There's lots of right-blog commentary lately on just how miserable a place Cuba has been, at least from Ilya Somin and from Tyler Cowen. (My new favorite red meat sentence, from this earlier Cowen post: "It's time to stop apologizing for communist dictatorships; are you really so taken with the idea of confiscating property as to overlook decades of tyranny, impoverishment, and human misery?")
Meanwhile the Lancet thinks it should be an "international crime" (their phrase) to hire doctors who come from poor countries. They want serfdom -- almost literally!
If you want to really cut to the chase about my political philosophy, the most important problems we face, by far, have to do with an entire world out there of people living in abject misery. (Coincidentally, that gives me about the same frame of reference as some of the most strident lefties you could imagine.)
Now the huge difference between me, and someone else who would look at the same problems and decide to soak the rich, is that reducing us all subsistence just isn't going to solve all those problems, certainly not any time soon. Instead, what are the best ways to solve some of those problems relatively quickly?
Until the next Norman Borlaug comes around, our best options basically amount to free trade -- and just getting rid of a handful of the absolute worst despots.
And if we spent even a fraction of the time thinking about how to deliver clean water around the world that we spend pimping ethanol...
Posted by Matt Bruce at February 26, 2008 11:36 AM