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Date: 21 Sep 2002 10:30:37 -0400

>>>>> "f" == fork list <Mr.> writes:

    f> "Free trade and free markets have proven their ability to lift
    f> whole societies out of poverty" I'm not a
    f> socio-political/history buff - does anybody have some clear
    f> examples?

China?  Ooops, no wait, scratch that.

There is one counter example that I can think of, but it may not be
precisely "free trade/markets" -- when Ben Franklin first visited
England he was asked why the colonies were so prosperous.  Ben
explained that they used "Colonial Script", a kind of barter-dollar,
and increasing the supply of script ensured complete employment.  The
British bankers were furious and immediately lobbied parliament to
clamp down on the practice.  Within a few years, the colonies were
rife with unemployment and poverty just like the rest of the Empire.

According to questionable literature handed out by a fringe political
party here in Canada, the Founding Fathers had no real complaint about
tea taxes, it was the banning of colonial script they were
protesting. If this is true, then it comes right back to the forces
that killed Ned Ludd's followers as to why popular opinion believes
they were protesting a tea tax.  The same pamphlet claimed that Canada
was also a prosperous nation until, by an act of parliament in the
late-50's or early 60's, the right to print money was removed from the
juristiction of parliament and handed over to the Bank of Canada.

I've wondered about all this.  Certainly the timeline of the collapse
of the Canadian economy fits the profile, but there are oodles of
other causes (for example, spending money like we had 300M people when
we only had 20M) Anyone have any further information on this?

-- 
Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications
 - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ -
  "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)


