Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The 19th Century is Appropriate

I've argued before that we don't need to drag Afghanistan into the 21st century to create a government and society that allows us to achieve a victory there. The 19th century will be just fine.

Indeed, it could be entirely appropriate:

This is not unique to Afghanistan. Other parts of the world, particularly in Africa, where literacy is low and technical specialists are scarce, foreign aid personnel have learned to introduce "appropriate technology" in areas where that is all that can be used on a sustained basis. In the United States and Europe, inventors have developed "appropriate technology" for these situations.


This is just addressing technology, but I think this applies to society and government, too.