THE moral imperative for the world's rich to do all they can reasonably do for the world's poor... The World Bank: Is there a b | Asian sex
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THE moral imperative for the world's rich to do all they can reasonably do for the world's poor... The World Bank: Is there a b

THE moral imperative for the world's rich to do all they can reasonably do for the world's poor is axiomatic. Any argument to the contrary triggers eyebrow-raising questions about what it means to be a caring human being and what are the core requirements for being a responsible member of the human race.

But once you get past the obvious axiom — the need to help others in need of help — little is suddenly so obvious. Reasonable and well-meaning people can have honest differences about how to narrow the gap between rich and poor in effect, how to be a truly helpful global citizen.

Differences on issues of just this sort are likely to be on display in Singapore, where the annual retreat for the governing boards of the two best-known international organisations has begun and will continue into next week. They are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In Asia, these two hefty outfits are generally about as popular as taxes and death. Mainly, they are thought to be too Western in their approach to global income and too insensitive (especially in the case of the IMF) to Asian cultural values and embedded traditions. One reform widely mentioned would thus re-jigger the power structure of the IMF to give greater clout to China, who is now under-represented, as well as South Korea — and a few others, elsewhere. It's hard to see why this would be a bad idea, unless you're a European governor and Asia's gain is viewed as Europe's loss.

Another issue of the moment is the role of the public sector/government in economic development. There are those within the IMF and World Bank who are suspicious of the utility of any public-policy measure that is not market-driven. Such a viewpoint clearly would diminish the role of positivistic government and the importance of carefully calibrated public policy.

One potentially fascinating Singapore session will in fact focus on whether capital markets (that acquire and invest monies from the private-sector) can properly be used to finance public-sector projects, such as highways and housing. "If you believe in the applicability of the US example," says Michael L. Klowden, President and CEO at the well-known public-policy Milken Institute in Santa Monica, California, "the answer is an emphatic yes."

Klowden, who will be offering a seminar on exactly this subject at the confab in Singapore, says the above observation is the easy part of the issue. The hard part is locating the balance between allowing market forces to operate, and requiring a healthy level of integrity and transparency in the market activity.

"I agree completely with the old saying that it is better to teach someone to fish than to give him a fish," says Klowden. "But it makes little sense to teach someone to fish and then permit people to steal the fishing pole."

Sure, too much government (in its regulatory and law-enforcement as well as policy role) can be as oppressive to the poor and to the powerless as so little government that allows the fat cats to swell into blimps. But it is insane to belittle the vital role of good governance in critical areas (public health, education, infrastructure) and to overstate the magical powers of purely market solutions.

For a living, breathing example of one society in which the search for optimal public policy has been both sincere and successful, the esteemed governors only have to peer out the windows of their Singapore hotel rooms. For many Americans, to be sure, Singapore's phenomenal success in creating one of the most efficient world economies and one of our safest environments (virtually from post-World War Two scratch) sometimes strikes Americans as more of an annoyance than a cause for celebration. "Right, they don't do it the American way," admits Klowden, referring to the nation's nanny-state" somewhat deserved reputation for planning just about everything for their citizens, including when to have sex.

Even so, Singapore works in large part because the government has delivered the material goods (the car, the housing, the school, the safety) necessary for comfort in a 21st century life. To be sure, the government is as intolerant of what it views as mischief-dissent as it is of saggy economic growth. And so much to the dismay of some Western delegations, the government, as of this writing, was said to be denying entrance visas next week to some well-known anti-globalisation activists whose hearts, it believes, are not in the right place.

The government will take no chance of Singapore turning into even an echo of Seattle. In 1999, at a big World Trade Organisation confab, protesters brought the city and the conference to a halt. But in Singapore, when the government determines what it wants to do, you can almost bet on the outcome. That's certainly not the American way, to be sure.

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admin – Sun, 2006 – 09 – 17 11:00