Please criticise this analysis.

Often we immediately know that a claim is not feasible, but we
can't easily lay out the logical steps to prove our argument.

The repeated claim is 'the marvel of microcredit lifting
millions out of poverty'. They tell:
* the banks won't lend to the 'peasants';
* local money lenders charge exhorbitant rates;
* a micro-credit scheme, typically to finance women to buy
stock to be traders, lifts countless people out of poverty.

The implication [to me] that the seed capital starts them on their way
to prosperity is false, for the following reasons:

[ BTW if it's the micro-management that does it, that's completely
different: effectively a type of cooperative where management skills
are leveraged and NOT seed capital giving big results. ]

Analogy: here in degenerating new-S.Africa the fields [veld] 'burns'
every winter. Although some one setting it alight purposely or
mistakenly is an essential element of the burning, it's not the
'scarce resource' [seed capital equivalent].
Analagously if you leave a $10 bill on a public path, it's not certain
who will remove it, just that statistically near certain, it will be
removed. So the scacre/essential resource for the burning is the
condition of the grass -- it dries in winter with no rain.

Similarly the poor peasant WILL by some random event at some
time aquire some seed-capital. And this will NOT lift her permanently
out of poverty as the micro-credit advocates claim.

A second proof is that the local enterpreneurs/money lenders would
bid the interest rate down if the seed-capital was so successful.

IMO it's a disgrace that such false optimism is peddle on otherwise
respectable press media like BBC & NPR.

It's the same garbage idea as "forgiving Africa its debts will
'develop' the continent". It's not the 'continent' which needs
developing, but the gene-pool.

IMO the [obviously sucessful, since it's collected thousands of
members over many years, in Bangladesh] 'micro-credit'
scheme, suceeds because of the subtle top-level management
ingredients, which is injected into the self managed/motivated
decentralised [mostly] women lenders.

That's why removing the 'white farmers' [essential but subtle
expertise] cause the PERMANENT collapse of Zimbabwian
agriculture - and the rest of the economy/society.

Who owns the land is irrelevant, provided the key decisions
are made by competents. Admittedly it's difficult to separate
land ownership from management, but it's NOT the seed
capital that does it.

Of course the 'peasants' and the first-world-misled-liberals
don't know that they don't know. They reasonably assume
that giving money, independant of the recipient's competence
solves the problem ?

== Chris Glur.

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