Day of Independence

Ladies, Gentlemen,

The same great people who brought you MotoPolo and the Kigali Lights Blowout are pleased to announce:

• What: The “Let Freedom Ring BBQ Bash,” preceded by the Patriot’s MotoPolo Tourney (PMPT). Meats shall be in abundance at the BBQ, but guests are encouraged to bring any traditional side dishes (potato salad, chips, dip, etc.).
• Where: The PMPT will be held at the football pitch just past the airport on the left. The BBQ will be held at the VIP Palace of Sam and Jared, which is on the road behind La Guardienne in Kiyovu.
• When: PMPT starts at 12:00 PM sharp. BBQ shall begin 4 hours thereafter, at 4:00 PM.
• Who: Sons of Liberty, Daughters of the Revolution
• How: Blood, Toil, Tears, Sweat.

The 4th of July is a day of remembrance for those who proved the full measure of their devotion in that severe contest between liberty and tyranny. As per usual, we will commemorate by clashing in competition and consuming copious quantities of fire-roasted meat.

At high noon, the reverberations from thundering engines will be felt all across Kigali as soldiers mount up to do battle in the most epic motopolo tourney mankind as ever conceived. Four teams of four shall take the field as the sun reaches its zenith; three teams shall follow it down in disgrace as the afternoon progresses. Who will bask victorious in the golden hour no man can know. Blood may be spilled. Lives may be lost. Glory will be tasted. Fame will be secured. Freedom will be won.

Some commentators have hailed the upcoming PMPT as the “sporting event of the decade.” Scholars maintain that nowhere in the vast annals of human history can one find a commemoration comparable for its encapsulation of the sort of noble conflict every quest for liberty possesses. In a news flash just yesterday, Reuters reported that Kim Jong-il has lamented: “The Patriot’s MotoPolo Tourney represents a clear and present danger to my authoritarian regime and the iron fist with which I hold down my people. The only thing more threatening to my relentless oppression is the Let Freedom Ring BBQ Bash taking place after the tournament at about 4 PM, where throngs of freedom-loving people will feast on a giant suckled pig.”

So do join us in the fight against terror at the Let Freedom Ring BBQ Bash this coming Saturday (and the tournament if you can make it).

Come and be greeted as liberators.

Yours in freedom,

The Power Brokers of Kigali

Mmm Mmm Goods

One of the most important features of a system of property rights is excludability. That is, if I own something–a fruitful avocado tree, say–I can exclude you from eating my delicious avocados unless we come to some mutually agreeable arrangement. Because I can capture as much of the tree’s benefit as I choose, I have a much stronger incentive to grow and maintain the tree than if people could pilfer the fruits of my labor at will.

Some things are however non-excludable by nature, meaning that it is prohibitively costly to prevent others benefiting from them. A classic example economists have long used is a lighthouse: With a lighthouse, there’s no way an owner can exclude ships from navigating by the boat-saving beam. Because free-riding would be easy, no one could ever hope to make any money from it and wouldn’t bother building the lighthouse, despite the obvious value of the service.

Non-excludability is the main feature of “public goods,” or those goods and services that seemingly can’t be produced (or aren’t produced enough) in private markets. Because public goods are still valuable, the government usually becomes their purveyor. Often public goods are nonetheless provided privately in creative ways. I happened to come across a Rwandan example last night in the book A Thousand Hills:

The two-lane highway that winds northwest from Kigali toward Lake Kivu qualifies as a fine one by African standards…It also has a feature rare in Africa and unique in Rwanda: a short stretch of it is illuminated by streetlights. At night you drive through the unbroken dark, always slowly in order to avoid hitting people. Suddenly the road is bathed in light. A couple of miles later, as you are still marveling at this wonder, it is over and you pass back into blackness.

The first time this happened to me, I wondered: Of all the highway stretches in Rwanda, why did the government choose to illuminate this one? Friends gave me a startling answer. The government did not choose this stretch, nor did it erect these streetlights, nor does it pay the electric bill. It is all Gerard Sina’s work.

(…)

The reason Sina illuminated a two-mile stretch of highway is that he owns a strip of businesses there. He has a grocery store with its own bakery, a sit-down restaurant, a snack bar that offers take-out service, a motel, and a pair of clean public restrooms. It is the only highway rest stop in Rwanda. Cars, trucks, and buses are always parked out front (pp. 318-319).

Charging for streetlights is a fool’s errand, but that’s not to say compensation can’t be had—just bundle the service with things for which you can charge, like Sina did. In 19th century England, private operators tied in the lighthouse service with the port fees, to varying degrees of success.

Gerard Sina has offerings throughout Rwanda, and I enjoy very much his pili-pili, often to the exclusion of other condiments.

Realism or Luddism?

In a letter to the editor, a former Peace Corps volunteer voices vehement vituperation at skeeter shooters:

SIR – You seem to support research into “devising laser-defence systems to shoot down mosquitoes and prevent the spread of malaria” (“Zap!”, June 6th). Lasers are not the solution to malaria. Indeed, I think many high-tech development solutions, like one laptop per child and Star Trek-style insect-blasting phasers, are a waste of time and money.

I worked for the volunteer Peace Corps in rural Zambia. The place where I lived had a well to provide clean water, but it sat idle because a simple five-cent plastic washer inside the pump was damaged and neither a replacement nor the tools to open the pump’s housing were available.

My own hut had a sizeable gap between the mud-brick wall and the thatched-grass roof, numerous holes in the thatching and between the wooden door and the wall. I can’t imagine what kind of laser system would have secured my hut against mosquitoes, much less who would have come to fix it when it failed. Were I still in Zambia I might have heard this story on the international news, except that the crank arm for charging my short-wave radio broke off and it never worked again. If there is an answer to malaria it is bednets and only bednets.

Zachary Wells
Monterey, California

The Supply Curves

Today I was at Rwandex, as I am from time to time, when one of the Rwandan quality controllers saw me watching a couple dozen women sorting coffee by hand.

“Do you know how much they pay those women?” He asked me.

“No, how much?”

“I think it’s about 1.3 dollars for one 60-kilo bag.”

“Would you work for that much?”

“No way.”

Expatriotism

In Rostock, where I lived for several months, a 23-year-old state-level politician has lost his job and been fined 200 Euro for publishing this photo on the German rip-off of Facebook:

His crime was “Verunglimpfung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” or denigrating the Federal Republic of Germany (that’s a German flag in there). In the newspaper article, he claims the photo was intended to counter the nationalism that is accompanying the ongoing Eurocup.

Imagine how Westerners would react if the country were some South American autocracy, say, rather than Germany. Wouldn’t it be criticized–even haughtily so–as deeply illiberal and wrong?

A good way to check for bias is to perform that little thought experiment when considering your stance on any given policy.  Consider if your opinion on e.g. trade, torture, immigration, going to war, etc. would change if it were not your home country advocating it but some unfamiliar foreign land. If your opinion would change, or reverse, it’s worth attempting  to pin down why that is. You might discover your rationale was as soggy as a flushed flag.

HT: KPC

Update: What about state-run media?