He is obviously right, add up the money Gates and Buffet have made for their shareholders and employees, plus all of the consumer surplus generated by their businesses and it would dwarf the amount they have given to charity. This doesn’t mean that charity is bad though. It is better to give someone a hundred dollars than one dollar, but giving away dollar bills is a good thing. As long as Gates and Buffet are doing charity in addition to business instead of instead their charity work is good.
However, I don’t see how getting a corrupt government to hand you a monopoly is creating much value for anyone.
It is partly a chicken/egg phenomena, because the investments people like Gates and Buffett make are designed to improve health, education and infrastructure in developing nations which will make them more able to become economically self sufficient.
A nation where people are spending tons on preventable illnesses, where there is no social stability, where people are malnourished (which causes physical and psychological problems), where there are no roads or electricity, etc. is one that isn’t going to be self sufficient.
However poverty rates declined dramatically in Asia, less so in the middle east and Latin America, but were stable in Africa from 1970-2005.
http://blog.american.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/poverty3.jpg
I once read that Africa was soon expected to be the only part of the world still in poverty in 40 years. The rest of the world will be out of poverty by then. So global anti-poverty efforts can’t explain why Asian poverty rates dropped dramatically while African poverty rates were stable.
On the subject of investment, it isn’t just private charity that invests. It is also public charity and remittances.
http://www.nextbillion.net/news/remittances-to-africa-overtakes-foreign-direct-investment
So IMO, you should have both. But places in East Asia rose out of poverty even w/o international aid, and they addressed their health/infrastructure problems later with the new wealth they had.
But if he (the person in question) doesn’t have clean drinking water or sanitation, he won’t be able to work the job since he will be sick more often. And if he grew up malnourished his capacity for physical labor and his cognitive abilities will be lowered. And if he doesn’t have a cell phone, electricity or internet access, he won’t be able to gather information to improve his lot in life as much. Either way, it isn’t an either/or situation. People can get and hold good jobs because they are healthy and live in a stable society. Or good jobs can provide wealth to make people health and society more stable.
My understanding is what is happening now is countries like China & India are investing in Africa since they have domestic markets similar to Africa (rural and poor). So they can create a product that has both a domestic & international market. But the effort to make money in Africa will raise the standard of living.
It’s bizarre you continue to compare the whole of Africa to individual nations. Also once again there’s a massive difference in the state India was left in compared to the states many of these African nations were left in and even so India suffered (and is still suffering) from massive poverty and instability. India also has received billions in charitable aid so it’s hardly an example of a nation that pulled itself up with no outside help.
Good thing I never made that claim either. I’m arguing that Japan is <> Africa. I would assume this is self evident. Once again Japan received billions in aid as well. Would Japan be even further along if that aid had been withheld?
Well geez if the “wealth” and plundering happened yesterday there’s no way it would leave behind a system of epidemic corruption and instability whose impact is still being felt today. So…your theory is that Africans don’t have the same amount of brains as the Japanese? Or is it that they have the brains but waste it in the lap of luxury our charities provide them with? It doesn’t have anything to do with regional differences, environmental differences, ethnic differences, different starting points, the fact that one is a homogeneous nation and the other is a huge continent made of varying factions. What in your mind is holding Africa back from becoming Japan 2.0?
This fish analogy is getting out of hand. It does not apply very well here at all.
What is meant by “give someone a job”? In this context it means investing in new businesses with the intent to make a profit, with the side effect that many desperately poor people are potentially employed by this business. That is all very good and well, but sane business owners will setup shop where there is sufficient infrastructure and skills to support their business. Nobody is going to setup a factory making cheap plastic shit in the middle of nowhere in the worst poverty stricken country in Africa. They are going to set it up in a place like China where they have transport infrastructure, reliable enough electricity, etc.
There is a baseline of poverty below which it is very, very difficult to spend any energy on anything but surviving the day. If you have to walk four hours a day just to get drinking water, or spend all your days caring for chronically ill kids there isn’t a lot of room for the extra effort required to better your position. Sure, if a company came in and built up the infrastructure and provided training for its own purposes that would no doubt have a hugely positive effect. But it isn’t going to happen on a wide scale, not when there is better infrastructure yet still cheap labor elsewhere.
In these places I believe there is a huge value in tackling some of the issues that make lives difficult and also make investment too dicey a proposition. Even if your goal is not to convince a large company to invest there, by investing in basic services such as water, medical care and education you help create conditions where local people can at least start their own small businesses.
Does it really change anything if we change the word “Africa” to “Nigeria”?
Yes, you didn’t make that claim. The OP put out the question: is charity better than economic development?
Even before 1850s and the concept of International Monetary Fund or billions in “foreign aid”, or Africa colonialism, Japan was ahead of [insert particular nation of Africa].
Your text might have a clue. Varying factions and infighting has been put forth by academics before. If that’s an underlying reason, the charities won’t make it go away.
I really don’t know what exactly is holding Africa back. What I do know is charity vaccinations and hospitals won’t solve their problems. I’m not suggesting that the charities stop doing that. I’m saying that delivering more of it isn’t the magic elixir that will lift them out of poverty.
And on top of that, India, Japan, and China all had functioning preindustrial civilizations and a shared culture before Western imperialism ran them over. They’d already done the work of more-or-less culturally unifying and learning how to run a large, centrally organized society before then; they could basically pick up where they left off in many ways. It’s the societies that were already organized before colonialism came along that organized themselves best after it collapsed.
Africa on the other hand had little of that, and what little organization it had was smashed rather than co-opted. The only modern governmental methods it had first hand experience with were those of a system designed only for exploitation. And on top of that dissension was encouraged to keep them weak, and to top it off they were handed a bunch of national borders that had nothing to do with the local cultural ones.
