Zimbabwe and South Africa

The President of South Africa seems to be part of the problem, not part of the solution.

"Mbeki is complicit in these totalitarian actions by Mugabe and the British Government must not let him get away with hiding behind a smokescreen of anti-colonialism."

"Miss Hoey, who chairs the all-party Zimbabwean parliamentary group, said that most agricultural and industrial sectors have collapsed under the onslaught of the regime's policies."

"Millions of pounds-worth of investment in good housing, small factories and machinery have been smashed. She said Zimbabwe was an even more sinister and dangerous country than when she visited it last time."

"Everything Mugabe's police and army do is done with virtually no media access and filming and reporting is perilous."

Britain Freezes Aid to Ethiopia Over Civil Unrest

Look's like Britain is suspending 20 million in aid to Ethiopia, but still sending 40 million. I wonder how many Ethiopians would have to be murdered by the Ethiopian government before all aid will be stopped. Here are the details.

Helping Africa fail, AGAIN!

Is the ONE Campaign promoting the Right Kind of Help?

Selected exerpts:

"For while humanitarian assistance undoubtedly saves lives today, and debt-write off and new aid have their place, they send the same signals Africa has been receiving for the past four decades--the entire continent is a basket case in need of aid."

"The Blair-Bush announcement of $674 million in aid for Eritrea and Ethiopia is worrying. While we except that food aid is warranted, the leaders of these two countries are among the worst in Africa, and we are rewarding them for bankrupting their agricultural economies through corruption, mismanagement, and communist collectivization. Yet on May 24 President Issias Afwerki of Eritrea even blamed the United States for his economic failure."

"In the last week Ethiopians killed 36 protesters who were up in arms over the failure to release election results on schedule. These results have been embargoed for several months so that its government can cook the books. In the meantime, they are declaring martial law. Did the Blair-Bush announcement give them license to conduct these acts? Probably so, given that United Kingdom has just suspended $54 million in new aid to Ethiopia."

"Moreover, aid transfers and debt forgiveness do little to change the basic institutional failures of the past 30 years that have made Africa poorer and sicker while the rest of the world has become richer and healthier."

"The danger in sending more aid to Africa is that the very governments that frustrate economic growth with laws and regulations, which entrench the power of political elites, will handle that money. Giving them more money empowers them further and ensures that they are removed from the populations that, theoretically, voted them into power."

"Africa does not need apologies, rock concerts, and aid plans. It needs the current leaders of its countries to recognize the importance of economic freedom and the rule of law. When these institutions are attacked, African leaders must defend them."

"Yet the way in which nearly every African leader has supported Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's destructive policies indicates that Africa's leaders continue to live in the past, and in so doing consign their people to a future of decades of suffering."

"Regardless of the pressure from Bono and his friends, or disasters in Ethiopia or Zimbabwe, blanket debt-write offs, and massive aid increases will not help. Only aid tied to democratic reforms--especially reforms of property right structures--will likely deliver results. The fact that there is no private property in Ethiopia is the reason its economy is such a mess."

Fair Trade

Something that would help every country, impoverished or not, is Fair Trade. Governments should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. The only concern of any government should be to ensure that everyone plays by the same rules.

David Frum's Diary on Africa Relief

David Frum's Diary on National Review Online has been making some excellent points about Africa in two of his journal pieces.

Here are a few excerpts:

Zimbabwe was given every chance to succeed - open
access to global markets on a preferential basis, massive foreign aid from all quarters, technical assistance in whatever field was requested. We started out with an educated elite - many of whom had lived abroad for a number of years. We had a diverse economy based on mining, agriculture, industry and commerce. We were virtually debt free. The world was at our feet but we blew it.

"Today Zimbabwe is a basket case - we cannot feed our people, we have destroyed over half the formal sector jobs in the economy, our industry is in tatters, all other sectors of the economy either shrinking or stagnant. Our social services are a mess and life expectancy has halved. We are poorer than we were 30 years ago and there is no sign of an end to the decline and all pervading despair.

