Tim Worstall

Zoe Williams Again

The incomparably wonderful Zoe Williams once again demonstrates her deep knowledge of the world, pointing us to the infallible truths. Just what would we do without such a stunning intellect to guide us in our lives?

Antwerp is called the "home of diamonds" not because the Belgians are
particular connoisseurs but because they were the first to discover
that if you chop Congolese slaves’ hands off willy-nilly, your diamond
yield will be slightly higher.

Amazing what you learn, isn’t it? There was I, all confused, thinking that it was actually King Leopold who did that, that the Congo was in fact his personal property. After he sold it to the Belgain nation things rather improved so I misunderstood.

However apparently legitimate these transactions, there is no precedent
for a country to be diamond (or petroleum) rich and not spend the rest
of its history bogged down in civil and/or external war.

The US was and is oil rich, Romania was, we had the North Sea, Norway has 20% of its GDP produced by oil and gas, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Abu Dhabi….all hotbeds of both civil and external wars that I obviously haven’t heard about yet. Botswana has diamonds or is that simply a myth that has mislead me?

But it’s not the illegality of the drug that triggers this tide of
violence. It is the scarcity of the resource, and it could be anything
from coke to copper. Developing nations chunter along quite happily
until they have something developed countries prize: it’s a cliche, but
it remains remarkable for its consistency.

That scarcity of copper really does seem to have dealt Chile a particularly heavy blow in recent decades, doesn’t it? All these things I didn’t know, all offered up to me in one easy to read column.

Seriously, what would we do without Zoe Williams?

In

8 responses

  1. Bob B Avatar
    Bob B

    There’s a moderately extensive, professional literature on the “resource curse”. Joe Stiglitz mentioned the curse in an interview on the BBCR4 Today programme this morning in connection with Iraq’s many development problems but the curse obviously relates to other countries with long histories of internal civil conflicts eg Nigeria:
    “The resource curse refers to the paradox that countries with an abundance of natural resources tend to have less economic growth than countries without these natural resources. . . ”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
    An earlier manifestation of a relating thesis was dubbed the “Dutch disease”:
    “Dutch disease is an economic concept that tries to explain the seeming relationship between the exploitation of natural resources and a decline in the manufacturing sector. The theory is that an increase in revenues from natural resources will deindustrialise a nation’s economy by raising the [real] exchange rate, which makes the manufacturing sector less competitive.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
    Think of the consequences of North Sea Oil for the Pound exchange rate in the early 1980s as Britain became a net oil exporter and what that did for manufacturing industries in Britain.
    Looking back over the period since WW2, there’s a recurring puzzle about how and why Japan’s economy has performed so relatively well over the time span – as have some other east and south-east Asian economies such as Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – compared with most or all economies in Africa or, to a lesser extent, South America, with mainly land-intensive economies and low population densities compared with much of Asia.
    A challenging point about the so-called Asian Tigers – that’s Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – as well as Japan is that they each had widely divergent experiences of state intervention in their respective economies so it’s difficult or impossible to credibly sustain simplistic diagnoses about attributing their relatively successful economic performance to either the absence or extent of state economic management and regulation. Famously, Japan was and is poorly endowed with natural resources and so are the Asian Tigers compared with many African and South American economies.
    Evidently, resource abundance is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for national economic prosperity.
    Try this on whether the highly interventist government of resource-poor Singapore is an exemplary model for any western economies:
    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977490-1,00.html
    In the early 1990s, Lee Kwan Yew, famously prime minister of Singapore for almost the entire period since independence, went on something of an international lecture tour extolling the superiority of the Confucian ethic over the familiar Christian ethic: Do unto to others as you would have others do unto you.
    George Bernard Shaw had anticipated him: Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
    Significantly or otherwise, the Christian church has had much less influence in the successful Asian economies than in South America or Africa.

    Reply
  2. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “they were the first to discover that if you chop Congolese slaves’ hands off willy-nilly, your diamond yield will be slightly higher.”
    Really…? I’d have thought it made it much harder for the slave to hold a pick, resulting in a decreased yield, but obviously she’s the expert…

    Reply
  3. Antipholus Papps Avatar
    Antipholus Papps

    Zoe’s a marvel isn’t she? I’ve developed an entire system of divination and epistemological realignment based entirely on her writings!

    Reply
  4. Mark Wadsworth Avatar
    Mark Wadsworth

    You forgot Brunei – oil rich but hell on earth.

    Reply
  5. Elaib Avatar
    Elaib

    One thought,in fact the reason Congolese slave’s hands were cut off was for the ivory and rubber trade, take a look at Hofstadt’s book. Diamonds have been in Antwerp for a lot longer than the 1870’s.
    Indeed Antwerp was already the diamond cutting capital of Europe in the 16th century. It had taken over from Bruges, which had been the centre from the 14th century, but could no longer compete due to the silting up of the Zwinn river. The first Diamond was mined in the Congo in 1907, the year before Leopold was forced to hand over the Congo to Belgium.
    Hey, but she could blame Isreal if she wants, after all it is the Jews who run the diamond trade in Antwerp – though now under intense Indian competition.

    Reply
  6. The Remittance Man Avatar
    The Remittance Man

    Ms Williams has made a case so mind-blowingly full of fuckwittery that I don’t even know how to counter it without recourse to firearms.

    Reply
  7. Johnathan Pearce Avatar
    Johnathan Pearce

    BobB’s point about the “resource curse” is very astute. Well said.

    Reply
  8. David Gillies Avatar
    David Gillies

    I liked this comment:

    “it’s a cliche, but it remains remarkable for its consistency.”
    What a perfect summation for this farrago of utter bullshit.

    Reply

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