Today’s L.A. Times has a laudatory article about land seizures in Zimbabwe.
They miss more than a few things, however, including the brutality aimed at stealing elections and terrorizing the white minority; the allocation of choice land to cronies of Zimbabwe’s despot Mugabe; the fact that the agricultural economy of Zimbabwe has collapsed and that the country faces starvation; and, finally, a growing body of work that suggests that real (in both senses of the word) property rights seem to be strongly correlated with development.
Now if you’ve looked at the history, you’ll note that part of the crisis was made in the U.K., who committed to fund a land buyout and apparently has issues.
Even Afrocentric commentators seem appalled.
A key element of my liberal beliefs is that we in the better-off, developed world need to help those who are less well-off become better off. A pervasive sense of guilt that allows us to look at something like the land seizures (which reinforce the notion that property is political booty) warmly isn’t going to get us there.
I have talked about a few things that might…