Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. This is an actual case of what the slapstick left calls 'speaking truth to power'.
LOL!
My parish has a Wednesday Evening Prayer service at 6 PM. We are a small parish, currently seeking a part-time priest, so it's led by a lay minister and I'm often the only attendee. The G8 meeting was mentioned in the intercessionary prayer, so after the service I engaged the lay minister in conversation about it.
I said, "I can understand forgiving the debt. If one is not moved by the spiritual aspect, practically speaking it's highly unlikely it'll ever be collected anyway, so why not get the good press by forgiving it? But there's no question that the people who have gotten most of the aid so far have been corrupt and have wasted or stolen it. So, then, is is moral to simply do more of the same?" In other words, is it actually Christian to give aid money to people who will steal or waste it?
She found that a worthy question, but had no answer. I suggested that we don't give any money at all. Instead, we buy the things that Africans actually need with the money, load it up into C-130s, and start flying it in and giving it out; agricultural tools, well digging and pumping equipment, sanitation gear, etc., etc., and bypass the existing governments entirely. Sure, some of it will end up on the black market, but give a farmer the tools and equipment he needs to farm and he's unlikely to sell it. Give a village the ability to get fresh water and they're unlikely to give it up.
She noted that this might be viewed as (I can't remember her word, but close to) presumptous by the U.S.. I said that many of the governments in Africa don't control half of their country, and the people of those countries have no illusions about their governments. I don't think they'll mind too much. We need to bypass the U.N. (I didn't say that to her - didn't think of it) and the local "governments" if we want to actually give effective aid. My final point was that in my opinion we are spiritually/morally obligated to make sure that any aid we give is actually received by the people who need it and is effective.
Bump to the top.
Why aren't more people saying this? Why do the dems keep thinking/saying that throwing money at people will help them?
It looks evil, truly it does.
Seems to me that I recall this little line in the Bible..something about teaching a man to feed himself and his family by teaching him how to fish....Well, like, duh....
On the economics level, if one is to ever get the African countries off the dole...that will involve the free flow of capital, with market forces determining success and failure. If the expectation of debt forgiveness is always there..then capital will never be able to flow rationally....and it will go elsewhere..directly related to this is absence of the rule of law....you see in Russia today what happens whne that is lacking...
FANTASTIC article!!! One of my best friends is from Zaire, and he first told me back around 1990 that a number of African economists were dead set against international aid. But I've never heard it put so plainly and forcefully as this...I'm definitely going to send this to him.
ping
OUTSTANDING POST! Thanks.
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Excellent article. I'm going to forward it to some of my economist friends.
Again, Basic Economics, by Thomas Sowell, should be required reading, including a competency test, for any person applying for employment that includes authority to spend tax revenues. Any person.
bump
BKMK
The WHO and the virus do gooders are trying to do to us with fear based on inflated models what they have done to Africa:
SPIEGEL: Would Africa actually be able to solve these problems on its own?
Shikwati: Of course. Hunger should not be a problem in most of the countries south of the Sahara. In addition, there are vast natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there’s a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn’t do all that poorly either.
SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn’t exist at that time.
Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It’s not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it’s only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.
SPIEGEL: And why’s that?
Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa’s biggest business. There’s nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.