Plan B Forum

If I read him correctly he said in his book that the solution for the appalling situation that he found Africa in is for the west to cut off the aid and get out Africa and leave them along . That that way they would be forced to fix their own problems or suffer the consequences. I was surprised that a liberal would hold such an opinion. Do you agree with him?

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Star-Safari- ... 0618134247

In the travel-writing tradition that made Paul Theroux’s reputation, Dark Star Safariis a rich and insightful book whose itinerary is Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town: down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda, and ultimately to the tip of South Africa. Going by train, dugout canoe, “chicken bus,” and cattle truck, Theroux passes through some of the most beautiful — and often life-threatening — landscapes on earth.
This is travel as discovery and also, in part, a sentimental journey. Almost forty years ago, Theroux first went to Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students, revisits his African friends. He finds astonishing, devastating changes wherever he goes. “Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first knew it,” he writes, “hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you can’t tell the politicians from the witch doctors. Not that Africa is one place. It is an assortment of motley republics and seedy chiefdoms. I got sick, I got stranded, but I was never bored. In fact, my trip was a delight and a revelation.” Seeing firsthand what is happening across Africa, Theroux is as obsessively curious and wittily observant as always, and his readers will find themselves on an epic and enlightening journey. Dark Star Safari is one of his bravest and best books.
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I don't think that cutting off all aid and leaving Africa to its own devices is a good idea. On the other hand, much of the "aid" that we -- the U.S., other individual nations, and the international community -- have given Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has aided ordinary Africans little if at all.

The crux of the problem as I see it is that most of sub-Saharan Africa's wealth lies in its natural resources. But that wealth cannot be realized unless those natural resources are somehow converted into things which people are willing to pay for. (Minerals are not valuable when buried in the ground; they must be mined; etc.)

If private corporations do that conversion without being effectively supervised, the likely outcome is exploitation of the native peoples for the enrichment of those corporations, which would do precious little to improve the situations of ordinary Africans. (See, e.g., the history of oil exploitation in the Middle East, today's "blood diamonds," etc.)

But if the international community simply provides money to the African governments to do that conversion, the likely results would be different only in the sense that corrupt African leaders, rather than private corporations from elsewhere, would be enriched. That would also do precious little to improve that situations of ordinary Africans.

In theory, the international community could create organizations which would undertake that conversion and distribute its benefits, one way or another, to ordinary Africans, and that distribution would be subject to international scrutiny. In practice, that idea is going nowhere.

Perhaps the best solution among the pittance of available options is to have private corporations undertake that conversion pursuant to agreements that (a) are subject to international scrutiny, (b) are for defined periods of time, and (c) provide for the reversion of all assets involved to the Africans at the ends of those defined periods of time.

For example: "OK, ABC Corporation, for the next 30 (or whatever) years, you can go in and mine whatever minerals XYZ Country has. While you are doing that, your operations will be subject to international scrutiny, and you agree to adopt whatever changes are required by the relevant international authority. You are, of course, entitled to profit from your operations, but those operations must also result in net gains for the individual Africans involved in them and for XYZ Country as a whole. And at the end of those thirty years, you must surrender all of your assets in those operations -- physical assets such as refining plants and what not, and also non-physical assets such as production-distribution contracts, etc. -- to Country XYZ."

Such a program would require serious international muscle. The international scrutiny of ABC's acitivities would have to be rigorous. The consequences of ABC's not adopting whatever changes are required by the relevant international authority would have to be severe. And the reversion requirement would have to be, if necessary, imposed by international force.

None of those things is very likely. The international community has a poor history of scrutinizing activities which are at least purportedly subject to its scrutiny, of imposing severe consequences for violating its mandates, even when those mandates have been agreed to by the entity subject to them, and of imposing international force to accomplish much of anything.

But the alternative appears to be more of sub-Saharan Africa's modern history: Millions killed in an apparently endless series of wars, pervasive poverty of a kind which those of us in more developed nations have difficulty even grasping, corporate abuses which would never be tolerated in more developed nations, and governmental corruption on a scale which would make Tammany Hall or the Grant Administration blush.

Even though I respect your opinion I am not sure that I agree with you except for the part where you expect no change. Many plans, mostly socialist, have been imposed on Africa and have met with other failure. There are factories over run with weeds and stripped of everything that is saleable while a whole continent is in desperate need of everything.

One thing that Paul points out in his books is the availability of cheap second hand clothes from the US. These clothes were donated by Americans mostly in churches to be given free to the poor in Africa. They instead are sold to African dealer who sale them to operators of small markets stalls. His opinion is that if these cheap clothes did not exist there might arise domestic clothing manufacturing and perhaps even cloth factories. At any rate he gives the impression that the Africans would be better of if they were more self reliant and I think he might have a point.

The main characteristic of these kleptocracies is crushingly stupid leaders who presume that prosperity can be assured by keeping Government in control of everything, including private commerce. New businesses are taxed and regulated to such an extent that no sane entrepreneur (or foreign investor) would put any significant capital at risk.

Africa has natural resources and human resources, and making the infrastructure work is do-able, but it doesn't appear that there are many countries where the private sector is permitted to prosper. And no amount of government can compensate. In order for the country to succeed, somebody has to produce something of economic value.

I have gave this a good bit of thought and come to the conclusion that Paul is right; the best thing we could do for the Africans would be for us in the west to just get out of their way. They have become dependent on us with only the exception being South Africa and possible Botswana. The only exception I would make to non-interference would be to encourage the establishment of a central African federation based on the US pattern, any other would just facilitate a more powerful dictatorship.

liberty wrote:"... Many plans, mostly socialist, mostly the systematic exploitation of colonials and other capitalists supported by corrupt local regimes have been imposed on Africa and have met with utter failure and made enormous fortunes for the Cecil Rhodes and DeBeers but leaving worse wretchness and poverty than they found.... "

Fixed that for you.

yrs,
rubato

liberty wrote:If I read him correctly he said in his book that the solution for the appalling situation that he found Africa in is for the west to cut off the aid and get out Africa and leave them along . That that way they would be forced to fix their own problems or suffer the consequences. I was surprised that a liberal would hold such an opinion. Do you agree with him?

... " s

Assuming that your summary is right, I've not read the book and don't know.

There were a number of people in the early 1800s who, convinced of the inevitability of Malthus' prediction that ultimately nothing could be done for the poor because their population would just increase until starvation and misery held it in check, actually convinced themselves that NOT helping the poor was actually better for them because fewer would be suffering.* The idea being that if you have 1,000 people starving today and you feed and clothe them you will inevitably have 2,000 people starving in the future when your aid has been stretched beyond possibility; so that to have fewer people suffering in the future you should not support them now. So Theroux's idea is not new and while not typical of liberals now or back then it is motivated by a sincere desire to reduce suffering driven by a view of the mechanics of social and economic change which is different than mine or most modern Liberals.

yrs,
rubato




*The advent of birth control made them completely wrong, in fact.

*The advent of birth control made them completely wrong, in fact.

So the poor use more birth control than those better off?
Got a graph on that?
I would argue the opposite.