"No amount of aid or debt relief or trade concessions are going to help this country get out of the hole it is in - only a radical change of direction and leadership will do that and I am afraid that this same analysis applies to many countries on the continent.

"People talk of a 'Marshal Plan' for Africa, failing to recognize that countries like Zimbabwe have been the recipients of more aid per capita than was applied to Europe in 1945. People talk about debt relief - we are not servicing our debt at all at present, the US$7 billion in debt that we owe is virtually free money anyway. It's not even trade - African countries have had access to European markets on an extremely preferential basis for 25 years and yet only a tiny minority have taken up the opportunities available.

"Our collapse is self-inflicted, its home grown, and until this sort of nonsense is addressed by the global and the African community, there is no hope for countries like Zimbabwe, the Congo, Sudan, Somalia and so on. We are our own worst enemies and we must fix what is wrong here at home in Africa, before we can make effective use of the generosity of the developed world and the new global village that offers such marvelous opportunities and freedom.

"When it comes to the wholesale theft of national resources and the subversion of the rule of law and democracy, our leaders are in a league all by themselves. We have become adept at manipulating the media and foreign governments and the multinational agencies such as the World Bank and the UN. To this long list we perhaps should now add the G8 leadership and Bob Geldof. We allow African leaders to strut across the platforms of the world stage as if they were acting in the real interests of their people and not acting simply as self-serving tyrants.

"Quite frankly until African leaders themselves put their own houses in order there should be no talk of assistance of any kind. It is ridiculous that Ethiopia with its rich agricultural resources has been supported by massive food aid for over 20 years. Just take a look at Nigeria - one of the oil giants of the world yet threatened with instability and rising poverty that belies its wealth and status.

"Development and poverty alleviation take discipline, honesty, openness and democracy in national political life. It takes hard work and commitment and the strict observance of the rule of law and the guarantee of investor rights and business contracts. If African leaders applied these principles to their own and their public lives they would bring prosperity and freedom

The debate over African aid has been influenced enough by the experience of the past half century that aid proponents feel they must make at least some nods toward issues of accountability and governance. But they say they can't do more than nod because impoverished countries like Benin or Niger can hardly be expected to generate capable public sectors and independent civic institutions overnight. Fair enough, maybe. But South Africa has--or has had--a capable public sector and independent civic institutions. The problem there is that the political authorities are at work traducing and destroying those assets for their own selfish advantage.

Enough

I’m a little disturbed this morning that I couldn’t find a single article which lists the African nations that will have their debt relieved by the G8 nations. I’m a little perturbed this morning that I couldn’t find a single article that names a single institution that will be writing off the debt to the unnamed African nations. I’m a little disheartened this morning that so few reporters, and so few advocates, and so few politicians, give a you know what about the details of the G8 debt relief package to Africa.

I’m finding out this morning that good intentions, no matter who gets hurt, is what makes the world go around; not moral governments, not inquisitive reporters, not knowledgeable skeptics, just big hearts and gutless leaders deciding what to do with money they didn’t have to earn in order to control. Money someone else had to break a sweat in order to earn; money someone else was counting on; money a lot of deserving and poor people will now never see.

Every transaction between one person or one institution who lends money to another person or institution or government has consequences. The lender postpones investing or spending their money for the period until the loan is repaid. The lender usually gets a fixed rate of return in order to offset the effects of inflation and provide a small return as an incentive. This incentive is what keeps funds available to be lent. The borrower gets the benefit of using money that has not been earned by agreeing to pay back the original loan along with an interest charge. In effect, the lender is postponing the gratification of using their money and the borrower is receiving unearned gratification.

Not every borrower is poor and not every lender is wealthy. There are many wealthy borrowers throughout the world and there are also many poor lenders throughout the world. Financial markets evaluate the risk associated with a loan in order to allow lenders to decide how much risk they are willing to exchange for a certain amount of return. Those who are poor have the opportunity to enjoy more of the fruits of their labor if they are willing to postpone enjoyment and accept a small amount of risk.

