Reply #54: I wouldn't count Africa out in the long term [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Its brightest and most ambitious people have emigrated to the West to escape the violence and poverty and are now going to school, mostly in scientific and technical fields. If conditions ever settle down there, we may see amazing things from returned emigres.

In the 1960s, no one would have picked South Korea or China as high tech success stories.

As far as agriculture is concerned, I would remove protections from agribusiness, but we need a domestic agricultural sector. It is extremely dangerous for any nation to be too dependent on imports for its food supply.

Crops that we can't grow ourselves should of course be tariff-free, but NAFTA and the like are merely encouraging agribusiness to go down to Mexico and practice industrial farming more cheaply while driving traditional Mexican farmers out of business.