[Angelique]

I would be very interested in your comments. Please ping the African list.

[rebelyell]

Nugent might be a bit crude in delivering his message, but it's hard to argue with his logic. I'd like to spend a day in the duck blind or in woods with him. He is a hell of an outdoorsman....that's a fact.

[detsaoT]

Why with all this aid do conditions remain the same?

No matter how much money you pour into corrupt regimes, they are still nothing more than corrupt regimes. This is the same reason that "free" trade with Cuba will do no good for the Cubans - All of the money made from such "trade" (and I still use the term loosely) ends up in Fidel's hands.

(Incidentally, were you aware that the Soviet Union spent billions of dollars, and sent thousands of people to the African continent to promote the Soviet version of freedom? Most certainly, the "help" they offered did nothing of any value to the average African citizen...)

Hope this clears things up.

:) ttt

[Koblenz]

Probably neither one is really helping things, but at least Nugent is having fun and not making us any poorer in the process. What Africa needs is governments that can establish property rights and free enterprise, and begin to offer their citizens some sort of basic education. It needs to encourage foreign investment as well. Until it does these things, it is going to remain a basketcase, as no one is going to farm the land, build new buildings, banks, etc, because they can't get capital because they have no property rights.

[Billthedrill]

All IMHO, of course, but:

Why with all this aid do conditions remain the same?

The aid is channelled through inefficient and too often seriously corrupt governments. Most areas with infrastructure sufficient to effectively distribute aid don't need it in the first place.

Why does this Continent remain so primeval?

It isn't, actually. While 38% of the North American continent is wilderness, only 28% of Africa is. It isn't a case of too much jungle, not enough people, it's too many people, not enough wealth and especially education.

Who is helping the most to make a difference? Nugent or Bono?

Well, I dunno, "teach a man to fish" and all that...OTOH, Bono is eminently edible...

[Alberta's Child]

Someone said recently that in an agricultural sense there is only one major difference between a country like the U.S. that produces more food than it can consume and a place like Africa that is always teetering on the brink of starvation: The U.S. has a market for commodity futures, which allows farmers to determine the prices for their crops before they plant them, thereby eliminating much of the risk involved with farming.

[bvw]

Seemed to me that Mr. Nugent was perhaps, over-ready, for the Rush call and dropped a barrage of points into too little time. Too hard to follow so many ....

[MissAmericanPie]

We have spent 7 trillion dollars trying to raise the standard of living for the third world. We need to cut that out.

[mc5cents]

Whenever I think of the conditions in Africa I can't help but think of that Sam Kinison routine about helping those people. Send 'em U-Hauls, luggage... See this? It's SAND!! It was a histerical piece. Only Kinison could deliver it though. He was a gem. Kind of rough around the edges but great.

[Ohioan]

You cannot impose prosperity on a people from without; neither can you uplift others by treating them as charity cases. If Nugent goes over there and shares "know how," out of the goodness of his heart, he is probably doing something rather constructive. The other's idea is fatuous flummery. It wouldn't do any good, even if it was Constitutional. As it is, it is an unconscionable and Unconstitutional squandering of the people's money.

I cannot fault the true altruist, who gives of himself to help others. But it is neither altruism nor decency to force your neighbor to support a cause he would not otherwise support, simply because you have a power to tax him. The power to tax--or to use tax revenues--or to borrow on the Credit of the United States, must not be used for purposes not envisioned by the Constitution of the United States. That is a simple application of basic honesty.

There were situations in the Cold War, when our aiding an ally or potential ally was a cost effective adjunct to our Defense efforts. But this is quite another situation.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[scholar]

Question to you: Why with all this aid do conditions remain the same? Why does this Continent remain so primeval? Who is helping the most to make a difference? Nugent or Bono?

Well, I am all for Nugent's "kill it and grill it" philosophy. As I have posted on other threads here, I am positively LIVID over O'Neill traveling with Bono, while that Socialist butthead is trying to wring more $$ from US citizens.

As for the primeval nature of the African continent, I fear it would take every FReeper on the forum to research and analyze all the factors. Africa is a huge continent with a diverse population,and there is no way to apply one analysis to every country or issue.

[another cricket]

Why with all this aid do conditions remain the same? Why does this Continent remain so primeval? Who is helping the most to make a difference? Nugent or Bono?

Well, Ted is helping a bit. Every one that he teaches to hunt now has a chance to feed the family. Bono on the other hand is only helping the creeps that made Africa such a mess in the first place.

The biggest problem in Africa has two parts. First it is nearly impossible to buy and have a clear title to property if you are an average Joe. This means that you can not build wealth. The second part is that the rule of law is a joke there. What the law is depends on who you are, whom you know and what you own.

The aid ends up in Swiss bank accounts and buying goodies for the strongman.

a.cricket

[nunya bidness]

Where do you find the time?

[Blue Screen of Death]

The bottom line is, this jerk (Bono) has no business telling my government to confiscate my money to spend on causes that make him feel good.

[KissOfTheSith]

>...the discussion of Bono's enterprise to pressure the USA to give more financial aid to Africa

Not exactly. The trip over there isn't Bono's idea. It is the idea of Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

O'Neill, Bono, Tucker Visit Uganda
By Rodrique Ngowi
Associated Press Writer
Monday, May 27, 2002; 10:40 AM

[...]
The tour grew out of O'Neill's skepticism about the effectiveness of the billions of aid dollars Africa has received since the 1960s and Bono's determination to show him that aid can make a difference if properly administered.
[...]
O'Neill said the Bush administration has recommended to Congress an 18 percent increase in U.S. participation in the African Development Bank, an 18 percent increase in contributions to the International Development Association, the World Bank's soft-loan arm and a $5 billion a year increase in overall aid from the United States.