The market in Africa and South America is not working now, just as it has not worked in my lifetime, because lending decisions have not been based on market forces. My guess is that very little of the debt has been going to entrepreneurs who could actually make life better in these developing countries. My guess is that the debt is going to governments who don’t allow free markets and free people to make free spending, working, lending, and investing decisions. My prediction is that this won’t be the last time we will be seeing Brad Pitt and Bono claiming American’s aren’t doing enough for the rest of the world. If only Pitt and Bono knew what they were talking about.

Reasonable People

For the last few days, I have been pestering Steve at Thy Grace is Sufficient about The ONE Campaign. I want to thank him for giving this issue more thought. He has been doing some heavy reading and some heavy lifting and has now posted his latest thoughts in his piece: The One Campaign, Pros and Cons.

I never meant to imply that AIDS and poverty in Africa were simple issues or that The ONE Campaign was too simple of a solution. I love this cause, but I reject many of the methods of this campaign. Sometimes doing something, even with good intentions, is the wrong thing to do when it causes more harm than good. Free people taking advantage of free markets is a solution that works every time to reduce poverty. The redistribution of wealth through force is a temporary band-aid that creates a long term great big fat festering sore everywhere and every time it has been unleashed on a population of people.

"... whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." is the rationale Steve is using for supporting the campaign. Reasonable people can always find disagreement about certain methods. However, every proposal made by The ONE Campaign will definitely hurt someone without even knowing if someone else will be helped. Some of the “someone’s” that will be hurt are “the least of these”. Don’t we also have a minimal obligation to at least not cause more harm and more suffering?

I hope Steve will forgive me for being such a pest.

The Game of Golf

Golfers will really enjoy this article: Cooler (club) heads prevail

Selected quotes:

"When they used to use the little tractors as tee markers at the John Deere [Classic], that got pretty ugly," Lowery said. "Guys just mangled those things, just reduced them to matchsticks. The pineapple tee markers at Sony have also taken a beating. You'd walk up to a tee there, and one of the markers would be nothing but a stump, the pineapple vaporized, and you'd start chuckling and say, 'Well, I guess Steve [Pate]'s been here.' "

"I think that's because the guys today don't really know the proper way to throw a club," said Bolt, always the showman, in a recent interview. "First, you've got to helicopter a club. Throw it so it spins parallel to the ground. Don't tomahawk it, not if you plan on hitting it again. Those tomahawk jobs almost always break. Plus, I've had more than a few jagged shafts lunge back at me for revenge when I've broken them like that.

"Second, always throw clubs down the fairway, so you don't have to waste energy and suffer the indignity of walking back for the darn thing. I always suggest putters for beginners because not only will those suckers really fly, but I haven't met one yet that didn't deserve some abuse."

Such displays are completely alien to today's tour, though Sweden's Jesper Parnevik recalled a moment of somewhat premeditated mania from early in his career. "One of my first years on the European Tour we were in Spain and I was over a 3-foot putt, and this Spanish guy up in the TV tower wouldn't stop talking on his cell phone," Parnevik said. "I screamed at him, and he didn't stop. He just kept right on chattering away, very loud. So, finally, I marked my ball, very calmly, picked it up, and threw it at him up in the tower. Unfortunately, I missed the putt. More unfortunately, I missed him."

Artful Criticism

Last week I posted this piece where I described this post from The Internet Monk as my favorite post of all time.

In his piece, The Internet Monk laments the inability of most Christians to be effective critics. He believes that a major reason most Christians don’t have the skills necessary to effectively criticize anything is because most Christians don’t practice and develop the skills needed to be effective.

Today, I want to highlight my second favorite post of all time. The honorable mention goes to Rob Asghar at Dime Store Guru for his brilliant two-part piece describing a letter of criticism he wrote to a social justice minister. In ”questions for a social-justice minister” and then ”More questions for the social-justice champion” Rob is not only effective in making his points, he turns his written criticism into a work of art. I especially like the way Rob affirms as he criticizes. As I read his pieces, I realized I needed to rethink some of my own assumptions as I vacillated between agreement and disagreement. The letter may have been written for someone else, but it hit home with me. Hopefully, I can someday learn to emulate Rob's technique.

