Quotulatiousness

June 12, 2013

New disclosure rules for Canadian oil, gas, and mining companies

Filed under: Business, Cancon — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:19

David Akin in the Toronto Sun:

The Canadian government announced new measures Tuesday that will force oil, gas, and mining companies to publicly disclose every penny they pay to any government at home or around the world.

The move is seen as an anti-corruption measure and one that many activists groups that work in the developing world, such as Oxfam, have been demanding for years, particularly since Canada is home to a majority of the world’s mining companies.

The European Union and the United States have already moved towards mandatory reporting requirements for their mining companies.

There have been cases in some developing countries where multinationals pay a host government substantial sums for the rights to oil, gas or minerals, but the local population complains that they do not know how much their governments are getting and, as a result, cannot demand their governments spend some of that wealth on them.

It’s not just in developing countries, either, as some First Nations activists have complained that they can’t get information on what their band councils receive in various resource development deals here in Canada. Of course, some (many?) deals get done with a bit of bribery to sweeten the attraction, but not every country will have (or enforce) rules like this.

May 26, 2013

Bangladesh needs legal reform and free markets

Filed under: Asia, Bureaucracy, Economics, Law — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:37

Sheldon Richman discusses the plight of workers — especially poor women workers — in Bangladesh:

According to a report written for the Netherlands ministry of foreign affairs, most Bangladeshis, unsurprisingly, are victimized by a land system that has long benefited the rural and urban elites. “Land-grabbing of both rural and urban land by domestic actors is a problem in Bangladesh,” the report states.

    Wealthy and influential people have encroached on public lands…, often with help of officials in land-administration and management departments. Among other examples, hundreds of housing companies in urban areas have started to demarcate their project area using pillars and signboard before receiving titles. They use local musclemen with guns and occupy local administrations, including the police. Most of the time, land owners feel obliged to sell their productive resources to the companies at a price inferior to market value. Civil servants within the government support these companies and receive some plot of land in exchange.

Women suffer most because of the patriarchy supported by the political system. “Women in Bangladesh rarely have equal property rights and rarely hold title to land,” the report notes. “Social and customary practices effectively exclude women from direct access to land.” As a result,

    Many of the rural poor in Bangladesh are landless, have only small plots of land, are depending on tenancy, or sharecropping. Moreover, tenure insecurity is high due to outdated and unfair laws and policies…. These growing rural inequalities and instability also generate migration to towns, increasing the rates of urban poverty.

Much as in Britain after the Enclosures, urban migration swells the ranks of workers, allowing employers to take advantage of them. Since Bangladesh does not have a free-market economy, starting a business is mired in regulatory red tape — and worse, such as “intellectual property” law — that benefit the elite while stifling the chance for poor individuals to find alternatives to factory work. (The owner of the Savar factory, Mohammed Sohel Rana, got rich in a system where, the Guardian writes, “politics and business are closely connected, corruption is rife, and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.”) Moreover, until the factory collapse, garment workers could not organize without employer permission.

Crony capitalism deprives Bangladeshis of property rights, freedom of exchange, and therefore work options. The people need neither the corporatist status quo nor Western condescension. They need radical land reform and freed markets.

January 14, 2013

Insufficient bribes and transport aircraft

Filed under: Government, Italy, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:35

Strategy Page on the sad-but-predictable situation in Afghanistan:

Afghanistan recently announced that it would cancel the contract to buy and use 20 C-27A transports. The official reason was the inability of the Italian maintenance firm to keep the aircraft operational. The unofficial reason is the unwillingness of the Italians to pay as much in bribes as the Afghan commanders were demanding. Over half a billion dollars was being spent on buying and operating these aircraft and all the money was coming from the United States. Afghan government and air force officials were determined to grab as much of that cash as possible. That meant there was not enough money for the spare parts and tools needed to keep the C-27As flying. The Afghans can be self-destructive in so many ways, and letting these transports get away because not enough could be stolen from the contracts was another example of this.

More self-destructive behavior is expected. The Western donor nations are getting fed up with the increasingly aggressive Afghan corruption. Last year, as the Afghans asked for more military aid, the donor nations instead cut contributions. The Afghans were told that the aid would be reduced from $11 billion a year to $4.1 billion a year between 2012 and 2017. That would only change if, by some miracle, the Afghans managed to get their thieving ways under control. Currently, the Afghans will go to great lengths to get around donor auditors and anti-corruption measures. The C-27A was a case of everyone just giving up. Expect to see more cases like this.

October 21, 2012

UN to deploy international monitors during US elections

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:03

The UN has become so concerned about claims that voting in the United States is corrupt that it will deploy international observers during the US elections:

United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers around the country on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places.

Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.

Update, 23 October: Among the observers will be Azerbaijani and Kazakhstani representatives, and some of the places being monitored include places like Concord, NH and Tallahassee, FL:

For example, Aida Alzhanova of Kazakhstan will be monitoring in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Phoenix, Arizona. Elchin Musayvev from Azerbaijan will be monitoring in Concord, New Hampshire.

[. . .]

Other U.N. targets include Richmond (VA), Harrisburg (PA), Raleigh (NC), Austin (TX), Des Moines (Iowa), St. Paul, (Minn.), Topeka (KS), and Tallahassee (FL).

September 30, 2012

If you’re not getting enough convictions on drug charges, tamper with the evidence at the lab

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:56

The war on drugs is already insane enough, with civil liberties being curtailed in pursuit of drug dealers and even drug users. The number of US citizens in prison for drug charges helps make the US one of the most-imprisoned societies in the world. But even with all that, things can still get worse, as this story from the Huffington Post shows:

“Annie Dookhan’s alleged actions corrupted the integrity of the entire criminal justice system,” state Attorney General Martha Coakley said during a news conference after Dookhan’s arrest. “There are many victims as a result of this.”

Dookhan faces more than 20 years in prison on charges of obstruction of justice and falsely pretending to hold a degree from a college or university. She testified under oath that she holds a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, but school officials say they have no record of her receiving an advanced degree or taking graduate courses there.

State police say Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples involving 34,000 defendants during her nine years at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Boston. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the fallout.

[. . .]

Verner said Dookhan later acknowledged to state police that she sometimes would take 15 to 25 samples and instead of testing them all, she would test only five of them, then list them all as positive. She said that sometimes, if a sample tested negative, she would take known cocaine from another sample and add it to the negative sample to make it test positive for cocaine, Verner said.

August 21, 2012

The 21st century equivalent to the enclosure movement

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Asia, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:07

Joseph R. Stromberg reviews The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth, by Fred Pearce.

The Land Grabbers is a wonderful primer on the newest manifestations of an ancient form of plunder: the seizure of other people’s resources and destruction of their livelihoods. The author, Fred Pearce, is a well-established British environmental journalist. Here he surveys the ongoing alienation of allegedly “unused” or “underused” land in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Australia, and elsewhere at the hands of international corporations, both private and state-owned. Politicians in the affected countries are key partners in operations that resemble the late-19th-century scramble for control of Africa. The land grabs aim at enriching privileged companies and their political allies, usually at the expense of those already on the land. States, companies, and their frequent close friend, the World Bank, see no reason to respect sitting owners and resource users, whatever their rights under customary law and (sometimes) postcolonial statutes. Pastoral nomads get even less respect. In Tanzania, for example, governments and safari capitalists have reduced the traditional grazing lands of the Maasai herdsmen to a fraction of what they were. And in Ethiopia, the government’s “villagization” policy, Pearce writes, resettles peasant farmers “in the manner of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot,” clearing the way for deals with foreign capital.

Where agriculture is concerned, the effort goes forth under an ideology that claims that only industrial-scale farming, modeled on subsidized American agribusiness, can feed the world. The ideologues in question include John Beddington, chief UK government scientist; Paul Collier, former research head at the World Bank; and Richard Ferguson of the investment company Renaissance Capital, who hopes to see “industrial-sized farms of a million hectares.” To realize that vision, smallholders, hunters, gatherers, and pastoralists must get out of the way and submit themselves to wage-labor, wherever they find it. The ideology goes hand in hand with the form of globalization that relies on the power of the United States and some associated countries to dictate the contours of world trade. While the U.S. has toppled states seen as hostile to American business interests (as in Guatemala in 1954), today’s methods are often more subtle. They include USAID programs, American domination of World Bank policies, and a web of treaty obligations, especially international investment agreements.

Pearce is an environmentalist, but his book is not especially ideological. He’s more interested in presenting data. Wherever possible he has figures for acreage (or hectares) and tells us who did what to whom and where. He also faults wealthy environmental idealists and NGOs, noting that their parks and preserves can displace local people and their property, just like commercial hunting preserves, sugar plantations, logging operations, and the rest can.

August 12, 2012

China’s economic situation in Keynesian and Austrian terms

Filed under: China, Economics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

Tyler Cowen in the New York Times:

Keynesian economics holds that aggregate demand — the sum of all consumption, investment, government spending and net exports — drives stability, and that government can and should help in difficult times. But the Austrian perspective, developed by the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek, and championed today by many libertarians and conservatives, emphasizes how government policy often makes things worse, not better.

