The Third World
One thing I hope we can all agree on:
It is a disgrace that in the 21st century
real poverty, famine, malnutrition
and lack of medical care
still exist
on earth.
The dispute is over what will actually work
in changing this state of affairs.
What needs to happen to
make Africa rich like us?
Summary
- How to end poverty in the third world
Make Poverty History
sums up the inability of people to understand the cause of third world poverty and famine,
and conversely, the cause of western prosperity.
Yes, it is brilliant that millions of people are focused on how to end poverty in Africa.
But Make Poverty History promotes the delusion that the solution to poverty is:
- Aid.
- Debt relief.
- Fair trade.
And that:
- The main problem is to get the West
(for example, the G8) to change.
In reality, the solution to poverty is:
- Democracy.
- Free speech and a free society.
- Capitalism.
- Free trade, not fair trade.
And:
- The main problem is that
Africa needs to change.
Aid, Debt relief and Fair trade are not the answer
To elaborate, aid and debt relief, when given to
governments that care about their citizens,
might do some good,
at times of emergency at least
(long-term aid may distort markets and cause harm).
But poor countries do not have good governments, or they would not be poor.
They have rotten governments, which stamp
on political freedom
and economic freedom.
Aid and debt relief, when given to dictatorships like these,
fuels civil wars, genocide, arms purchases and palace building;
fills Swiss bank accounts;
and distorts markets, often increasing poverty.
- $1 trillion in aid has been given to Africa since WW2,
and there is nothing to show for it.
Aid is obviously not the solution to poverty in Africa.
-
African aid and lack of growth
v. Asian growth and lack of aid
- The Globalization Institute
-
More Aid, Less Growth, report, 2005.
- Aid may cause poverty.
For every 1% increase in development aid received by a developing country,
there is a 3.65% drop in real GDP growth per capita.
-
Fair trade
often means a form of
Protectionism,
and, like all state attempts to control prices,
is likely to increase poverty, not reduce it.
- Confusingly, "fair trade"
also sometimes stands for attempts to
eliminate
protectionism,
such as eliminating the
Agricultural subsidies
of the
CAP.
In which case, the "fair trade" people are on the right side.
- The EU
Africa must adopt western values
The solutions to poverty are well known.
If it is ever to become prosperous,
Africa must abandon
dictatorship, socialism, communism, Islamism, pan-Arabism,
statism, protectionism,
tribalism, superstition, racism and corruption,
and must adopt western values of:
democracy, capitalism, science, free speech, freedom of religion,
free press, a free society,
property rights, the rule of law,
the ability to make binding contracts,
free enterprise, minimal bureaucracy, minimal taxation,
minimal state enterprise,
and free trade.
Is there anything the West can do?
Is there anything the West can do to help end poverty?
Yes there is:
- Make Africa change.
Declare a long term goal of ending all dictatorships in Africa.
Declare that the goal is to establish capitalist democracies in all of Africa.
Simply saying this would be a huge step forward.
- Work towards that goal. Sanction dictators. Seize their assets.
Support dissidents.
Link aid, loans, trade and arms to democratic reform.
There are many
methods of ending dictatorship
other than by war
(though war should always be an option).
- Scrap all agricultural subsidies in the EU and the US.
- End trade barriers.
Of course, many trade barriers are internal to Africa.
But we can at least
end the external ones.
Live 8 and Make Poverty History
- Make Poverty History
-
Click, click, click. If only saving half the world from poverty were so simple
- Stephen Pollard
on Make Poverty History:
Debt relief and more aid will not make poverty history.
And trade barriers will increase poverty, not reduce it.
-
In contrast,
we do actually know what will make poverty history:
"Much Third World poverty is the result of governments taking the decision,
in effect, to remain poor. The conditions under which they can prosper are known,
and available, if those in power choose to avail themselves of them.
As Hernando de Soto
... points out, it is easy to make a country prosperous. It needs only security of life and property,
and markets in which property rights can be valued and traded."
-
Live8: a triumph for sentiment, not for results
by Allister Heath
- "The real question is: why are some countries rich and others poor?
To the Make Poverty History crowd, the answer to this question,
by far the most important in economics and all of the social sciences,
usually lies with Western exploitation, insufficient aid
and the alleged ravages caused by free trade or greedy multinationals.