Dead Trees and Beautiful Daughters

I've been tagged... by Bonnie at Off the top to answer a few questions about my book reading life.

I’m embarrassed to say, but I guess not too embarrassed to write, that I don’t spend much time with dead trees these days. My wife thinks I’m trying to kill the ficus tree in our back yard, but that’s a different story. I honestly don’t remember the last book I bought or the last book I read cover to cover. I have been reading to my daughters for the last six or seven years. The youngest is finishing kindergarten this year and she is turning in to a voracious reader who would rather read to me than have me read to her.

My favorite book from this period in my life is Goose and the Mountain Lion. It is a work of precision word-smithing by Marion Harris and beautifully illustrated by Jim Harris. It was a gift to my daughters from their grandmother who passed away in January which adds to why I think it is so special.

My second favorite book is Elmo's Counting Game. I had a lot of fun talking like Elmo as I read the book to my girls and they learned how to count.

I won’t be tagging any of my blogging buddies. No need in embarrassing any other computer-only readers.

Principles

Some of life’s best principles are absolute gems on the micro or personal level. However, oftentimes when a principle that is beneficial on a personal level is applied to a macro or governmental level, it creates a disaster. Charity and debt relief are two such principles meant for the micro and not for the macro.

Charity is beautiful to behold when the giver and the receiver get to look each other in the eye. The giver gets the gratification and joy of knowing they have helped and made life better for a fellow human being who is in need. The receiver gets the appreciation from knowing someone else cared enough to make a personal sacrifice in order to help. The receiver in one situation will often become the giver in another situation. Acts of grace are multiplied as giving is passed on.

Debt relief on a personal level is very similar to charity on a personal level. The lender and the debtor can look each other in the eye and know that the lender is making a sacrifice and the debtor is benefiting from the sacrifice. It is a beautiful act of grace when a person is forgiven a debt by another person.

The further people get from the eye to eye contact when performing acts of charity and debt relief, the less these acts are blessings and the more destructive these acts become. Welfare, at it’s core, is the act of forcing one person to pay the expenses of another person. The key word here is force. When a person is forced to pay the expenses of someone else, they don’t have a sense of gratification, they end up with a sense of bitterness. When a person is allowed, again through the force of law, to receive the benefits of someone else’s work, they no longer feel gratitude, they feel entitlement. Debt relief is very similar. Customers of lending institutions are forced to subsidize the other customers who default on their loan. The defaulter does not learn a lesson and no one is blessed.

The ONE Campaign | About the Campaign would be outstanding if it encouraged Americans to voluntarily reach into their pockets and give. However, it does not. The ONE Campaign is about forcing some people to pay the expenses of others.

I am surprised by the number of people I respect in the blogshere who have signed the Declaration. I am saddened that so many good people think it is acceptable to force others to pay for a cause they consider worthy. I am disheartened that the eighth commandment is so easily overlooked by Christians. I’m hoping some of the signers will reconsider.

Why One Percent?

Sometimes in life we feel compelled to get involved and help out an important cause. Sometimes in life, we need to take baby steps in the right direction, trusting God, even when we haven’t resolved all of the problems or issues that could arise from our actions. Sometimes in life, it is better to do nothing than it is to do something when the something that we do ends up making matters worse.

Every computer programmer knows that we don’t start out by writing a complete application. We start out by designing a prototype. Then we code and test, one method, and one procedure, and one routine at a time. We make sure the parts of our prototype have each been proven to work before we combine them to produce the prototype. Once the prototype is completely coded, we test it by using very specific sets of test data, not an entire universe of data. If, and only if, the prototype works exactly like it was imagined and designed, do we move on to the actual computer application. The application then goes through the same process as the prototype, with even more pieces and more testing before it is ever used on real data.

The promoters of The ONE Campaign | Why One Percent? are asking Americans to fork over a very huge amount of personal and national resources even before they have designed and proven a prototype is working. There never has been a computer program or anything else that works solely based on good intentions. The ONE Campaign won’t either. Let’s make sure it is working on a small scale before we make matters worse.

