Short on time, but I just can't let this one go unaddressed.
Live 8 or Aid or whatever the hell it's called.
Ugh.
Idiots.
OK here people, let me explain it for you nice and easy so that even those of you with public school educations can understand.
Remember back when we were kids in the 80's and we all sent our money into Ethiopia? And then 5 cents would feed a kid for 12 weeks or something like that. Yeah, look at Ethiopia now! What success!
Africa has received over the past 30 years roughly $200 billion in aid. Adjust for inflation and you're looking at more around $350 billion - Marshall Plan levels of aid. And I'm willing to bet that figure is a little low.
Yet, despite this aid Africa is the only, ONLY continent where standards of living have actually gone down! The only other country in the world where this has happened is Venezuela where (surprise surprise) a socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez, has taken the reigns and driven living standards down despite high oil prices.
The problem isn't that money won't help, it will, but it's who's delivering the money. Thus far it's been the most incompetent entities the world has ever created; government, international organizations (UN), NGO's, and charities. Bastions of employment for those who are not only leftists, and not only people who majored in worthless subjects like peace studies, but incompetent oafs as well with no practical skills to speak of.
Don't believe me? Look at the latest member to this fine front to fight poverty in Africa; artists!
“I look at the news, I see people starving, I am crying, I’m a total mess”
Icelandic singer Björk
“We’ll jump if you jump and we’re all jumping on behalf of those who can’t even crawl”
Bob Geldof warns G8 leaders meeting in Scotland to take action against poverty
“For Aids in Afghanistan, is it?”
Marty Gradwell, from Ontario
BONO, LEAD SINGER OF U2 (London)
"The rock stars and the hip hop stars can't change anything, but our audience really can.
"We're not asking you to put your hand in your pockets, but we are asking people to put their fists in the air."
What insane insight to the inner workings of geopolitics and international economics! Certainly the University of Chicago should award all of these geniuses honorary doctorates in economics! With such geniuses playing music to alleviate poverty, how can it possibly fail?
No, sorry, the only entity thus far capable of delivering money to a country and having it make any significant progress towards eliminating poverty, raising standards of living and increasing the health and wealth of a nation is capitalism, namely foreign investment.
Don't believe me? Look at China and India. They've done more to raise their massive populations out of poverty by opening their borders up to investment from foreign companies than any government, charity, aid or debt forgiveness program ever would.
Of course, you don't want to believe this, because it's contrary to what you've been told this entire time. That, or perhaps to the average liberal, it's more important to feed their ego than to actually accomplish anything (which is why, by in large, most of your projects fail, but hey, even though Jamal is starving in Somalia, at least you feel good about it because you went to a concert!) But don't worry, you're a liberal, we understand. We're getting used to dealing with such ignorance and hypocrisy.
You are 100% correct and we have absolutely no disagreement. If the US and Europe (especially France) would eliminate their farm subsidies, then many crops (cotton, particularly) would flow from Africa to the western world. This would result in cheaper cotton (among other things) being imported from Africa and a retooling of our agricultural industry, redirecting resources to more profitable industries or new ones we have yet to discover. Anyway, this is why you have the free trade talks like Doha, Seattle, and recently Cancun.
ReplyDeleteBut the irony is I guarantee you that these same idiots out in Britain right now thinking they're helping by attending a concert are the same ones who go an protest anytime there's a WTO, trade agreement talks and are the first to protest the likes of NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.
Again, I'll say it for the cheap seats, the liberals' desire to inflate their ego's and tell themselves they're somehow helping people and being good, supercedes the fact whether or not they actually are doing any good.
I don't know, there is plenty of competition to be the worst violator of free trade.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, yes, the whole point of trade is to have different countries produce what they're best at and then trade with other countries for the goods those countries are best at producing. So Switzerland makes chocolates while Japan makes cars.
However, this doesn't mean the US should retain its workers to make textiles. With our labor laws, regulations and unions, there's no amount of training that would make it cheaper than say what Bangladesh and China can make it at.
But the great thing about capitalism is that if you are innovating enough, then you will find new industries. So we may have lost out textile industries to the cheaper competitors of China and India, but we develop new ones, telecommunications, computers, technology, fighter planes, etc.
This, of course, requires more and more education and training.
Try this post, it will explain things a little better that I have time here;
http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2005/05/right-should-own-issue-of-foreign.html
We have opened our economy, that is correct. But do spare a thought for controlled dis-investment. For otherwise, a second and greater Asian economic meltdown is not unthinkable.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the best way is:
closed borders, protectionism -> sustainable local markets -> first dis-investment in sectors with huge local consumption (in India - cars) -> dis-investment of capital markets, banks, financial institutions
Government disinvestment in these fields or private companies pulling out of these fields?
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere the other day that in the past 40 years, after adjusting for inflation, total aid to Africa from the West and East Asia totals over $450 billion. And now with this debt relief coming in, I'm sure it's well over $525 billion.
ReplyDeleteThis concert is the most absurd thing ever. Here you have all these RICH, multimillionaire rockstars... if just 1/10 of the whole entertainment industry decided to take their profits and give it to foreign aid, they could easily double the amount the US puts into Africa. But they don't. Instead, Bono, while wearing a $2000 pair of sunglasses, wants the governments to use coercion to take people's money and completely ignores private aid through charities and such.
Geldoff said the other day that it didn't matter what we did, but that something should be done, "even if it doesn't work." How ignorant can one get? All they want is to throw obscene amounts of money into Africa with no accountability.
The level of hypocrisy sickens me.
Did I mention that poverty is relative? Therefore, poverty will always exist, so the idea that we are somehow getting rid of poverty is even more absurd. What we're really attempting to eliminate is "poverty that is so great it results in death."
But that's another rant...
Here's a great link to an interview with a Kenyan economist... "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"
ReplyDeletehttp://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html
Hmmm, whole link didn't post... maybe if I use HTML tags...
ReplyDelete"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"
Here's another great article by David Ignatius about how markets will end poverty:
ReplyDeleteProfits, A Penny At a Time
Using a 50 cent bullet on Robert Mugabe will be a good start to ending poverty there.
Yeah, those aid figures are hard to come by, like I said, the $350 billion was low in my estimation, I for the figures either from the World Bank or the IMF.
ReplyDeleteThe sad truth of the matter is Africa, like China, North America, and South America is just going to have to go through the same thing and pull itself up on its own. No amount of AID will help when you have a Charles Taylor or a Robert Mugawbe in power.
As for the trade, I'll point it out again. While it is the best thing that could happen to Africa, I guarantee you 95% of the people at this concert are the same one who torched Seattle and protest anytime there's a globalization meeting.
"Even if it doesn't work" yes, could it be anymore leftist?