This conveniently omits to explain how so many poor nations in Asia have got rich"
-
Make Poverty History Ireland
openly supports restrictions on both third world
imports and exports.
- The
Live 8 march
in Edinburgh, July 2005,
included banners for:
- "Bush - World's No.1 Terrorist"
- "George W. Bush - Terrorist"
- "Stop Bush's Reign of Terror"
- "Hands off Iran and Syria!"
- "Fight poverty not war. Bring the troops home."
- "Bread not bombs"
- "Water not war"
- "Stop the war"
- Socialist Youth.
- Italian communists
- RESPECT
- Palestinian flags.
Why would I join a march that contained such banners?
- To clarify, "Bread not bombs"
is indeed what I hope for for Africa.
I hope for an end to the war-mongering tyrannies of Africa.
But that's not
what it means in this context.
We all know that in this context
it is about Iraq
and what it means
is "Bring the British and American troops home"
and "Abandon the Middle East to fascism".
- The
Dublin march
included banners for:
- The Socialist Workers Party.
- The Socialist Party.
- The violent
organised crime group
Sinn Fein-IRA.
I would never join a march that contained such banners.
The cause of famine that charities dare not talk about:
third-world governments.
-
Band Aid and Live Aid
(also here)
dominated headlines in 1984-5,
letting the world know about the appalling
Ethiopian Famine.
-
Yet no one at that time ever got to hear the cause of the
Ethiopian Famine,
which was
communism.
To be precise,
the Ethiopian famine was caused by the Ethiopian communist government.
Killing the Ethiopian government
would have done more to save lives
than all the famine relief
put together.
But we could not hear this, because it was not politically correct.
- Ethiopia in 1984
-
Cruel to be kind?,
David Rieff,
June 24, 2005
- On the impossible situation facing charities working under
genocidal totalitarian regimes,
whether The Red Cross under the Nazis
or Live Aid in Ethiopia.
Did the charities, by limited cooperation with the Ethiopian democide,
cause more deaths than they saved?
- Why is the Third World poor?
-
Noam Chomsky's crackpot world view
- that the Third World are somehow
"oppressed" or "exploited"
by the First World.
Many people on the left claim
(based on no evidence) that
the Third World is poor
because we are rich.
-
In reality, of course, the cause of third-world poverty is simple.
Third-world people are poor because of third-world governments.
-
How the West grew rich
by Dinesh D'Souza.
- If the west got rich by slavery, empire, and exploiting other peoples,
then we have a philosophy of despair
- for the third world can't do the same.
In other words they will never get rich.
-
If, on the other hand,
these things
are expressions of the
west's pre-existing wealth, technology and power,
rather than causes of it (*),
then we have a philosophy of hope.
If the west got rich because of
science, democracy, and capitalism
- with empire, and even natural resources, largely irrelevant -
then we have a philosophy of fantastic hope:
If the Third World adopts
science, democracy, and capitalism,
then they will get rich just like us.
- (*) After all, why was it Western Europeans
that travelled and conquered the world?
There must have been something pre-existing
in Western European culture
that made empire possible.
- David Landes
denies that European colonialism and empire
was a significant cause of European wealth.
-
Quote from Ibn Warraq
on the idea that the third world is poor
because of the legacy of imperialism.
"Ibn Warraq pointed out that more than 50 years after the West left its colonies
in the Third World, Leftists are still blaming all the ills of Africa and the Middle East
on the former colonial powers,
while the same left-wingers only 10 years after the fall of Communism
blamed Russia's troubles on unrestrained capitalism."
- Hernando De Soto
(and here)
- Let's make the Third World rich too!
- What I love about De Soto is that he refuses to see the third world's
future as modest, self-sufficient and agrarian,
living in harmony with nature in rural villages,
their countries existing on permanent welfare
- which seems to be the model the left promotes.
He sees no reason why they can't become high-tech, modern, complex,
urban, globalised and prosperous
- like us.
For me, South Korea is the model for the future of the third world.
- The Institute for Liberty and Democracy
- De Soto's main point is that
capitalism depends on lots of things we take for granted
- property rights, a clear registry of who owns what,
enforceable contracts with strangers.
Also
making it as easy and fast as possible
to do things like set up a business, rent a building,
hire someone, buy and sell land, raise a loan,
issue shares, etc.
Then capitalism is a pre-Internet "network effect".
You don't have to trade just with people you trust
(which is what most of the poor,
economically unfree
world
has to do).