If O'Neill were really AGAINST something, he wouldn't have created a media circus to give the "opposition" global attention. If the Administration had reacted the same way to critics regarding 9/11 warnings, the media would have been taken on a tour of the FBI and CIA and White House archives and allowed to dig through whatever they wanted to "make their case" the way Bono is being allowed to make his case...

The Force can have a strong effect on the weak minded. Don't let Jedi wave their hands in front of your face. Or, when they do, question the stuff you find yourself "thinking"...

-- KotS

[CyberCowboy777]

I heard bono on NPR this morning. He admitted that much of the monies already spent were wasted (how many millions?) or that very little ever got to the people or need. He says that the systems for distributing monies and resources is better now. That we should not give up and that we should spend more to help that infrastructure along. He gave no specifics no details as to how it is different now, just rambled on about Aids and Water. When did it change and how?

It is not just Governments that are corrupt and wasteful. many of the NGA/O are just as bad. Only the ones that receive no Nation aid seem to work efficiently.

[far sider]

I don't know about Africa, but I can tell you that in Haiti the "good intentions" of the US often do much more harm than good.

About twenty years ago we shipped boat-loads of rice (one of their main staples) to Haiti to help eleviate hunger there. Of course when the rice got there, we had to find some way to distribute it. So we paid Haitian businessmen and paid bribes to the bureaucrats to allow the distribution. Of course much of the rice ended up on the black market. But we helped to feed a lot of hungry Haitians, right?

Unfortunately, the Haitians have there own rice industry, which was nearly devastated. With all the free and low cost rice available, small Haitian rice farmers could not pay their expenses, and were forced to sell their lands, to the rich businessmen that we had just paid to deliver the rice in the first place.

It's is very hard to ANYTHING to help these very poor countries without very careful study. And the more money is involved the more likely it is that there will be uniniended consequences.

[Kermit]

I post the following, whenever there's a discussion on development in the third world. You gotta read this book, it'll make you an optimist.

These people who write on third world development are so friggin' stupid, they haven't learned anything in 50 years. They've been coming up with magical thoughts for 50 years on "development". State planning was the solution. Exports were the solution. Democracy was the solution. World Banks loans to governments were the solution. Aid is still the solution according to Bush and his latest scheme. Now, they pretend that "globalization" was the solution.

But they are blind. They write about ending poverty, without ever talking about property.

Poverty = lack of wealth
Wealth = property
Ending poverty = getting property in the hands of the poor.

D'oh!

Here's the way to go about it. I recommend to everyone to read this book, it'll open your eyes and immunize you against the type of nonsense in this article.

Click Here for page at Amazon.com.

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by Hernando De Soto, Hernando De Soto

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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
It's become clear by now the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in most places around the globe hasn't ushered in an unequivocal flowering of capitalism in the developing and postcommunist world. Western thinkers have blamed this on everything from these countries' lack of sellable assets to their inherently non-entrepreneurial "mindset." In this book, the renowned Peruvian economist and adviser to presidents and prime ministers Hernando de Soto proposes and argues another reason: it's not that poor, postcommunist countries don't have the assets to make capitalism flourish. As de Soto points out by way of example, in Egypt, the wealth the poor have accumulated is worth 55 times as much as the sum of all direct foreign investment ever recorded there, including that spent on building the Suez Canal and the Aswan Dam.

No, the real problem is that such countries have yet to establish and normalize the invisible network of laws that turns assets from "dead" into "liquid" capital. In the West, standardized laws allow us to mortgage a house to raise money for a new venture, permit the worth of a company to be broken up into so many publicly tradable stocks, and make it possible to govern and appraise property with agreed-upon rules that hold across neighborhoods, towns, or regions. This invisible infrastructure of "asset management"--so taken for granted in the West, even though it has only fully existed in the United States for the past 100 years--is the missing ingredient to success with capitalism, insists de Soto. But even though that link is primarily a legal one, he argues that the process of making it a normalized component of a society is more a political--or attitude-changing--challenge than anything else.

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From The Industry Standard
"An increasingly important economist provides a fascinating lesson in why capitalism works by looking at the places where it doesn't." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all editorial reviews...

[mamelukesabre]

I really don't care. THey're both nut job musicians. ONe just happens to be pro hunting and very good at it, but he's still a loon. If he wants to go to africa and criticize these socialist popstars like bono, I won't complain but I'm not going to pretend like he's a hero for it either.

[Physicist]

Who is helping the most to make a difference? Nugent or Bono?

Time for me to don my asbestos underwear.

First, some caveats. I'm a hunter. I don't think animals have rights, and I don't think that animals should ever come before people. I think Ted Nugent is absolutely the MAN. I don't think much of Boner Pox...uh, Bono Vox, either as a singer or a demagogue. I think pouring money into corrupt African regimes is a disaster for everyone. I don't dispute that Boner is a fool, on this issue or any other.

However.

The "bush meat" trade is rapidly stripping the African continent of wild game. It won't be long before there aren't any animals to hunt, and after that, they won't come back. Hunting in America is well managed, but in Africa they are facing a classic Tragedy of the Commons. One way or another, it won't last.

I am not saying that the animals should come before the people. The issue is that hunting in Africa is a valuable thing FOR the people, and for that reason it shouldn't be spoiled. Not do the animals feed people, but it was once (and should be again) an important "export", generating dollars from "big game" tourists and "eco" tourists alike. That can potentially support many more people than bush meat.

This important resource should not be squandered. Ted Nugent is wrong to promote hunting in Africa right now. The Tragedy of the Commons needs to be fixed first, either by establishing owners for the animals, or by establishing rational limits on hunting.