(1) What kind of success did Africa have with governments that wielded great power over the different African economies?
(2) What are some of the major arguments advanced by the Public Choice school of economics?
(3) What are front-loading and political engineering? (See the video and reading for Lesson 74.)
Hello everyone! It’s been quite a year.
During the postwar time period of Africa, many countries such as Nigeria or South Africa saw a significant skyrocketing of nationalism (and government tyranny). For instance, the country of “Zaire” (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) was run by a man named Mobuto Seko, who excessively spent 5 million dollars of net worth that could’ve been used to support his country’s squalid lifestyle and economically vulnerable citizens. He spoke highly of Zaire’s “growing” economy and that the future had nowhere to go but up for Africa! (Whilst investing entirely in European products and land but cast out as much as 500 million dollars’ worth of foreign business out of Zaire) Another “Socialist” African dictator, Julius Nyerere “Teacher” controlled Tanzania in a one-party rule. He ended up banning many immigrants (mainly Asian workers) in 1967 through an unjust use of power with the Arusha declaration, but this ended up backfiring, and declining Tanzania’s wellbeing and ability to produce. Contrast this with Kenya, (admittingly, this was also a one-party nation but) it did not have a socialist economy, but instead the ruler Jomo Kenyatta, invested in tourism and foreign cooperation, causing life in Kenya to be considerably better for the average citizen (Compared to Zaire and Tanzania).
Public Choice politics is very straightforward, let me state that first. The traditional view popularized by state education paints government officials as servants committed to the public good. On the other hand, the public choice school of economics view: self-interested individuals remain interested only in themselves when elected to powerful positions, they do not become magically interested in serving the people upon gaining a seat in the government. The only thing politicians are interested in is getting enough people satisfied into voting for their re-election. The idea of “Tyranny of the minority” comes from the fact that the state can impose costs that they won’t personally pay. Only the people who benefit from the political process will be rationally informed enough of what and who to vote for.
Finally, what is front-loading and political engineering? Well, as my teacher Toom Woods instructed in lesson 74, it is using government laws and regulations to achieve a goal. But what does that mean? Attempting to artificially increase the number of jobs for one, or the military as a whole. In finance, front-loading is the act of disproportionately using too much of a project’s budget at the beginning, often with promises of “never before seen innovation” to justify the use of money to supporters.
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