Economists of all stripes agree that China may be in for a spill. John Maynard Keynes emphasized back in the 1930s the dangers of speculative bubbles, and China certainly seems to have had one in its property market.

[. . .]

The Austrian perspective introduces some scarier considerations. China has been investing 40 percent to 50 percent of its national income. But it is hard to invest so much money wisely, particularly in an environment of economic favoritism. And this rate of investment is artificially high to begin with.

Beijing is often accused of manipulating the value of its currency, the renminbi, to subsidize its manufacturing. The government also funnels domestic savings into the national banking system and grants subsidies to politically favored businesses, and it seems obsessed with building infrastructure. All of this tips the economy in very particular directions.

The Austrian approach raises the possibility that there is no way for China to make good on enough of its oversubsidized investments. At first, they create lots of jobs and revenue, but as the business cycle proceeds, new marginal investments become less valuable and more prone to allocation by corruption. The giddy booms of earlier times wear off, and suddenly not every decision seems wise. The combination can lead to an economic crackup — not because aggregate demand is too low, but because the economy has been producing the wrong mix of goods and services.

Lots of earlier discussion of the problems in China’s economy here.

August 9, 2012

Individual property rights for First Nations people

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:32

Canada’s treatment of First Nations people has been a disgrace for decades. After locating them (for the most part) on out-of-the-way reserves, they are mostly forgotten by the media and the politicians until something truly awful happens (like the situation on the Attawapiskat reserve) and then TV crews are dispatched, speeches are made and … usually the amnesia kicks in and all is forgotten.

In the National Post, Tasha Kheiriddin suggests that the time is finally ripe to address one of the root causes of poverty among First Nations people on Canadian reserves: their inability to own property. Band councils hold the land “in trust” for their people, which means there are lots of opportunities for those close to the band council to benefit from the administration of the shared resources. Not all bands suffer from this kind of corruption, but many do. Allocating the land to private ownership by individuals would have many beneficial effects:

This week, the federal government confirmed that it is working on legislation to allow the ownership of private property on First Nations reserves. Some aboriginal leaders, such as former chief Manny Jules, who heads the First Nations Tax Commission, applauded the move. But others see ulterior, sinister motivations at work, as Dr. Pam Palmater, a Mi’kmaw professor in the Indigenous Studies department at Ryerson University in Toronto, told Postmedia News’ Teresa Smith. “The quickest way to get that Enbridge pipeline through our territory would be to divide up those lands into individual parcels because it would be a lot quicker to pick off individuals — especially the impoverished ones. And then, if one neighbour sees that an individual gets $100,000 for his property, then what’s someone else, a single mom, with three kids, living on welfare gonna do?”

It’s easy to imagine situations on reserves that are currently governed by band councils that are less than scrupulous where the best land will somehow end up in the hands of the very people who currently benefit from the council’s favour. That is certainly one of the challenges that any such legislation will have to attempt to curtail (even assuming they can get enough support from existing First Nations representatives and groups to move forward with any privatization laws at all).

There is also no doubt that granting First Nations people full property rights – the right to buy, sell, mortgage, use and develop land – is a worthy cause. It would create an ownership culture, instead of the current system (in which reserve land is owned by the federal government, in trust for its Indian residents), which fosters dependency. It would free individual aboriginals from the too-often self-serving grip of band councils. At the same time, it would create responsible government, should those bands seek to tax property, by making them accountable to the property taxpayers they would then serve.

August 4, 2012

The tribal and political divisions of Afghanistan

Filed under: Asia, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

A brief primer from Strategy Page on the volatile mix of tribal rivalries that makes Afghanistan such a difficult place to conduct business (or military operations):

The war against the Taliban is increasingly just another chapter in the centuries old conflict between the Pushtun and non-Pushtun tribes of Afghanistan. President Karzai and his allies are from Pushtun tribes that have long been rivals to the tribes that form the core of Taliban leadership and manpower. All this is made worse by the fact that the non-Pushtun Afghans (Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbek), who comprise 60 percent of the population, do not want to lose the increased power (more in proportion to their size of the population) they obtained once democracy was installed in 2002. While Pushtuns are 40 percent of the population, Tajiks are 24 percent, Hazara ten percent, Uzbek 9 percent and various other non-Pushtun minorities the rest. This struggle between Pushtuns and the rest has defined Afghanistan since its creation three centuries ago. The Pushtun are not happy with the recent revisions that gave the majority more power. For Pushtuns, that is just not right. The Taliban are seen as major players in the fight to right this wrong, and for many Pushtuns that makes up for a lot of the evil the Taliban does.

