Отчет 1964 года о микронезийской экономике остается актуальным спустя шестьдесят лет

Still relevant SIXTY years ago, the economic survey officially known as the Nathan Report was published. It was commissioned by the U.S. Department of the Interior and prepared by the Washington-based consulting firm Robert R. Nathan Associates Inc. Its subject was the economic potential of what was then known as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands — the Northern Marianas, Palau, the Marshall Islands and the present-day Federated States of Micronesia. These jurisdictions were administered by the U.S., which at the time wanted to secure the region’s long-term political alignment with Washington. (There was also the matter of United Nations inspection missions that issued scathing critiques of U.S. governance in the Trust Territory, calling out severe economic stagnation, deteriorating post-World War II infrastructure and neglect. But that’s another story.) The Nathan Report, in any case, was so detailed and informative, and its analyses so far-reaching, that it remains surprisingly relevant six decades later. Here, for example, is what the report had to say about the island economy: “Many conditions, which in the modern economies are so ‘natural’ that they are implicitly assumed, do not exist in the Trust Territory. The ‘mental re-orientation’ necessary to think and plan intelligently in the existing [island] setting is not easy for the outsider to achieve. Careful and thoughtful study of the evolution and present patterns of economic and related conditions and institutions is essential.” Since then, how many times have “experts” lectured us on the local economy while offering little evidence that they understand it? How many of us, for that matter, are aware that “realistic economic development planning must begin with the conditions which actually exist, not with the conditions which one might wish for or like to assume,” and that “neither geography nor history has been good to” these islands “from the point of view of building economic development potential”? For all the endless talk of bright prospects and exciting possibilities, why is it that we so seldom acknowledge that the “most striking and pervasive physical characteristic of [the region] is that of the smallness and wide dispersion of the land area and the great expanses of water which separate these clusters of minute islands”? According to the Nathan Report, “No single economic factor or combination of related factors is as important as this all-important element. The limited land area and the great distances separating the islands have always been and continue to be obstacles to trade and mobility, to investment and development. They impose high costs of supply, production, and marketing for almost any kind of enterprise. The difficulties of logistics must be considered in every single activity and every single enterprise.” But to hear certain folks talk, one would assume it’s all a matter of “positive thinking.” There’s more AND what did the Nathan Report have to say about the islands’ unflagging faith that somehow, someday, Uncle Sam would eventually come to their financial rescue? “Many [island residents]…have assumed that the United States Government and the American people enjoy the availability of almost unlimited economic means. Many [island residents] conclude that with little effort the Americans could provide them with good roads and harbors, shipping and airlines, hospitals and doctors, schools and teachers, jobs and incomes, and a wide variety of profitable economic opportunities….” Generally, island residents “do not have a very accurate picture of the imperfect economic and social conditions which really exist in the outside world. They think that most people have greater opportunities than they really have, that most people live better than they really live, that goods and services are easier to obtain than they really are, and that economic success can be achieved much more quickly and easily than it really can….” Worse, most of us “have little awareness of the work and resources required to provide essential public facilities and services. Nor are [we] aware that such facilities and services demand individual sacrifices, in the form of tax payments and restraints on current consumption. “[We] do not know that even in the most highly developed economies of the world, including the United States, local governmental units are almost always short of funds and never provide all the public facilities and services that many people want.” Many island leaders “seek better facilities and services by looking to the United States government to provide more money to the [island] government to be used for this purpose. “They could not know that the more than 100,000 local government units in the United States are also trying to get the United States government to give them more money to provide better facilities and services, and that even the highly developed American economy is not productive enough, nor is the tax base large enough, to grant all of these requests.” History, if it teaches us anything, teaches us humility. If we want to be inoculated against the feverish election-year claims of politicians seeking votes, we need to learn more about what has already been said and done in the past, what worked and what didn’t, and what the hard realities of geography, demographics, economics and government have always demanded of us. Sixty years later, the Nathan Report is still telling us something we seem determined to forget: Economic development is not a matter of slogans, wishful thinking or promises that Washington will somehow make our problems disappear. It begins with an honest understanding of where we are, what we have, what we lack and what it will actually cost to get where we want to go. Perhaps the most useful lesson from the report is also the simplest: Before we listen to anyone promising us an economic miracle, we should first ask whether that person understands the economy we actually have.