Welfare

Phil Dillon at Another Man's Meat describes welfare from a first person point of view in Freedom - The Best Antidote for the Tyranny of the Welfare State.

Capitalism's Truths

My readers may want to give Capitalism's Truths a look. Day after day, Josh has been hammering out very good economic lessons. Leave a comment, too. He's way too smart to be so lonely.

Contrarian View From the Pew: Duck

If it looks like a duck, and if it quacks like a duck, more often than not...it's a duck. The ONE Campaign sure looks like a big fat global welfare quacker to me.

Once again, good intentions seem to be getting the best of common sense. Welfare doesn’t decrease poverty; never has and never will. How can we expect God to bless a government program that conflicts with the eighth commandment? Stealing from some in order to give to others is still stealing. Government sanctioned stealing is no more moral than putting on a black suit and visiting your neighbor in the middle of the night.

The best way to reduce poverty is to increase freedom; not reduce freedom by placing a greater burden on tax payers and workers around the world. Do people never learn, or is this just more proof that most people care more about how they are perceived by others than they care about the truth? Good intentions sometimes leads to disastrous results when the good intentions are not accompanied by effective methods. There is a real danger that poverty, AIDS, and dependence will all be increased in Africa with this proposal just like poverty and dependence were increased in America during welfare’s heyday.

There are sensible, effective, and moral methods we can use to decrease global poverty, though. First and foremost, we should open the borders of the United States to more immigration. Some of the money immigrants earn in the United States will make it’s way back to the immigrant’s country of origin where it will help to increase economic opportunities. We should also reduce taxes across the board in the United States which would increase investments in under-developed countries, and also increase spending in America on goods imported from other countries.

Freedom is a time tested method for reducing poverty and improving lives. Welfare is a black hole that destroys families and increases poverty. We should be promoting freedom, not welfare.

Emily Post: Salute

In the military salutes are not voluntary. As a private in the United States Marine Corp, I hated saluting; especially when it meant saluting a butter bar. I had a gut level feeling of inferiority when I had to salute someone who wasn’t much older and probably not any more accomplished than I was. However, something inside of me had changed by the time I was promoted to Sergeant. As a Sergeant, saluting no longer felt subservient, saluting became a sign of respect; a sign of mutual respect as my salute was returned.

My blogroll links are my way of saluting fellow bloggers. I want to acknowledge the bloggers who I consider exceptional; those who either write exceptionally well or who have a unique and interesting perspective. There is a lot of sameness in the blog world. I prefer unique, especially uniquely good.

Pete at Bryans Nonsense has left comments on my site and he has also had me on his blogroll for quite some time. Pete seems like a great guy to me. He is always respectful, kind, and knowledgeable. I’ve wanted to reciprocate his gesture, but I am uncomfortable with Pentecostals, especially unabashed Pentecostals like Pete. It finally occurred to me this morning that I don’t need to agree with the emphasis of Pete’s site in order to return his salute. I’m sorry it took me so long to return your salute Pete; this Marine should have known and acted better.

All Time Best Post

I don't know how I found this post or when I first read it, but it is one of the few posts I saved in my favorites. Every time I read it, I pick up something new. It is so well reasoned and well written that it is my favorite post of all time.

My award for the best post of all time goes to The Internet Monk.

Does anyone else have a favorite post of all time? Post it on your blog so we can do some heavy thinking next week.

Middle Age

I'm sure there are a lot of guys wishing they were DANICA PATRICK's boyfriend this week. Maybe it's a sign of middle age, but I'm wishing I was her agent!

National Influence

When it comes to influence at our National level, practically nothing is as it should be. Elected leaders should be in the business of persuasion, but they are not. Reporters should be in the business of collecting, organizing, and relaying the facts, but they are not. Commentators should be in the business of exposing the flaws in our system, but they are not.