This tribal animosity played a role in the American reaction to Pakistan closing its border to NATO truck traffic last November. The U.S. played hardball with the Pakistanis and shifted truck traffic to the more expensive northern route. This was great for the non-Pushtuns up north, who got a lot more lucrative trucking business. It was a disaster for the mainly Pushtun trucking companies in the south, and the Taliban who extorted “protection money” from the truckers to avoid being attacked. Aware of all that, NATO traffic is not returning to its pre-November levels, and may be reduced still more if the Taliban become more troublesome because their cash flow has increased.

[. . .]

Afghanistan is different to the extent that it has a more violent (than the norm) tribal culture and heavy resistance to anti-corruption efforts. Most Afghans who reach a leadership position consider corruption (demanding bribes and stealing government funds) a right and stealing something of an obligation to make his family/clan/tribe stronger and better able to survive. Many Afghans have noted that countries with less corruption are more prosperous and peaceful, but this anti-corruption faction is still a minority. Corruption continues to be a major problem in Afghanistan and it will get worse when most foreign troops leave in 2014. At that point, the anti-corruption activists will be at more personal risk, as will auditors and other monitors of how foreign aid is spent.

Many (if not most) Pushtuns, and nearly all non-Pushtuns, are hostile to the Taliban and their alien radical Islamic ways. Aside from the lifestyle restrictions, Afghans don’t like the Taliban demand that Afghans put religion before tribal and family obligations and, worst of all, strive for Islamic world conquest. Most Afghans see the Taliban as a bunch of intolerant fanatics who like to execute (often by beheading or bombs) those who oppose them. The Taliban leadership has been aware of these attitudes for years and has tried to restrain its frontline fighters. But this has been difficult, as Pushtun teenagers with guns are prone to bullying less well-armed civilians, especially if they are from another tribe. Ancient cultural habits are hard to break.

July 18, 2012

Who Exploits You More: Capitalists or Cronies?

Filed under: Business, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:48

July 15, 2012

What’s a waste of $180 million among politicians?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:09

Rex Murphy explains just why Ontarians are so justifiably cynical about politics and politicians:

Add all these up and I think we have a good notion of why politics are so little regarded, why so many politicians are abused or scorned and why public life holds so little invitation for those of delicate moral scruple, or a functioning conscience.

But now I’d like to add one particular item to that list: the Dalton McGuinty campaign’s decision to cancel an already-in-progress, contract-guaranteed gas-fired electricity plant outside Mississauga, Ont. It was cancelled, according to the current Ontario Energy Minister’s own words, by the Liberal campaign during the last election. (Everyone who is either sentient or not an absolute Liberal partisan — and pardon the redundancy — realizes that happened because opposition to the plant threatened a Liberal seat or two in the election.)

The cost of that “campaign” choice is now acknowledged to be $180-million.

Now if even a million of the amount had gone into some private pocket, or a bank account of someone close to the Ontario Liberals, the scandal would be nuclear. But because the money is merely wasted — because the whole $180-million just got thrown away, effectively doled out just for partisan advantage — people don’t quite reach white-hot anger.

But something else may be going on. People’s contempt for actions of this sort may be so deep that for a while it remains unspoken. Arrogance and self-interest on this level leaves most normal people speechless. They resign themselves to the sleaziness and corruption of the game. They learn to quietly despise politics. At that point, in a democracy, all are losers. And make no error: It was the Ontario Liberals this time, but once in power, every party, from the Tories to the Greens, is capable of acting in the same way.

July 13, 2012

Questioning the accuracy of official Chinese economic figures

Filed under: Business, China, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

Yes, we’ve heard this several times before, and for good reason:

China’s relatively mild slowdown in the second quarter has reignited a controversy about whether its official statistics can be trusted.

Chinese growth edged down to 7.6 per cent in the second quarter from 8.1 per cent in the first quarter, and analysts said the momentum in June, from stronger bank lending to rising investment, pointed to a rebound in the second half of the year.

But rather than delivering reassurance, the numbers instead provoked questions about whether the reality is worse than the government is letting on.

Economists with Barclays noted that a deceleration in industrial production was consistent with 7.0-7.3 per cent growth. Analysts at Capital Economics said that the true figure was probably closer to 7.0 per cent.

[. . .]

Doubts about Chinese data have a fine pedigree. Li Keqiang, who is widely expected to succeed Wen Jiabao later this year as premier, confided to U.S. officials in 2007 that gross domestic product was “man made” and “for reference only”, according to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.

Earlier posts on the Chinese economy are here.

July 11, 2012

Mexicans not willing to suffer increasing death toll to support American war on drugs

Filed under: Americas, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:03

Jacob Sullum on the recent election result as a sign of repudiation for American drug policy:

Early last year, when the death toll from Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on the cartels stood at 35,000 or so, Michele Leonhart, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, told reporters in Cancun “the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs.” The results of last week’s presidential election, in which the candidate of Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) finished a distant third, suggest Mexican voters are no longer buying that counterintuitive argument, if they ever did.

Even if “the fight against drugs” were winnable, it would be an outrageous imposition. Why should Mexicans tolerate murder and mayhem on an appalling scale (more than 50,000 deaths since Calderon launched his assault in December 2006), not to mention the rampant corruption associated with prohibition, all in the name of stopping Americans from obtaining psychoactive substances that their government has arbitrarily decreed they should not consume? That sort of arrogant expectation is becoming increasingly untenable.

Mexico’s incoming president, Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has promised continued cooperation with U.S. drug warriors. But during the campaign, he and the other two leading candidates all said controlling violence, as opposed to seizing drugs or arresting traffickers, would be their top law enforcement priority. Pena Nieto has reiterated that commitment since the election, saying his success should be measured by the homicide rate.

Crony Capitalism: the issue that unites the Tea Party and the Occupy movement

Filed under: Business, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

Matthew Mitchell at the Mercatus Center:

Despite the ideological miles that separate them, activists in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements agree on one thing: both condemn the recent bailouts of wealthy and well-connected banks. To the Tea Partiers, these bailouts were an unwarranted federal intrusion into the free market; to the Occupiers, they were a taxpayer-financed gift to the wealthy executives whose malfeasance brought on the financial crisis.[1] To both, the bailouts smacked of cronyism.

The financial bailouts of 2008 were but one example in a long list of privileges that governments occasionally bestow upon particular firms or particular industries. At various times and places, these privileges have included (among other things) monopoly status, favorable regulations, subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees, targeted tax breaks, protection from foreign competition, and noncompetitive contracts. Whatever its guise, government-granted privilege is an extraordinarily destructive force. It misdirects resources, impedes genuine economic progress, breeds corruption, and undermines the legitimacy of both the government and the private sector.

[. . .]

… regulations can be especially useful to firms if they give the appearance of being anti-business or somehow pro-consumer. Regulations are often supported by strange bedfellows. Bruce Yandle of Clemson University has studied the phenomenon extensively:

The pages of history are full of episodes best explained by a theory of regulation I call “bootleggers and Baptists.” Bootleggers … support Sunday closing laws that shut down all the local bars and liquor stores. Baptists support the same laws and lobby vigorously for them. Both parties gain, while the regulators are content because the law is easy to administer.[25]

The moralizing arguments are often front and center in regulatory policy debates, while the narrow interests that stand to benefit from certain regulations are much less conspicuous.

July 5, 2012

The failed state league table

Filed under: Africa, Government — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:51

This is a list you never want your country (or your neighbours) to appear on: the “top ten” failed states.

For the fifth year in a row, Somalia is ranked as the most failed failed state on the planet. This ranking was made by The Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy Magazine. Over the last decade, it’s become popular for think tanks, risk management firms and intelligence agencies to compile lists of “failed states.” This is what unstable countries, prone to rebellion and civil disorder, are called these days. What they all have in common is a lack of “civil society” (rule of, and respect for, law), and lots of corruption. The two sort of go together. Somalia consistently comes in first on most of these failed state lists. This year the top ten list of failed states (from worst to less worse) was Somalia, Congo Democratic Republic, Sudan, Chad, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic.

Not surprisingly, the best example of a failed state has long been Somalia, and that’s largely because the concept of the “nation of Somalia” is a very recent development (the 1960s). It never caught on, which is a common feature of failed states. Same could be said for the Palestinians. Sudan is accused of being a failed state, but it isn’t in the same league with Somalia. Sudan has had central government of sorts, on and off, for thousands of years. Not so Somalia.

Another common problem in failed states is a large number of ethnic groups. This is a common curse throughout Africa, which why the majority of the worst failed states are there. Europe, and much of Asia, have managed to get past this tribalism, although that has not always resulted in a civil society. It usually takes the establishment of a functioning democracy to make that happen. This tribalism has kept most African nations from making a lot of economic or political progress. The top five failed states are all African. Somalia is also unique in that it is one of those rare African nations that is not ethnically diverse. Instead, Somalia suffers from tribal animosities and severe warlordism (basically successful gangsters who establish temporary control over an area).

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