the rare I told you so

I'm not usually the kind of person to say "I told you so", especially since it can ring false in hindsight. However, there are a couple of interesting cases that I feel like noting: first has to do with the financial crisis and the second has to do with a topic that is very much related to what I'm working on for my masters' thesis these days.


As for the financial crisis? Well, to my knowledge I was the first candidate for any political party anywhere in the world to state on the record (in a televised debate during which I more or less massacred the French language) that resolving the problems in financial markets would require a coordinated global response in terms of stimulus plans and easing problems in credit markets. (Actually, I am very much NOT a politician, but when offering to volunteer for the Green party before the last election, I was asked to be a candidate). In any case, this was ultimately the action that most governments ended up doing, in some part under pressures from experts at international institutions.


As for my particular area of interest? Well, I'm curious about the relations between violent conflict and agriculture. I happened to read last week that the recent revolution in Madagascar was largely a response to efforts to lease out land to foreign owners. The problem is that this would have pushed farmers off of land that they currently cultivate, but over which they have no secure rights. Somewhat against the primary thrust of what I'm working on was that they engaged in conflict to ensure their property rights, but the idea that the prospect of reduced certainty about tenure can have a vicious feedback cycle still rings through. In fact, the model that I'm working towards would exactly have predicted that the strategy being used in Madagascar would have increased the probability of conflict.

This is especially important because there are a large number of similar deals presently being negotiated. The benefits, of course, are the influx of foreign capital, which are important. But, without addressing the needs and 'rights' of traditional land users, the effects could be colossal. These negotiations will either have to take care of the interests of farmers who will lose their land or look towards moving to a draconian police state to prevent major civil conflict. The question might be: which types of institutions are likely to imply that governments would prefer the first approach to the second? Not exactly what I'm working on right now (which I figured out yesterday how to explain in precisely 12 words), but it is an important question nonetheless.

Anyways, there's an "I told you so" about two huge issues, the second of which is still enormously in play.