You can buy and sell with strangers.
And the economy explodes.
- Hegemony of the Heart,
by Clark S. Judge,
summarises De Soto's work.
-
The Maoist/fascist
"Shining Path" in De Soto's
native Peru
want to kill him.
- Liberty Institute, India
(pro-democracy, pro-free market).
Many third-world charities have no idea how to actually make the third world prosperous.
On top of that, some "charities"
also get involved in highly controversial
left-wing political causes
such as opposition to Israel and America.
- Afri
(Anti-America, Anti-Israel, Anti-NATO, Anti-War on Iraq)
-
Afri, Another Left-Wing Political "Charity"
- Afri
beautifully sums up what is wrong with modern charities.
They started off just helping poor people in the third world, but:
-
"Following a re-elevation of its work in the early '80's, however,
AFrI changed its approach from a charity to a justice perspective.
Realising that, despite the aid given by AFrI and many other agencies, the situation in
[Third World] Countries was getting worse rather than better.
AFrI decided to focus on some of the major causes of poverty. We identified
unfair distribution of wealth, wastage of resources on the arms trade,
[Third World] debt, unfair trade and environmental destruction,
as some of the major causes."
Thus missing the two
major causes of all poverty and famine on earth:
(1) lack of democracy, and:
(2) lack of capitalism.
In one short paragraph Afri encapsulates the stupidity
of the entire western left
when it comes to the third world and poverty.
- Trocaire
(Anti-War on Iraq,
Anti-War on Afghanistan,
Anti-intervention in Sudan, Anti-Israel)
-
blog-irish on Trocaire
(and here)
- Tony Allwright
(and here
and here)
- William Sjostrom
-
The first casualty of war
by Brendan O'Connor
-
Trocaire seeks to address causes of poverty
- letter by Trocaire's Justin Kilcullen
shows the inability of left-wing charities to understand poverty.
He lists the root causes of poverty as:
"unfair trading practices, human rights abuses, conflict and inequality",
again missing the two main causes,
lack of democracy
and lack of capitalism.
-
Trocaire's International News
-
Gaza strip: An open air prison, Justin Kilcullen, 16 August 2005.
The article consists entirely of criticism of Israel.
The Palestinians are not criticised.
Israel has sealed off the Gaza strip just for fun, it seems.
No mention of Hamas.
No criticism of Hamas and suicide bombings
and the shooting of settler children
in their beds.
No criticism of the endless Islamist jihad to destroy Israel
and set up an Islamic tyranny.
What is this politicised rubbish doing on Trocaire's website?
- Eoin Murray's Gaza blog
-
Trocaire's opposition to military action
to stop the Sudan genocide.
It seems to me that this prejudiced, lefty charity
cares more about restraining US power
than they do about saving lives.
-
GOAL supports all possible action to stop the Sudan genocide.
- "The Security Council
has once again proved itself to be out of touch
and continues on its downward spiral into redundancy.
Bush and Blair were prepared to commit troops to prevent persecution
in Kosovo and Iraq and they must do the same again."
- Until Trocaire reforms:
Do not give money to Trocaire.
Give your money to GOAL
instead.
See also here.
-
Trocaire protest at the US Embassy in Dublin
during Israel-Hezbollah war, 31st July 2006.
Why not protest at the Iranian Embassy in Blackrock, Co.Dublin?
After all, they're the aggressors, they started the war,
they want to exterminate Israel,
they arm Hezbollah, and they could end the war by surrendering.
- NGO Monitor
- CORI (Anti-capitalism)
- Oxfam
- War on Want
(Anti-Israel, Anti-globalisation, "Anti-war")
-
The Red Cross
accepts the Red Crescent,
which is a religious symbol,
but refuses to accept the
Red Star of David,
which is a religious symbol.
I'm sure that Christian Aid does some good work in the third world.
Why do they have to spoil it all by getting involved in
politics?
Why can't they just stick to
charity?
If a charity must make statements about politics,
it should only make them about issues on which we can all agree
- such as the famine-causing tyrannies of Sudan and North Korea
- rather than about issues on which reasonable people disagree,
such as Israel.
I can't give money to Christian Aid
because they promote ideas I disagree with.
This is a shame.
There are many other charities that do not talk about politics -
or only talk about issues like Sudan that we can all agree on.
Give your money to these charities instead.
