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.