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80s,live aid,britain,africa,hunger Band Aid - "Do They Know It's Christmas?"
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_%28band%29
A Band-aid™ is exactly what may be seen used here, for a sucking chest wound.
Over the last 30 years the first world has transferred over a trillion dollars in aid, yet GDP levels are actually lower then levels at independence. Clearly this approach doesn't work.
Yet Bob Geldof and other world wide NGOs hold the same misguided idea that pumping more money would somehow solve everything. When in reality it's creating a larger problem, it's reaching a point where local entrepreneurship is dying out because people just expect NGOs to come solve everything. Of course eventually they do, give the population some complicated piece of machinery, that breaks 3 days later and no one knows how to fix, and the parts of course aren't available in Africa.
What about food aid? There is wasn't a more ironic name for it. Food Aid is usually dumped by donor nations to the country, of course it alleviates short term hunger problems. But the west dumps so much aid (because western agricultural industries are overproducing) that in the long term it destroys the local agricultural market. The local agricultural market goes into subsistence mode, producing only for itself, how do you compete with free dumped food? So what happens is that the nation is again set up for the same thing to happen, the market never recovers to provide for the population.
What the First world should do is open up borders between African nations so that food supply shocks are handled by the agricultural market within Africa. Aid packages even come with stipulations that WTO, IMF and other donors can set.
What Africa needs is directed foreign investment, skilled labor that can train the population, sustainable growth initiatives instead of hand outs. Once you raise the welfare of the people problems such as AIDs and other diseases would decreased as people get educated and increase their standard of living. You can't solve the problem if you don't attack it's roots.
Why not protest about the restrictive agricultural subsidies and tariff systems that the EU and US possess that destroy the import/export competitiveness of agricultural products from Africa? (Africa is mostly agriculturally based) Of course you won't your governments will warn you of dangerous lower food standards in the Third World, which is so ironic considering food borne diseases sprung up in the UK first with BSE.
Try this next time at Live 8 Aid, ask an NGO representative how they want to actually promote change, you will receive ambiguous answers that show no understanding of the situation on the ground... How I ever managed not to punch out my colleagues and their delusional views, I don't know... NGO people think they are just morally superior because they have a good humanitarian agenda, but don't realize that even good causes can be carried out poorly, like the Democrats.
And make no mistake, libertarian capitalism is as much a faith-based initiative as the hope that donations will fix the problem. Donations may be appropriate in certain situations, where markets may be in others.
It's never news worthy until they can take a video or picture of a child with a large belly due to malnutrition and flies all over their faces.
And what happens then? It goes on media networks and is totally tuned out, because "God how many times have you seen it already"? Of course the coverage of wars, genocide, famine, corruption does the exact opposite... it makes Africa seem like an a bad place to invest in.
No one ever talks about positive things, things that are changing, like Rwanda's drive to increase IT usage in it's population. How most African countries have ridiculously large expansion of mobile phone networks because it's cheaper to build towers instead of laying conventional copper/fiber optic lines? Right there is a large untapped, high rate of adaptation market for cell phone companies.
Theo, thats the same reasoning NGOs give all the time, saying Africa is not ready for free trade, globalization or capitalism or whatever the 'word' of the moment is. I heard that excuse a billion times. I could tell you a million stories about why that's not the case, but... I know you wouldn't listen to me but I hope you read this Der Spiegel interview with Kenyan economics expert James Shikwat. Which is about as close as from the horses mouth as you can get.
Everyone thinks Africa is some kind of disabled person that NEEDS donations. That is simply not true, did 1st world nations have donations drop from the sky when implementing new technologies like phones? power lines? Of course not. What made it happen is sound economic and development strategies of improving infrastructure, subsidized by the goverment and offered to the population at low prices. Exactly the kind of advice, deep thought and planning that doesn't go into the mindset of 90% of NGOs involved in Africa today.
If you want to make real change in Africa, go there, see for yourself. Be a tourist, see Kenya, Zambia and South Africa. Spend your American dollars there, because that would create infinitely more change and improvement in life then any donation or dollar-child-adaptation scam that is run. And again...
