3rd World Poverty

If I wasn't officially completely broke myself, I'd give them money. Warlords steal it all anyhow.

Nothing practical can be done, as far as I can tell.
This was a bad thread to post on a board that has Tarden/Dave Q as a regular contributor.

Overpopulation hurts things. But so does the World Bank apparently. THere is no simple answer. The world is bad and cruel. We must try to help and we can't do much.

Drat LUSENET formatting! The above rant should have been preceded with a "Bono mode on" and followed by a "Bono mode off."

*snicker*. If you're dying to make angle-brackets, the proper way is [ampersand]lt; and [ampersand]gt; for the left and right, respectively.

Well, excuuuuuse me for not being a master programmer. And while yer at it, what's your solution to third world poverty?

Probably by teaching them HTML coding. ;-)

I think we have to stop :

one : view them as one huge group ( ie AFRICA instead of Bantu, Berbers etc)
This is a huge problem . We stomped in their and imposed counterintutive borders

two : exoticizing them . As "naive" or "starving" or "corrupt".

This happens alot in Asia and among the Natives in North America. as well. Even calling them Asians . As well erase the loans, stop pressuring them to build useless infastructure and cash crops. They have been there for 1000s of years. They know best what works .

It would also be helpful if the IMF and the World Bank weren't so enthralled with "laissez-faire," neoliberal economics. In the name of "privatization," the nation's economic and social infrastructure ends up getting sold to multinationals and their local lackeys, none of whom give a flying fuck about the economic or social well-being of the countries.

This could change if the right appointments were made to the IMF and the World Bank. Considering who's squatting in and fouling the Oval Office, however, I'm not hopeful about this at all.

The theory of 'comparative advantage' doesn't help developing nations, neither does the imbalances in news flow. Also, as well as the problems of debt and poverty, there is the problem of cultural imperialism. As stated above the multinationals have many of these nations over a barrel, and it is these corporations which now cause alot of the problems and are very unlikely to change their ways. Obviously, debts should be written off. Also, these nations should be offered more technical assistance to develop better communications infrastructure, though this is a long term goal. Many developing nations could be self-sufficient, but the global system of trade has meant a raw deal.

Personally, I can only hope that more pressure is put on multi- nationals to act ethically and that the IMO considers writing off debts or at least reducing interest rates.

IMF even, it's early. I do agree with Anthony about stereotyping developing nations, many could be self-sufficient but for the debts and the presence of MNC's.

Robert Mugabe has the right idea

try again

Well, isn't it up to them to take the power back?

Tadeusz: I'd answer, but politics happens to be my "taboo" topic in the ILM/E universe.

Robert Mugabe has the right idea

I can't even begin to communicate how angry I get when I read statements like that. Old "Handsome Bob" (as a gay group in South Africa call him ever since he said sodomites were worse than pigs - the pink vote is not that important in Zimbabwe as you can probably guess) is corrupt, violent, amoral and almost certainly insane. The reason Africa is such a disaster has nothing to with the land itself being agriculturally poor, or the lack of minerals etc. It's to do with border disputes more arcane and complicated than the bloody Balkans, with despots siphoning off IMF money and taxes to buy a castle in Scotland (Dave's buddy there again), and the few decent men being sucked in by crackpot economic ideas (the guy in Tanzania with his hippie shit in the 70's) and medical conspiracy theory (good old Thabo - the one whose name is an anagram of Botha - denying that HIV causes AIDS).

And before anyone says that this can be explained away as "colonial legacy" or "the fault of uncaring multinationals" let me just mention that Botswana is one of the best success stories in Southern Africa, and it's got that way because the absence of corruption in the post- colonial government allowed it to make a very good deal with a multinational called de Beers to exploit its diamonds to the full and enrich the whole infrastructure.

Mugabe is a fule. So what am I doing about it? Trying to tell people at every chance I get where the real problem lies. And I don't think it's something that Bono can grasp either, because the idea that Africans are not innocent put-upon savages, but ordinary people who are capable of both good and evil, is a bit too much for his tiny black-and-white brain.

Sorry about the rant. It's a bit of sore subject for me.

That is what i was trying to say. Although any points DeBeers gets in Botswana they lose for fiancing the civil wars in Angola.

sam, i am interested in the 1970s Tanzania guy. a few years ago i read some stuff which touched on this, but can't remember that much. could you expand on this a little?

Well, I read about him in a PJ O'Rourke book I think (Eat The Rich possibly), but I'm afraid I can't remember his name. He was some kind of communist, one who was taken to the hearts of Western liberals who rather liked his vision of a villagey Eden-like Africa which all pulled together. I'm sorry, I don't remember much more, except that it didn't work out in the end and he was deposed or resigned. Anyone else know?

