Externalities Department
The ban on poppy farming in Afghanistan may hamper the heroin trade but it also leaves farmers in poverty.
Kate Clark meets one who has had to negotiate the betrothal of his six-year-old daughter to pay a debt.
- the quotation is from here, where you can read KC’s story (you can read about externalities generally here)
- the daughter is to marry the son of a creditor of the farmer
- from the story:
He has already exchanged two daughters for debt and now the youngest has wiped off a further £1,000 ($2,000) worth, a huge amount of money in rural Afghanistan.
…
Did he not feel any shame, I asked, about marrying off his six-year-old?
No, he said, the real shame would have been to have his creditors knocking at his door, embarrassing him in front of the village.
Your daughter, I persisted, how does she feel?
“Oh, she’s happy to be solving her father’s problems,” he said.
- the Stumblng Tumblr’s knowledge of such matters doesn’t rise above what he reads from the usual sources; from them, he had the impression that, in such societies, the appearance of daughters in a family was unwelcome
- contrary to his earlier understanding, it seems now to him that daughters may be welcome, though not as daughters, rather as inventory
- still, the six-year-old daughter discussed in the story is obviously consoling herself with the thought that, “Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds” (see here)
——
