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February 20, 2007
ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD, OR, LIVE 8 FOR GEEKS; I'M BACK (FOR REAL THIS TIME)
As distasteful as it is to quote one's own self, I've written before:
Few things are as dangerous as the crusades of the good intentioned and clueless.
Perhaps it would be a stretch to call the One Laptop per Child project "dangerous". But one thing it is, is a badly overrated idea. We can take off "ly" and "overrated", and it would still be just as true.
I will not think too hard about the necessity of children in poorer countries owning laptops. It's not entirely clear, however, that this is desirable. The question is not "will laptops help to this end?" (they may or may not do), but "at what cost, compared to what alternatives?". Would 400 laptops be a better way of spending money than, say, a $40,000 library?
But let's grant the premise that laptops in the hands of children in developing nations is a wise way to spend money. How do they intend to distribute them? Via governments.
At this point, we have to ask whether a government in a developing nation is to be trusted with this. I would barely trust my own government to post a letter, let alone distribute laptops in an intelligent way. And yet, we are meant to trust governments in developing nations to do the same.
The problem here is that developing nations are almost invariably poor because of bad governments. Sometimes, this is because such governments have still not realised that socialism has failed (take a look at the upcoming disaster of Venezuela). Others treat it as their own private fiefdoms, and abuse the power granted unto them as a club to beat around the ethnic and social groups they dislike. The incompetencies and abuses are many and varied, but the upshot is the same: bad government. And the outcome is always poverty.
It is only those blinded to history by the sight of a noble-sounding crusade that would think that bad governments will distribute these laptops fairly. But history will show the folly of this. Foreign aid has always been misallocated; either soaked up by the establishment, or wasted on pointless prestige projects, or used to bestow favour upon their own favoured ethnic groups. The laptops will be misallocated in the same way, if history is any guide.
There are other issues which have not been adequately settled. One could make the point that used commodity desktop hardware would come out at the same price (the OLPC project is still a long way short of getting the price down to $100), for example. But these are minor concerns in comparison.
I'M BACK (FOR REAL THIS TIME): Yup, I've said this before, but for some reason, I've actually started to care about things that are happening in the world. Coming soon, tiring screeds about nuclear power and global warming. Stay tuned.
Posted by Lewis at February 20, 2007 07:30 PM