Look up The Arusha Declaration on google. It was Julius Nyerere.

Sam - true, true, and true again (x infinity). And at the risk of sounding insensitive, so what? What countries haven't gone through irrational convulsions on their way to self-determination? Is the 'tragedy' of Zimbabwe any worse than that of, say, the American Civil War? (As for the Balkans, if they can't get over their nationalism then fuck 'em, I'm with Bismarck on this one.) And is the west even 'entitled' to help? I seem to recall that a certain superpower is now run by the son of a former president, a result secured by current president's brother. If this was to happen in Zambia or Honduras the 'legacy of colonialism' would be invoked until you'd never hear the end of it.

Nyerere's apologia for the 'Ujaama' experiment ("We failed, let's admit it") was a far more positive influence than anything any American or European could have possibly said. People only learn through experience! (Well, if they survive that is. So it goes.)

Is Nyerere the single only one of the Independence Generation whose rep is not simply DESTROYED by how he himself behaved when sleek with power? (ie decently, on the whole: rural socialism in one country notwithstanding)...

(P. J. O'Rourke possibly not the source *I* wd pick for secure grasp of "post"-colonial political economy...)

I don't actually have a big problem with Nyerere - and you're right, he did say sorry, admirably. But I think that it was irresponsible of him to impose that unproven system on such a shaky foundation.

And I was hesitant to say that I got it from a PJ O'Rourke book - I knew someone would tell me that he's not much of an impartial source...but I don't know if my point is affected.

ILE is beautiful for the fact that there can be a thread as intersting ans stimulating as this and there can be one titled " I Have A Big Ass". My brother always points to colonial border creation as the main cause of the troubles there. I thin however, overpopulation is a bgi cause as well. Its simple math, the more people , the less food and resources available, the less stability. But there are also som e rather backward practices in parts of the continent liek slaves owning in Sudan, lynching of "witches" by mobs, geonocide and such. I think Islam isn't helping allot of the progressive actions there.

The border is a big deal because those who did not know but borders agaisnt clashing tribal lines. Africa was carved up among the victors in Berlin a little over 120 years ago. No wonder it has its troubles. As well huge multinationals perform rape and pillages all the time. Shell in Nigeria, DeBeers all over the place. The corrupt warlords have a part, the overpopulation, the importance of religon, the IMF , the stripping of soil for cash crops, the oversimplyfing and grouping together of disparate tribes under one ruberick are all contributing factors. Why are we talking about Africa, What about South America, Indochina, India ... Same sort of things ?

I posted a very long and detailed answer to this question a few hours ago and have returned to see that it has not stuck. Whilst I would love to repeat it - I am about to go to the pub. For the record though it echoed Anthony's point above that we seem to be equating 3rd world (a terribly out of date and inaccurate term by the way) with Africa. What about South America - where different paradigms have created much the same effect.

Probably talking about Africa because it's the toughest case around. :)

One thing I had to start admitting last time I was in Ethiopia: Communism really has fulfilled some of its mission, in ways we in the Western world are simply never exposed to. Out in the most rural portions of the country, we'd come across really lovely roads, teeming with actual verifiable poverty-fighting commerce -- e.g., a brewery that seemed to be supporting half a city, made possible almost entirely by a decent highway to the capital -- and whenever I'd ask after how the road got built, I'd hear the same answer: China. In fact, pretty much every progressive public work I came across was a result of a brief period of Marxist rule. But lest I sound like an apologist, I should note that that same period was accompanied by massive property seizure, human rights abuses, oppression of opposition groups, and that whole mass-starvation problem.

All that aside, the "what're you going to do?" question is what makes me less critical of transnational capital (IMF, World Bank) than many others I know. As much as I agree with all of the typical complaints, I don't see any realistic alternative for developing such areas, even at the expense of the same environmental degradation and labor abuses that we in the western world suffered through during our periods of development. Another key realization from Ethiopia visits: much as we talk about citizens of such areas being "exploited," the fact is that nothing could be done to exploit some of them -- so long as they are eating food and not dying, they will be doing better than before.

You could even argue that exploitative aspect would fade as soon as citizens of such countries developed enough economic stability to organize politically.

HOw will AIDS shape Africa's future? I hear stagering statistics liek one in four people have HIV in some places there

Its not only AIDS. It is Cholera, Dysentry, Polio , Malaria and any of 10 000 that could and have mutated.