Political liberty

John Rogerson (Letters, 6 July) inverts reality when he says "pol-itical tyranny, incompetence and corruption" are "essential for the maintenance of our modern hi-tech, profligate, consumer life-style". It is political liberty, not tyranny, that is needed to produce wealth. Countries that have a long history of dictatorship and corruption have appallingly low living standards.

Furthermore, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are anti-capitalist, mercantilist organisations, which serve only to squander taxpayers’ money and wreck economies wherever they intervene. This is exactly what has happened in countries like Argentina.

It is a myth that western industrialisation is endangering the globe, as George Kerevan (Opinion, 8 July) points out. Pre-industrial societies, both in the west and what is now the third world, were dominated, not by purposeful frugality but by pri-mitive mysticism, unreason and superstition, and are not blue-prints for a successful future.

BRUCE A CRICHTON

Victoria Road

Falkirk