Live 8 The big lie.

[Felix_Nietsche]

I kind of agree with you except for these, I don't think European and American companies sucking all the money out of these countries will help much at all.
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1. The premise of your argument is there is a finite amount of wealth in the world. The fact is wealth is CREATED. The more a person produces more, more wealth is created. A nations GDP growth is proof that wealth is not finite. Ask yourself this: why are many African nations are rich in natural resources and yet poor? Why is a nation like Japan with little natural resources wealthy? If a a nation has gold but no money to build a mine then would it not be to their benefit to have someone build a mine. If the mine produced $50,000,000 a year where $25M left the country and $25M stayed in the country then is not that country $25M a year richer? Instead of being happy to be $25M a year richer with more companies looking to invest more money, they got greedy and ripped off the foreign companies who helped create wealth in their countries. Africans have killed the golden goose so many times by ripping-off their investors that only a fool (and the world bank) invests money there. The wide spread poverty in African is a self-inflicted wound.


2. It takes capital to create wealth and Africa has had huge problems attracting captital. They have ripped off the world bank and private investors for years. For most African nations, to invest money there is to flush your money down the drain. The main tactic that 3rd world nations use to screw themselves over is "nationalization" of private property.
Nationalization is the West and nationalization in 3rd world countries have COMPLETELY different meanings. In the West it means a change in ownership. In 3rd world countries it means theft. Forcing foreign companies to sell their assets on pennys on the dollar. E.g. An American aluminum company invested in Jamaica to build a bauxite mine. After it was finished, the Jamaican govt "nationalized" the mine leaving the American company with pennys. But when a "rich" company gets ripped off, no one cries for them. Instead we're suppose to cry for the starving Africans who ripped these people off. This is bizarro world. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]


3. The productivity in Africa is a joke. Corruption and incompetance has been sabotaging this continent for decades except in places where western entrepreneuers have lived (S.Africa/Rhodesia). The best and brightest in Africa leave Africa to the West as fast as they can. To create wealth, Africa needs highly educated entrepreneuers to improve their productivity.
Take Zimbabwe for example. Before Mugambe destroyed this country economically it had rich farmlands, minerals, and other wealth producing assets. People had jobs and the economy grew. Now this former bread basket of a nation has hunger problems. If the professional farmers were allowed to return to their farmland once again wealth would flow in this country and workers would have jobs.


Besides who says the wealth would leave the nation? Some would be placed in banks for safekeeping and some would be re-invested into the country to produce more wealth ("greed is good" -Gordon Gecko-). The cold war is over. Adam Smith won and Karl Marx lost. Evidently, Africa has not heard the news.

[jcx]

Happened to be flipping channels and saw Apple's daddy Chris Martin on MTV touring Ghana trying to reinforce one of the pillars of Live8, so called fair trade. Mr Martin then treated us to a view inside his well meaning but completely clueless mind. He walked through a market bemoaning the fact that there was an abundance of imported food for sale at very cheap prices. He especially didn't like that here, there and everywhere were sacks of rice from the demon USA.

Flash forward to Mr. Paltrow touring a small rice paddy being worked by a few men with ancient tools. His message here was if only the cruel 1st world stopped dumping cheap food on Africa these small farms would lead the continent to prosperity. This is of course utterly insane, as the Ghanian govt (in this example) could simply slap high tariffs on these imports if they wanted to nuture their own farmers.

It gets better! In the same segment our future Nobel Laureate (I wish I was joking. It's a virtual guarantee the next Peace Prize goes to one of these Live8 fools) proceeds to give a lecture on how the industrialized world needs to step in and prevent famine! Excuse me sir, but if selling our crops really cheap bothers you, isn't giving food away for free even worse? We're supposed to let these people tell us where our aid dollars shoud be spent? Sheesh.