Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!ihnp4!ixn5c!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!pollack From: pollack@uicsl.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: RFC: Software as Foreign Aid ? - (nf) Message-ID: <2297@uiucdcs.UUCP> Date: Thu, 23-Jun-83 04:47:45 EDT Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.2297 Posted: Thu Jun 23 04:47:45 1983 Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jun-83 09:56:23 EDT Lines: 25 #R:ut-ngp:-35300:uicsl:16300008:000:1141 uicsl!pollack Jun 23 01:38:00 1983 It is hard to respond seriously to this one, folks. The educational systems of "never-allowed-to-be-developing" countries, say, like Guatemala, are not up to training the people even to simulate a Turing Machine. Since they have no computers, and cannot run the software themselves, it is basically useless. Maybe starving children can eat floppy disks. The only kind of computers available in such countries are used to maintain subversive lists and monitor the flow of water and electricity (overuse may indicate a guerrilla "safehouse"). Providing free software for this purpose is equivalent to providing bullets. Besides, your main contention is that if we gave software for foreign aid, we would not be losing anything. I infer from this that you think we get nothing for our current form of aid. Rest assured that the aid we pour into such countries is only considered overhead, and the (fixed) cost of maintaining corrupt regimes which repress their people is deemed smaller than the variable costs of yearly cost-of-living raises to organized workers. You are getting cheap bananas and cheap semiconductor chips: TANSTAAFL.