02 April 2009

Take-make-waste

The extractor employs the technology of take-make-waste. In the limiting, plunderer case, as it applies, for example, to the oil sovereign or the oil executive, it is take-waste without bothering with the '-make-' step.

In the extractor case, the system distracts the public's attention from the 'take-waste' steps to focus the people's attention on the '-make-' step. In the plunderer case, the strongman ruler invokes extraction distraction when there is no '-make-' step to emphasize so that attention must be directed somewhere else entirely -- to some cooked up danger or ethnic or cultural violation. The milder form of such distraction emphasizes the '-make-' step, the growth and employment and high returns to investment, while it de-emphasizes the '-take-waste' step that is degrading the foundation on which the ostensible 'productivity' is built.

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