World map showing high income in blue and lowest income in red. Image via Wikipedia Just to show this is not a "communist" blog, I wanted to discuss the problems when you do not have a robust trade economy, which, due to its size, requires that some form of currency is exchanged (as they always have been even with gold being the standard 'backer' of a currency until recently. The good news is trade means you should have a 'surplus' of goods under which a nation survives. So what do you trade? Commodities, manufactured goods, people (yes, has and is still done not to mention skilled workers) and even ideas. Trade means growth although globalisation does mean goods are purchased cheaply from countries that can mass produce. Consider the implications of what we build in our factories: cars/machinery, plastics, food and of course weapons.
Double Edged Swords:
A nation's ability to produce goods means it is able to produce weapons. In both world wars civilian infrastructure was always directed towards the war effort. Of course this is the general dilemma facing developed countries with superior technology as they engage with developing nations.
Iranian techs have built an enormously powerful supercomputer from 216 AMD processors. The Linux-cluster machine has a 'theoretical peak performance of 860 gig-flops'. From Slashdot.org
That's a lot of gig-flops, which are probably useful for calculations in certain weapon developments. Of course there are always products and services that can be misused. This is also a major problem in terms of international aid programs. While corruption is the main concern when developed countries give aid it encounters more problems with aid organisations being misused. It seems the best form of economic aid is to provide physical infrastructure which benefits local communities and provides a foundation for future growth and development.
Give to create more givers:
It is hoped that continual improvements to third world nations and other developing nations helps them to a point where they are then giving what they can to nations in need. From this discussion you can see that many governments do participate within a 'gift economy' when it comes to economic and physical aid. This is assistance given without thought of repayment but without strong trade and manufacturing a nation is at risk of having nothing left to give.
-KJ
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