The big determinant with the countries that succeed or don’t - is the social attitude to learning. The most successful - Japan, China, Korea (even the Jewish religion) - have a tradition of honoring the scholar. They are considred important and are respected, even if they do not become rich. India has a somewhat similar tradition of scholarship. China’s was strongest, with the ancient civil service exams so that even the lowliest peasant could become a top civil servant with enough knowledge and talent. Oddly enough, China is probably the biggest develop miracle of the late 20th century. Japan or Germany may have been flattened in 1945 (and Korea in 1950), but they still had their educated class.
What does Africa have? A tradition that the chief kills everyone he wants and takes all the wives he wants, and war settles everything. I’m not an Africa expert, but I have not heard of much ancient tradition of scholarship. When the 19th century social upheaval of European occupation was added, no wonder the place is still in chaos.
So, none of them mentioned colonialism?
Let’s take the Congo, a place I know fairly well. King Leopold, and the Union Minere, gave jobs to the Congolese, so thing should have been just dandy according to your lights. They also looted the place. Didn’t do too well with the teaching though - at the time of Independence, in 1960, the first class of Congolese in Louvanium University, outside of Leopoldville, was just graduating. Before this, the Congolese were not allowed to attend. Perhaps that had something to do with it.
We all know how the Europeans split up Africa into countries ignoring the natural tribal boundaries. We all know that anything that could have evolved into governments was destroyed by the Europeans, with nothing put into their place until independence was granted almost overnight.
I wonder how the US would have done if England had not permitted colonial legislatures, so that none of the Founding Fathers would have had any opportunity to learn democracy first hand?
BTW, I’m sure Japan benefited greatly from the good sense of keeping Europeans far away from them for such a long time. When contact was made, there was a strong government to push for modernization.
Britain took control of the administration of India, (siphoning off profits where they could), but they did not destroy the social order of India or plunder the region using minimal infrastructure and India was far wealthier than sub-Sahara Africa throughout history.
I highly recommend that you read Jared Diamond’s excellent Guns, Germs and Steel.
Things aren’t as simple as you seem to think.
Well, not Egypt, really, and not so much South Africa.
However, in 1850, Africa had been plundered by slavers, (both with original raids and with the internecine strife that the off-shore slavers promoted to encourage internal slave taking and selling), while Japan had remained an independent nation until coerced by U.S. guns to join the 19th century–which it did with a lot of assistance from the U.S. and Britain.
I read that book and also Collapse. Jared believes in environmental factors and geographical destiny. Not everyone agrees with him fully.
Britain was also outnumbered in Africa. They also had to rely on administration by proxy (tribal chiefs, whatever).
Many scholars believe the after effects of colonialism of Africa has been overstated as a reason for its ongoing poverty situation today.
I doubt that “many scholars” say any such thing, but it would be interesting to see one who actually has said that (as well as his background and his arguments and their rebuttals).
(And whatever Britain might have done, its example was only marginally followed bythe French and never by the Germans or the Belgians.)
Thomas Sowell would be one. (He’s black but hopefully, people won’t hold that against him.)
I have a dozen books by him so I don’t remember the exact book that has the extensive chapter about Africa. If I were to drill into book’s bibliography, we could cross-reference more academics.
You can google keywords “Thomas Sowell” and “Africa” to get some sense of his arguments but none of the online articles have the depth (or the bibliography) of his book on the subject of Africa.
I’d like to point out that Buffet was not really into too much charity etc until fairly recently. At the age that Helu’ is now, I’m guessing, just guessing, that Buffett and Helu’ would have held very similar positions.
Did they say why? Because I don’t agree with your equivalency between Japan and Africa, but I doubt you will let me get away simply dismissing it without explanation.
One reason is that they compared the diaspora of various ethnic groups throughout the world (Africans, Jews, Asians, etc). They compare the economic outcomes of various immigrants (and their children & grandchildren) in other countries to rule out geographic destiny. (“Yes blacks were disadvantaged because of slavery, but Jews were also persecuted and marginalized for 2000 years. Vietnam was under China rule for 1000 years… blah blah blah” — that type of stuff.)
I feel these comments may open up a whole can of worms about racial biases and accusations of Darwinian inferiority but I’m not really interested in debating that hot-button subject. I’m just mentioning the type of data the scholars looked at and why they disagree with Mr. Diamond.
Jared Diamond has some interesting points about environmental factors but I’m not aware of any rebuttals he’s made against the diaspora analysis.
Jaysus this is a long bloody bit of spin.
Outnumbered?
Bloody fucking meaningless statement. The Empire relied on proxy rule by active choice, as it was cheaper, and given the goals, more effective.
The Belgians and the French were also “outnumbered” and had direct adminstration.
That observation is fundamentally dishonest or ignorant.
Handwaving spin (in the context of your other comments).
The “analysis” described is stunningly dishonest.
This statement quoted is profoundly dishonest: "**"Yes blacks were disadvantaged because of slavery, but Jews were also persecuted and marginalized for 2000 years. *; never mind that is confused and obscures different situations - Jews in good numbers played very privledged roles and even discrimination pushed them off into roles that ended up being very useful (banking, trade), whereas 16-19th century black african slavery forced people seen as African in manual labour roles.
There is absolutely not a real and proper honest comparison between the situations, the only possible rational for such an analysis is polite apologia for fundamental racism.
I hardly consider a bloody black American who knows nothing particularly profound about African nor is a proper scholar of Africa (nor a proper scholar to my view, whatever Americans think) a convincing citation.
So, you’re really quite good at sweeping generalisations without any proper real citation, and appeals to vague authority, all in the general direction of African inferiority, with … ostentatious disclaimer of course.
Bloody rot.