31.2006 6:17pm

Dean Esmay:

Yeah, and tribal politics aren't quite the same thing as democratic politics either.

5.31.2006 6:49pm

I've read a number of articles making this point; a good article making a similar point was in the National Review a few weeks ago by a doctor who had worked in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe just before it became independent. His point was that with independence looming, black doctors' pay was equalized with that of white doctors, and while black doctors were briefly able to greatly improve their standard of living, they were pulled back quickly as soon as their extended family and tribal members found out they had more money than before. So, their standard of living reverted to a state slightly above destitution, while they still pulled down salaries many times that of most other workers.

I've also read numerous articles saying that politics and government/bureaucracy in Africa is tightly intertwined with tribal matters, so it is unclear how some sort of formal tribal wealth-sharing scheme would escape the grasping hand of bureaucrats and the state.

5.31.2006 7:53pm

Randall:

Show me a people that identify with tribes, and I will show you a people with serious trouble taking advantage of the opportunities democracy and capitalism offer.

We romanticize tribalism and other Third World habits, but it is almost always (almost?) a recipe for disaster.

In a way, it is sad, because tribes do provide a sense of belonging that we Westerners sorely miss, but at a price that is, after all is said and done, prohibitively high.

5.31.2006 9:31pm