Politicians like to give the impression that they are actively trying to change the minds of others and that they are open to new ideas. However, politicians aren’t really interested in new ideas or even any ideas; they are mostly interested in the influence that is derived from power. Political speeches today are about positioning, not persuasion. It is much easier, much more effective for getting votes, and much better for the campaign bank account for a politician to speak about what his constituents want to hear than it is for the politician to make an effort and risk loosing voters by trying to persuade voters or fellow politicians to change their mind. Power in Washington comes from riding the right wave, and collecting the money associated with the wave, at the right time.

Reporters try to give the impression that they are just reporting the facts, but every story has an angle and every story has a purpose whether or not it is acknowledged by the reporter. The stories that get told, the way they are told, the facts that get included, the facts that get omitted, the quotes that get included or not included, and the insinuations all make a story influential. For many years now, the National media has supported the more liberal causes and challenged the more conservative causes with their stories, but with the development of internet, the liberal monopoly has been broken. However, it has not been replaced with neutral story tellers; it has been replaced with even more partisan story tellers on both sides. Thankfully, more and more people are learning to read between the lines. Sadly, fewer and fewer people are willing to consider views that conflict with their own.

Commentators write and talk like they are making an effort to persuade. However, persuasion is the secondary concern for the national commentator. Face time and print space are the primary concerns of the successful national commentator. The successful commentator needs to develop an audience and maintain that audience. Just like the politician, it is much easier and much more effective for a commentator to appeal to his or her audience by advocating the causes of the audience than it is for the commentator to try to change the minds of the audience they’ve got. People listen to Rush Limbaugh to find out if he agrees with them, they don’t listen to him for his insight.

I can’t name a single elected official who is persuasive. I can’t name a single reporter who is neutral. Chris Wallace comes close. However, I can name a commentator who I think is somewhat different, and therefore effective at changing minds in a good way. Dennis Prager is persuasive because he doesn’t make much of an effort to persuade any of his callers to change their mind. He interviews his callers in order to bring clarity to an issue. He puts all of his effort into clarifying the areas of agreement and disagreement and the reasons for differences of opinion. There are commentators I agree with more than Dennis, but there is no one who has taught me more because he respects others by letting them make up their own mind.

Resisting Influence

In my two previous posts, I have first tried to differentiate the difference between “persuasion” and “influence” and then I have proposed that Christians should be reluctant to wield influence using techniques other than pure “persuasion” because all other methods involve manipulation and control which is sinful most of the time.

There is no doubt in my mind that way too often, believers, including myself, succumb to the sinful desire to manipulate and control others. As believers, we need to resist the temptation to manipulate others, and we also need to develop the judgment and discipline that is required to resist the manipulation of others. Sure, we have all heard and we all know we shouldn’t conform to the world, but I have never heard a clear definition anywhere of what it means to “not conform”. Most of us have houses, and cars, and clothes, and we play sports, and attend parties, and vacation, and recreate, just like all of the non-believers. I’m not sure we need all of our possessions or activities, but I would still maintain, “not conforming” has more to do with how we handle the influence of others than it has to do with what we possess or what we do for fun.

Most people, most of the time, are influenced by their own emotions and by the status of other people; not by truthfulness of an idea. I’m not claiming most people are dumb or that they don’t care about the truth, but I am claiming that most people balance the truth with their feelings about how they will be perceived by others, and often times the truth gets subjugated to the need to be perceived in a positive way by others. Madonna and Tom Cruise are influential because they have been able to reinvent themselves in a way that creates an image that is attractive and desired by a large part of the population. Leaders of political parties in the United States are influential because opponents within the party take a big risk of being alienated when they offer alternative ideas. Pastors, and Elders, and Deacons, and other leaders, in most Churches are influential for the same reason; opposition has consequences regardless of the validity of a new or different idea.

We can choose to go along in order to get along in society and in our churches, or we can choose to resist the influence of others. It’s not wrong to want to be like others when we are following the example of positive role models. It’s not wrong to have the same ideas as others when we evaluate an idea based on the merits of the idea. However, it is wrong to want to be like someone else because of how we will be perceived by others and it is wrong to support an idea solely because someone else who is influential has the same idea. We shouldn’t allow our emotional need for acceptance to influence our understanding or our support of the truth.