WCR Letters to the Editor

More about the morality of debt forgiveness

Mollot also seems to assume that debt relief advocates are responding emotionally rather than from the "rational" perspective of market theory - a doctrine which asserts that economic rewards and punishments discipline people to work properly.

As a debt relief advocate, I assure Mollot that we are well-versed in market theory, but we recognize that the economic conditions Adam Smith based his thinking on do not exist in today's globalized corporate economies.

Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776 at a time when subsistence agriculture was the economic norm and farm families supplemented their incomes with cottage industry performed in their homes.

Today's Third World poor people lived much like 18th century Britons until the 1970s when Western bankers dumped billions of Arab petrodollars into transforming Third World economies into resource exporters in a global market.

With the loans, small agricultural holdings were expropriated and/or bought up to make way for large-scale monocropping by agribusinesses.

Just like in 19th century Britain after the "enclosure laws," displaced peasants were forced by economic necessity into wage labour in the expanding mines, processing plants and plantations.

But unlike Britain whose early industrialization gave it a competitive advantage over the rest of the world and whose industrialists could get good prices for their outputs and pay good wages, the World Bank and Western bankers developed the same export industries in each country in which they invested.

When these industries came on line they predictably produced a glut of commodities which devastated their prices so those industries couldn't afford to pay good wages or keep all their employees.

There currently exists a vast oversupply of global capacity in commodities production so all those now-landless peasants are un- or under-employed and barely scraping by.

This is not "emotionalism." This is economic history.

First World investment created the present plight of Third World people by altering the structure of their economies in ways that proved shortsighted and unsustainable.

IMF austerity measures cannot "discipline" displaced peasants into correcting their ways because there are no alternative "ways" available to them now.

Mollot's rational market solution to this situation is akin to throwing a family into the ocean then telling them it's for their own good that they suffer the market discipline of having to swim 200 miles to shore.

The discipline "works" because next time they won't be so quick to get in the water.

Except they didn't "choose" to get in the water. They were pushed, by First World investors and Third World elites.

Forgiving their debts will render moot the IMF austerity programs that force governments to reduce social spending and imports to increase debt-interest payments.

Third World governments could then at least afford to loosen the reins on their citizens and businesses. Their doing so is to be a condition of their debt forgiveness in the plans I've looked at.

As it stands they must either squeeze their people or default and have their currencies rendered worthless so they can't import anything at all.

Debt forgiveness would end this unconscionable Catch 22 situation.

Derryl Hermanutz
Spruce Grove

A joy to be an altar server

As a young boy serving Mass as one of the altar boys, it was certainly a prestigious undertaking, and even a chore, or better yet, a challenge. It was like at home or at school, it was part of the program, and it was done to perfection, and, it felt good too.

As a Catholic the world over, it is to be a part of the program (Mass), at the altar, the choir, the usher and many other very important tasks in preparation for the program (Mass), such as lay ministers reading the word of God or helping to serve the Blessed Sacrament.

At age 76, I look back to the many years in between as a "parishioner" in the audience (congregation) enjoying the program (Mass) and looking forward to the next program.

Now at such a late age and new to a native Catholic parish, which welcomes each and every one, including me, a misplaced Hawaiian, it was like coming home.

Someone said to me "How would you like to serve Mass today?" Wow! Me, an altar boy again after all the years, and oh yes, it's no longer in Latin.

Well why not, what a challenge, no matter at what age, the feeling is still there, only now appreciation, honour and understanding sets in.

It feels good to come home and be a part of my family of the Sacred Heart Church of the First People and to my father and dear friend Father Jim Holland.

Kimo Trent
Edmonton

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