Department of Impractical Schemes

I totally sympathize with the ethical position Leif Weinar is adopting when he suggests that dictators who sell their country's natural resources should be thought of as thieves, but boy-oh-boy does prosecuting them in court as if they were thieves not seem like a workable response to the problem. See also Tyler Cowen's remarks.

People often seem to forget when talking about foreign policy notions that it's not good enough to adopt policy ideas that express admirable sentiments about sundry global scumbags -- what's needed are ideas that are actually helpful, and few if any ideas for moving into a new era of dictators vs. democrats global clashes will actually have beneficial humanitarian impacts over the long- or medium-terms.