<incom> Remittances and Development

[Peter Burgess]

Dear Colleagues

Thank you for your messages about remittances and development. I very
much respect Scott's work in this field.

Ignorance is sometimes bliss. I am reminded of Faraday's remark after
he had demonstrated electricity to some leadership in the 19th century
in response to the question "What use is it?" and Faraday said
something along the lines that "You will soon be taxing it". It seems
to me that remittances and technology are in this same space.

My view of the remittance phenomenon is that it has been incredibly
valuable in making life possible in a lot of places where the local
economy has completely broken ... broken in large part courtesy of the
rich and powerful corporatocracy and their political collaborators.
And this has been accomplished simply because the remittance flows
have been below the radar of those that would otherwise engage in
taxing and exploiting these fund flows.

In many ways peoples' "freedoms" are getting constrained in many and
worrisome ways. Technology can help to make remittances lower cost
than once upon a time, but the same technology can also be used to
automatically syphon out more or less of the fund flow as tax and to
provide information that would be better kept private. While I do not
want fund flows to be used for bomb building, control of remittance
flows should not be a way of taxing for the benefit of the powerful,
or a system to monitor and control global society and its movements.

We are in very dangerous territory, and need to move cautiously. The
solution should not be worse than the problem.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess

____________
Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
212 772 6918 peterbnyc at gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network

On 6/27/06, Scott S Robinson <ssr at laneta.apc.org> wrote: