DELTA: IMF, Botswana, Bullyboys, Tinkerers and Liberal Bubble-heads

One my flight back from the EU, I had the good luck to find myself seated next to a young woman from Botswana.  I learn she's a student of economics (probably) returning for her sophomore year at a very selective small women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts.

As my twins are just starting college life, we had a lot to chat about in the beginning, about the cost of USA tuitions and fees, financial aid, and jobs.  My wife teaches at Middlebury, and (I'll call her Mosta, a pseudonym) knew the Cameroon program my wife set up and was considering applying for next year.  Mosta described her father as a retired road construction engineer, and her mother ran a nursing program at a Botswana hospital.

Botswana Africa is considered one of the most democratic and least corrupt countries in the sub-sahara, though Mosta and I quickly agreed that it was a low bar.  She knew the term "resource curse".  Botswana is home to diamond mining (and not much else), and reliant on raw materials contracts.  She understood and agreed with my "development" theory.   Nations whose path to wealth was mainly tied to being somehow related to someone with the sharpest elbows inside a bureaucracy which controlled foreign access to those raw materials.  The curse of natural resources lies in the bullyboy culture within the governments who find themselves awash in cash from resource contracts but don't have much of a private sector in other home businesses.

Yin, Yang, or Omm Part 2: White Man Ju-ju vs. 3-Point Shot

In Part I we took a close up of an actual problem - the past decade of managing Cathode Ray Tube televisions and monitors, after briefly introducing the concept that guilt and liability - positive ethical systems - can be twisted into bad law via fear, greed, and envy.  

What's the "green scare?"  

Same as the red scare.  Export Sympathizer is today's "Commie"

The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (RERA), HR2791, was the focus.  The bill acknowledges overseas refurbishing and recycling operations if and only if the name-brand company (e.g. Dell of Texas) is shipping there (warranty repair, takeback).  That's "responsible".  The contract factories overseas are NOT owned by the name brand, there are no Dell employees at the computer display factory.  If Hurricane Fung, Hurricane Hamdy, Hurricane Benson, or Hurricane Chiu were OEM employees taking back used goods for repair and refurbishment, they'd be "Stewards".  Instead they are "primitive waste criminals".

The Guardian covered Dell for coming out against a geeks of color boycott, and I vigorously applaud Dell for that.   But RERA language creates a "members only" export system.

As the blog got longer, I've cut it into three or four parts.  Poor editing, or de Tocquevillian insight?  Mostly lack of time to edit, I'm running a business after all.  The digression into psychology and ethics is the readers choice, I figure.   Just don't hit the "print" key.

LIABILITY JUJU

Term Paper Required Reading: Waste Policy Haves and Have Nots

Here are three background reading assignments:

A:  History of the light bulb (Arizona State University INVSEE)
B:  Rapidly Urbanizing Populations Face Unique Challenges (WorldWatch Institute)
C:  Network of Tinkerers - 2007 US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Network of Tinkerers - Bureau of Labor Statistics
	[PDF]  www.bls.gov/ore/pdf/ec070120.pdf File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View by PB Meyer - 2007 - Cited by 5 - Related articles Nov 5, 2007 – Network of Tinkerers: A Model of Open-Source Technology Innovation. Peter B. Meyer, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Working Paper 413 ...

When you fail to understand that "waste" is relative, and you apply the precautions over past waste in present contexts, you would take the used printing press from Benjamin Franklin, you'd take the used RCA victrolas from from Japan Victrola Corporation.

The movement of used goods from "haves" to "have nots" is a story of opportunity.  Sales of working product (USA producing new cars and selling them to Europe) is an exchange from "haves" to "have nots".   Donations of rice to children is an exchange.  Purchase of coffee from a country that has coffee, for consumption in a country that does not have coffee, is an exchange between haves and have nots.

When you study the history of development, and the history of tinkering, and the history of new products, from light bulbs to flush toilets, you prepare yourself to do a better job trading in commerce. Or you can tell yourself that prohibition, boycotts, and bans on commerce are the answer... if you ignore the history of prohibition, bans, and boycotts.

Fair Trade Recycling: Networks of Tinkerers

I have a lot of deadlines pressing, and a lot of 80% finished stuff in the DRAFTS folder, so I'll be spending less time in the next week competing for the latest and most cutting edge developments on electronics scrap export policy, surplus property policy, e-waste, digital divide, and Fair Trade Recycling.  We do have a big WR3A Announcement coming down the pike in the next 2 weeks, so stay tuned.

Tinkered Printing Press

Meanwhile, we try to be a resource for university and college students who are studying the past and present about trade in "e-waste" and surplus property.  We have an exciting new Master's Thesis student here in Middlebury for 6 months, who traveled from Paul Cezanne University in France just to study "E-Waste" with WR3A.

Many of these students come from other nations, and it's obvious to many of them that transfer of surplus technology is a transfer of wealth.  We never seem to see that simple idea in any UN, EU, or even EPA documentation.  It's as if our culture has become so obsessive-compulsive about food spoilage in the refrigerators that we are banning sale of food to starving nations unless we have proof it won't spoil.  If you give food to a starving child, you better have done your paperwork.

The "hyperbole of harm" accusations by groups like Basel Action Network have made donations and trade almost "radioactive" for donors.  Who is hurt?  Poor people, democracy, and the environment.  

My "hypothesis" that "tinkering" (see Japan, a Network of Tinkerers, Y. Takahashi, 2000) is the opposite of the "resource curse", that repair and refurbishing (or "Yankee Ingenuity") is a form of "value added" which has been critical to the most successful international development stories... it can probably be documented here in the USA when Yankees bought manufacturing practices and "surplus from upgrades" from England (c.f. Benjamin Franklin autobiography, on printing technology).

So again for the academics, here is some light reading about how Japan went from resource-starved and military complex into becoming the kingpin for technology two decades later.  This is happening in real time in India, Indonesia, and China - just to  name three of the five largest countries in the world, two of them the top Muslim population and largest democracies.

A Network of Tinkerers:
The Advent of the Radio and Television Receiver Industry in Japan

Yuzo Takahashi

Technology and Culture
Vol. 41, No. 3 (Jul., 2000), pp. 460-484
(article consists of 25 pages)

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Society for the History of Technology

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147538