[Gatler]

I was just reminded rather randomly of the plight of the third world, and thought to myself (as often happens) "surely there's something to be done about that."

Now, normally I think the Robin Hood model is ridiculous. Steal from the rich; give to the poor is a wonderful idea until you realize that at a certain point the only rich people will be in your income range, and then things won't be so much fun anymore.

However; there are folks with so much money they are statistically incapable of spending it all on themselves, or so I'm told.

If we were to take this money from them and apply it to the troubles of the third world, would it be enough to solve the monetary problems? (I say monetary, because not all of their problems can be solved by throwing money at them.)

And just to be clear, I'm not advocating taking it from them. They earned that wealth fair and square; what's theirs is theirs to do with as they please, within the law.

[ForbiddenKnowledge]

No it wouldn't, because we shovel incredible amounts of money into places like africa already, and it achieves sweet F.A.

Chucking money at them is not doing them any good. They need infrastructure, they need a coherent, driving force to provide what they need to solve their problems. They need the "ground model" so to speak set up - food, water, hospitals, schools, and they need industrial support so they can begin to export to other countries. From what I've read, the poorer nations are massively rich in resources, but they do not have the capability to utilise this. Rather than money, we need to give them this capability, so they can become self supporting.

[Impulse]

Do you really believe that? If you do, then you really need to reconsider it. Canada donated roughly $9 million. This is not a lot, but if you factor the US and Europe, money would not be an issue. The real issue is how the money is used. You know many charities have a massive administration? In many cases up to 20c out of every dollar you give goes to admin. Also, read what Rafe has said.

[crisis_vyper]

Originally Posted by Rafe

No it wouldn't, because we shovel incredible amounts of money into places like africa already, and it achieves sweet F.A.

Chucking money at them is not doing them any good. They need infrastructure, they need a coherent, driving force to provide what they need to solve their problems. They need the "ground model" so to speak set up - food, water, hospitals, schools, and they need industrial support so they can begin to export to other countries. From what I've read, the poorer nations are massively rich in resources, but they do not have the capability to utilise this. Rather than money, we need to give them this capability, so they can become self supporting.

Agreed. You need to make these people realize that no one will help them get out from that predicament but themselves. Even they have enough pride to say no to just kissing people's feet for their life.

Catch a fish and give it to a man and you will feed a person a day. Teach them how to fish and they will be feeding themselves for a lifetime.

Although I have bastardize the saying, but it holds true for almost anything.

[ForbiddenKnowledge]

Not only that, but I think its quite insulting to the people to simply chuck money at them. Its the same with fulfilling job placements based on ethnic minorities over here.

You might as well tell these people that they have no hope and should just accept the hand outs.

I would be willing to wager they want to support themselves, instead of just being given money, we just need to set the dominoes rolling, so to speak, and give them the basic infrastructure.

The real issue is how the money is used

Bingo. This is the underlying problem. Its not the amount, its how its being used. 9/10 of the poorer countries are rife with corruption - most of the money helping the so called leaders line their pockets.

If we were serious about helping, we would go over their and build (say) massive irrigation systems, for food, and large water systems. We would give them a crop, and what they need to support it, and then let them grow, harvest, etc from land we have made suitable.

I hate to say it, but instead of chucking money into the countries, we should be paying large companies to go over there and build the basic infrastructure they need to become self sufficient, and then help them to do so.

The land there, is, from what I have read, crap. Its bad land for growing, which means meagre food crops, which means starvation. We are able to alter land to become more farm friendly - we've done it. Now we need to do it over there, so they have a chance at helping themselves.

All giving them money does is make them dependant on us, not something anyone wants.

[Fish Ead]

Anyone remember that "If you were emperor of the world" thread a while back? One of my ideas included what I called the "Robin Hood Law". Basically, individuals or corporations that were found to be corrupt would be subject to having ill-gotten assets seized and funneled directly into helping honest, but unfortunate people.

[Max Smirnov]

Hey, I've never anticipated that LGT will turn more lefty than me! I'm quite on the left side, but the idea of forcibly taking away money from people never occured to me as a viable political option... Don't take it too seriously LGT, I have noticed that you've said you're not exactly advocating that.

On the other hand, look: we (as a society, regardless which country do you live in) already take from the rich, as they pay far higher taxes. The problem is that the richest of them avoid paying most taxes still...

Throwing money at 3rd world ISN'T a good option. That money will end in the pockets of local warlords, or at best local government officals or military budgedts. Most of this money will go back to us (us = rich part of the world), spent on luxury goods and weapons from USA, EU and China.

What really could be done:
1)Stop subsiding our farmers,
2) stop subsiding our corporations making 'development programs' in 3rd world, stop forcing 3rd world countries from raising custom barriers against those corporations;
3)drop our custom barriers on their light industry goods.

What's that going to help?
1)3rd world farmers will be able to compete with our farmers, thus generating income for them and their countries, as well as cheaper food for us. They will no longer be forced to farm koka and other narcotic plants, thus increasing their price and cutting onto drug lords budgets.
2) Our corporations will no longer have huge advantage over theirs, and so they will be able to compete on more or less equal terms, generating more income for their countries;
3) This will allow their industry (light as it is so far) to gradually develop.

But that's never going to happen, no sir. Our governments have them by the balls and are happy to suck them dry. And stopping that practices would undobtelly lessen a bit our own living standards, so any goverment which would allow for it will lose many votes. Plus, any country which would help the 3rd world in this way would be at slight economic disadvantage to those who refuse to do it.

An old capitalist saying is 'Do not give a fish to a hungry man, give him a fishing pole'. I agree with that. The problem is that we don't have healthy capitalism, just a bunch of state-corporate-military cartels who abhor the free market despite saying otherwise.

