Radio Hanoi

[Brad De Long]

>On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>  Median standards of living in Indonesia did roughly quadruple under
>>  Suharto...
>
>Well, now, let's be fair, Indonesia was blessed with sizeable petroleum
>revenues, did not experience a devastating war on its own territory from
>1954-1975 or saturation bombing by B-52s, didn't have to fight off the
>maniacal thugs of the Khmer Rouge from 1977-1990 or so, didn't have to
>beat off a Chinese ground invasion in 1979, and didn't have a US trade
>embargo slapped on it until 1995. Which doesn't excuse the VCP's
>bone-headed agrarian policies from 1980-87, of course, but, jeez, give
>these people a break already.
>
>Incidentally, apropos of things Vietnamese, I'm teaching a wonderful
>Vietnamese book by Bao Ninh called "The Sorrow of War", in a pretty good
>translation. It's a soul-shattering autobiographical account of what he
>experienced as an NVA soldier in the war. I found myself physically
>wincing over the sheer *damage* we caused that tiny, indescribably
>beautiful country. For those who survived, the bombs are still falling, in
>their minds, memories and empty places where there used to be friends,
>neighbors, loved ones.
>
>-- Dennis

I guess I was trying to make too convoluted a point. My point was 
that if I was a conspiracy theorist trying to choose between:

	(a) the North Vietnamese communists brainwashed John McCain and

		made him their agent while he was a POW,

and:

	(b) the future founders of Nike sent John McCain to North Vietnam

		to tell the future leaders of unified Vietnam that if only

		they kept standards of living very low and political

		control tight then Nike would come in in two decades, use

		Vietnam's workers to make shoes and Vietnam's Communist

		Party as gang bosses, and reward the politburo handsomely...

That if--as I said--I was a conspiracy theorist trying to choose 
between those two, I would choose (b). After all, where else in the 
world can Nike find a workforce with a higher ratio of productivity 
to wages than Vietnam, or can it find a more effective gang labor 
boss than the CPVN?

This is, IMNSHO, one of the cruelest and sickest ironies of the 
twentieth century...

Brad DeLong