Slorg's Intergalactic Guide to Economic Development

So you're a poor, broken-down Third World ex-neocolony and you want to get rich? The first step is simple: listen carefully to what the IMF, the World Bank and Wall Street recommend. Then, do the exact opposite.

No country ever got rich by following the neoliberal script, but plenty have gone bust. The following strategies are anathema to the neoliberals, but worked just fine for Japan, South Korea, China, Singapore, and the core economies of the European Union:

1. Default. Identify all the hard currency debt you inherited from the band of corrupt thugs who ran your country into the ground. Next, cease payments on this debt. Don't worry about not having access to foreign capital; if those scum were really interested in financing your economy, you'd have a functioning industrial base by now, wouldn't you? Let the creditors twist in the wind for awhile, and then sit down and negotiate significant debt reductions with your creditors. Hey presto, you now have the money to jumpstart your industrialization program.

2. Land reform. With the cash, buy up excess land from the landlord class and wealthy, unproductive elites by exchanging long-term Government bonds for their hard currency stash, and allow peasants to jumpstart rural industrialization by rigorously protecting local markets.

3. Finance internal growth. Next, nationalize your credit system and rigorously control foreign exchange. Channel long-term credit to peasants and small and medium-size businesses at low rates of interest. Set up a national health insurance system, a national pension fund, and a postal savings bank, and channel the savings into domestic investment.

4. Learn from the best, export to the rest. Carefully negotiate any market openings for maximum advantage with trading partners willing to take short-term losses for mutual long-term benefit: the major keiretsu trading houses, e.g., or the Eurobanks.

5. Grow brain cells. Invest heavily in education, literacy programs, science and training, and redistribute income from the rich to the poor.

6. The people united. Sprinkle lightly with egalitarian ideology, and voila - in fifty years, you'll be filthy rich.

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