My Capitalism is Bigger than Yours

‘Less regulation, more privatisation!’ my colleague exhorts, foaming at the mouth. I reach into my bag, frantically feeling around for an effective projectile.  All I can find is a copy of the communist manifesto, which really lacks sufficient heft. Where is Das Kapital when you need it?

Whilst not every proponent of neo-liberalism voices their views with the vehement verve of a robotic Richard Simmons, the general, and often unspoken, devotion to this norm is prevalent far beyond the corporate sphere. Nowhere more so than in the world of international development, where previously mild mannered idealists become free market exponents purely through a lack of imagination.

A likeness of my capitalist colleagues.

But the best evidence against the implicit raison d’etre of many of the biggest NGOs is right under their noses, they just need to look at their clients to see the folly of the capitalist creed. Take Sierra Leone, the country that tried and failed to make eating children’s hearts cool.

Since, in 1961, the British decided their cute little colony was ready for the big wide world and released it, bright eyed and bushy tailed, into the realm of independence, Sierra Leone has suffered under the yolk of a farcical parade of military coups and corrupt dictatorships, none of which has had strong regulation or infrastructure as a particular priority. A cynical person might say that some of them were more motivated by money than by the good of their people.

In fact, the successive governments of Sierra Leone have given about as much attention to oversight and regulation as the British government has given to monsoon mitigation. Any semblance of property or employee laws, intellectual property rights or environmental standards  hold no real way in practise. Tax rates can be negotiated with the tax authority, land rights generally come down to who pays the most, and any laws that are written down are riddled with spelling and numerical errors and unlikely to be taken seriously. An officer at the Ministry of Labour laughed heartily when I told him I wanted to operate in accordance with employee laws. ‘Sir,’ he said, gathering himself together, ‘If everyone followed all the rules in this document, there wouldn’t be any businesses left.’ He then wiped his face with a $100 bill and excused himself, presumably attending to his sex-weary concubines*.

The upshot is that, historically, businesses have been able to do as they please, provided they have money to grease the cogs along the way. Building on someone else’s land? Want to tear town protected forest? Nothing that has proved much of an impediment in the past; money talks here. Before you know it, you end up with an ecosystem where thousands of workers are paid below the minimum wage (the choice is between that or nothing), businesses save costs by driving 30 year old cars that spew poisonous black gases toward flocks of pedestrians too poor to afford transport and the transport system is operated entirely by 20 somethings who wear sunglasses at night and call themselves things like ‘Mr. International’.  This is a place where you have to pay a bribe just to report a bribe to the police, and homeless child labourers ask not ‘please, sir, can I have some more?’ but ‘please, sir, can I have some?’

Not only has Sierra Leone let its (weak and ailing) private sector take over all the essential functions of the country, but it has long since sold off the rights to its minerals and mines to foreign contractors; they have killed the goose, feasted on its innards, and then starved while the foreign multinationals dine out on its golden eggs.

Amidst these squalid free for all, the only wonder is that Sierra Leoneans are asked to pay taxes in the first place; given that the national tax authority’s buildings are about the only physical evidence of taxpayer money being spent, it begs the question: are they paying taxes solely to fund the collection of more taxes?

So for those who espouse more free-markets, less state involvement and less regulation; which really adheres more to you capitalist ideal; the United States, with its public health systems, massive investment in university and state research funding, and its network of national parks, or Sierra Leone, the country where mothers sell their children to witch doctors whilst their husbands buy underage girls at a dollar an hour? And which would you rather live in?


*This may sound silly but two officers at another government ministry introduced a quiet and shaken looking young secretary to me as ‘Comfort’. ‘That’s a nice name, I told her’; the officers laughed loudly, ‘that is; she’s our comfort’. Cunts.