GOAL is one
in Ireland - but there are hundreds of others.
-
Christian Aid
(Anti-Israel, Anti-free trade)
- Instead of just concentrating on charity,
they get involved in politics.
They say
for example:
"Christian Aid is gravely concerned about the Israeli government's
unilateral disengagement policy, including its
stated commitment to retaining the majority of illegal settlements in the West Bank".
This is not something about which Christian Aid should take a position.
- Christian Hate?
- Christian Aid Watch blog,
focusing on their anti-Israel bias.
Read it all.
-
Their section on free trade -
"Tell Tony Blair to stop backing free trade policies."
-
Their section on Israel
-
NGO Monitor
Reports
on Christian Aid's anti-Israel bias
(and here
and here).
- Christian Aid is also linked to the anti-Israel group
Pressureworks.
- Their
distorted history
sums up the attempted Second Holocaust
in 1967 as follows:
"The Six Day War was the inevitable conclusion of
years of tension between Israel and its Arab neighbours, setting the tone in the Middle East for years to come."
So it wasn't an attempted genocide by
Islamic supremacists then,
despite Nasser
openly saying he wanted to destroy Israel?
It was just the product of some abstract "tension"?
I think you'll find the "years of tension" came from the very
existence of a dhimmi state.
- Pressureworks sum up
the 1980s
as follows:
"The aggressive approach of Israel's ruling Likud party leads to the first Palestinian intifada,
or uprising, bringing Israel global condemnation."
- They actually highlight a photo of
"Damage to police headquarters by the Israeli's F16 bombers" [sic] -
as if this is something we should oppose.
-
No pictures of
children killed by Islamist suicide bombers
though.
The anti-Israel group Pressureworks
highlight a photo of
"Damage to police headquarters by the Israeli's F16 bombers" [sic] -
as if this is something we should oppose.
Capitalism and globalisation are the solutions to
third world poverty.
Anyone who cares about the third world should promote
globalisation and
economic freedom.
Anti-globalisation protesters are spoilt, rich children
who want to prevent the rest of the world
from enjoying the fruits of capitalism
that they have grown up with.
They are worse than immoral.
Poverty is not funny.
Poverty is not a matter of living in a squat
or not having enough for a pint.
Poverty is a matter of watching your children starve and die.
-
Big-Hearted Globalism
by Brett D. Schaefer
- Capitalism and globalisation are the solutions to
third world poverty.
- Anti-globalisation protesters
- Demos are not democracy:
- The Law of Protests:
Protests and demos do not represent public opinion
-
Anti-Globalism = Anti-Americanism
by Jean-Francois Revel
- "Anti-globalists have tried to replace democracy with a despotism of the mob, advancing the
brutal proposition that street demonstrators are more legitimate than elected governments.
...
Democrats worthy of the name should not forget that power is
conferred by ballots, not by bricks hurled through windows."
- It has been said before:
Those who cannot win elections, take to the streets.
Nobody will vote for the anti-globalisation street thugs, anti-semites and
totalitarian marxists.
So democracy will not help them.
Furious that no one finds their arguments convincing,
they turn to demos and riots to try to bypass the democratic process.
Western governments, sensibly, will let them protest
but will never listen to them.
- French anti-capitalism
- The G8
- The protesters against the
G8 summits
really do have something they could protest about:
the inclusion of Putin's illiberal dictatorship of
Russia
in this group of otherwise civilized liberal democracies.
But of course that's not what bothers them.
- Naomi Klein
(and here)
- Pro-globalisation
- Socialism was responsible for much,
perhaps even most, of the 20th century's
poverty and famine.
-
In defence of cultural imperialism
- it's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Opinion survey, Apr 2008,
shows that most people, both in the West and in the third world,
agree with me,
not with leftists like Naomi Klein.
Most people in the world want to become rich (or at least comfortable),
and they are very interested in how the rich countries got rich.
Only in France and Turkey here
is there a plurality stupid enough to dispute the free market.
And in France's case it is only a decadent pose,
since the free market
made France herself rich,
and France is despite everything
one of the most free market countries in the world.
This survey provides grounds for optimism about the developing world.
For instance,
with 66 percent support for the free market,
China's future looks bright.
They adopted some of the West's worst ideas in the 20th century
(socialism and totalitarianism).
Let's hope they're going to adopt the West's best ideas in the 21st century
(capitalism and democracy).
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