Why not protest about the restrictive agricultural subsidies and tariff systems that the EU and US possess that destroy the import/export competitiveness of agricultural products from Africa? (Africa is mostly agriculturally based) Of course you won't your governments will warn you of dangerous lower food standards in the Third World, which is so ironic considering food borne diseases sprung up in the UK first with BSE.
Try this next time at Live 8 Aid, ask an NGO representative how they want to actually promote change, you will receive ambiguous answers that show no understanding of the situation on the ground... How I ever managed not to punch out my colleagues and their delusional views, I don't know... NGO people think they are just morally superior because they have a good humanitarian agenda, but don't realize that even good causes can be carried out poorly, like the Democrats.
(Well, they could, but it wouldn't be very safe or nutritious.)
If you can stop ranting and read for a second, I never said market solutions couldn't help the situation.
But they are not the miracle cure you envision, any more than it is here in the U.S.
I'll get excited about IT infrastructure when people are safe and can eat, OK?
Until then, what you're describing sounds like the beginning of some kind of gentrification.
Ironically this is the same attitude US AID brings (along with it's EU accomplices). Of course really they are dumping all the surplus produce from the basket land of the US to sustain a subsidized agricultural market.
Sounds like it.
Am I as foolish as to think markets are the solution you prescribe them to be?
Nope.
Currently that is not the case.
If you are interested go to World Trade Organization see how First World nation 'donors' abuse their anti-dumping laws against agricultural produce coming from the Third world. Or how how the EU wastes it's budget on the Common Agricultural Policy.
As I said earlier the large trade wall created by subsidization of agricultural products in the West snuffs out development of the agricultural markets of Africa. Where 70% of the population relies on agriculture. The subsidization in the west creates a false demand response on the behalf of it's farmers who try to produce more and more as the government will purchase their produce or subsidize them so they actually stop. This is what lead ultimately to the current chicks-in-iron baskets syndrome in the agricultural market in the West, too much is being produced, false demand signal, farmers think they can make more, so they invest in newer and newer technologies to grow chickens, plants and many many more things. This is where genetic engineering came from, as farmers wanted to maximize their output.
But line that subsidized market with a natural labor based agricultural market in the third world and it cannot compete on price. What the EU started doing, is actually buying the surplus output from the farmers, and then dumping it on the world market. This is how I ended up eating bananas grown in the EU in South Africa. The price fall created basically kills the import/export competitiveness of this primary sector of the economy. So what happens is that you have off shot investments in other fields, leading to micro transaction banks and alternative investments like the provision of infrastructure like cellular phones. This increases business activity. If you don't know that business activity is increased through better communication, look at your daily life compared to just a few years ago.
As Sam Kinison said a long time ago,
"See this? This is sand. Nothing grows here. Nothing's ever gonna grow here..."
I'm glad I turned my back on Intellectualism, as it breeds vast cynicism like you've read here. How about taking this video for what it was at the time. They really did think they could change or "feed the world". They wanted to do something, anything to get the message out there. But I guess they could have listened to all of you and just ignored it, kind of like you're all doing. Question, if you have all the answers, what are YOU doing about changing the world? Hmmm? Point the all-seeing eye toward yourselves. But I doubt that you will...you'll come at me with both barrels blazing.
Sigh...Merry Christmas.
Here is cynical. The cruelest fact is that it is virtually impossible to reform agricultural program payment/subsidy programs at an executive agency level in the U.S. because:
1) The flow of money is controlled by political appointees and appropriations for the programs are controlled by Congressional committees
2) The money flows directly to the powerful rural interests within each State.
3) It amounts to political suicide to interrupt the cash flow.
"Greater good" thinking is never a strong suit of a two-party government, though.
And farhad was dead wrong to downvote this. Just look at the all the colorful British poofy 80s hair.
replacement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jEnTSQStGE
This needs to be in the terrible channel