[GeekyGator]

None of these will solve the problems, folks. They may help, but they won't solve the problems.

I've read a few articles comapring Africa and East Asia after World War II- both started at nearly the same place. I've also seen a few things about Africa today.

The problem is not infastructure (though it is a problem), or lack of resources, or anything like that, rather, it is their governments.

When you live in a country where the government can and may well tomorrow come with a buldozer and destroy your business, you won't expand it larger than a shack, even if business is good enough to do so.

If you need to go to 23 different ministries to start your business and all need substantial bribes to get anything done, you won't expand or register your business.

If you don't expand or register your business, the government (presuming it wasn't corrupt) doesn't get tax revenue, and can't spend it on schools/hostpitals/etc.

Hence, the thing that Africa specifically and the 3rd world needs the most is a fair, stable, capitalist style government.

[knightperson]

Efforts to "fix things" can be hampered by many things, and only one of them is "not enough money." Even if you could throw all necessary money at a problem, social, political, and other factors will continue to stop it even if the money problem is removed.

I also don't want to begrudge guys who faithfully earned their fortune. At least in the US the tax code tries to gently encourage charitable donations from those who can, and I think it's successful in some cases. At least you are not taxed on the money that you give away to noble causes. I'm surprised he hasn't been mentioned already when we're talking about incredible amounts of wealth, but Bill Gates does give away quite a bit. It might be a trivial percentage of his net worth, but it's a pile of money anyway. I think since he handed over control of Microsoft some years ago, the majority of his time is spent managing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and it's done a lot of good, particularly in the fight against Malaria if I remember right.

I could go on and on with my objections to Microsoft's conduct when Gates ran it or some of the deals he made back then, but I won't say anything bad about him as a humanitarian. I think he truly understands the responsibility that comes with the kind of wealth and power he has.

[crazedmongoose2003]

Originally Posted by Lord-General Thunder

I was just reminded rather randomly of the plight of the third world, and thought to myself (as often happens) "surely there's something to be done about that."

Now, normally I think the Robin Hood model is ridiculous. Steal from the rich; give to the poor is a wonderful idea until you realize that at a certain point the only rich people will be in your income range, and then things won't be so much fun anymore.

However; there are folks with so much money they are statistically incapable of spending it all on themselves, or so I'm told.

If we were to take this money from them and apply it to the troubles of the third world, would it be enough to solve the monetary problems? (I say monetary, because not all of their problems can be solved by throwing money at them.)

And just to be clear, I'm not advocating taking it from them. They earned that wealth fair and square; what's theirs is theirs to do with as they please, within the law.

Okay, this post got long fast, I'll break it up.

The inherent efficiency of Capitalism and the need for less bureacratic control in third world countries

The problem is the minute you take away people's rights to keep whatever they earned, you remove incentives for work efficiency, economical, social and technological developments, and basically most other things that ensure a progressive society. There's a reason workers in capitalist societies are always more efficient, and technology always develops faster, and it's that we allow people to become hideously rich.

Of course, there is a sliding tax scale, as there should be, so theoretically rich people are supposed to give more of course, the problem rests with tax evasions so favoured by the upper/upper middle class, especially the entrepenuer class which, let's face it, remains the cornerstone of western society since the 1600's-ish, for all their faults.


Possible Solutions to the Africa problem:

And there's a problem with dumping money into places like Africa, the place is so corrupt and inefficient that money won't really help, the first rule they drum to you in economics is that it's all about raising the universal quality of life via the most efficient use of resources possible.

But maybe free market capitalism isn't the answer for Africa, not so much the theory, but more it just can't be executed successfully, I think the relative success of socialism and failure of capitalism in Central America, contrasted with the reverse in East Asia (ie. success of capitalism and failure of state controlled economies, I won't say communism because obviously China broke the mould by having a relatively free market despite being communist) shows quite obviously the solution differs from region to region.

Development for the long term or saving lives in the short term?

I think, and this is really betraying my conscience to say this, but I think the best way to help Africa is to somewhat turn a blind eye to their horrific human rights violations and such and engage in economic and infrastructure based developments, in bilateral relationships with their corrupt and evil as all hell governments.

I mean it's impossible to read the situation in Darfur and not want the west to go and support the SLA and overthrow the Sudanese government, but then ask yourselves, how many of the west's successfuly governments did start in utterly corrupt and evil rule? I can think of three just from the top of my head, South Korea, Taiwan (not a nation officially I know) and Greece.

Here are three nations who had virtual despots in charge after WW2, but through the economic development of the US (who conveniently turned a blind eye to the fact that they're all ruled as lunatic police states), they eventually developed into democratic and well off states.

So, and I can't believe I'm saying this, I think China's doing the right thing right now in terms of helping Africa. Even if it's for their own selfish gains (much like the US helping South Korea and Greece was just trying to win the cold war), I think if you have an experienced government with all the technologies, resources and expertise needed to seriously develop a nation's infrastructure and economy, then eventually said nation will become economically better off. And with economic growth comes education and social and political reforms (most of the time, the Middle East proves resistant to this rule).

If I was emperor.....

So if I were to have a say in this whole thing, encourage donations through charities like Oxfam and Amnesty International on one hand, to minimize the loss suffered by the victims, but on the otherhand, pour the resources of the state into strictly bilateral relationships with the country's government. Instead of constantly just pressurizing them to fix up their place without any suggestions on how to do so.

The bad point in this suggestion of course, is that these countries will become better off eventually, but will not be self determined. But hey, in this age, I think you can count on one hand the number of nations in this world that's truly self determined from either the US, EU or Russia. And also, countries with no strategic value will continue to be abandoned.