If At First You Don’t Succeed...

by Richard A. Cheatham, Press Media Group, LLC

“If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.” The message of the recent Live 8 extravaganza and the Group of Eight summit meeting in Scotland was, “If at first you don’t succeed, try the same failed methods over and over whether they work or not.”

Another message might be, “Looking as if you are doing something worthwhile and gaining enormous media attention for your career is far more important than actually helping people.” The “solutions” touted by the organizers of Live 8 and government “leaders” at G 8 are the very things that aggravate and perpetuate the problems the organizers so loudly proclaim they want to eliminate. They called for and got lots more foreign aid and debt forgiveness. What they’ll get is more poverty and misery for the people they claim they want to help.

Has charity been tried before? Most of the previous $400 billion in government to government development aid sent to Africa over the last thirty years propped up and perpetuated some of the most tyrannical regimes in world today. That money enriched corrupt government officials who are the very people preventing any long-term improvement in Africa. Money that didn’t go directly into their pockets was dumped into their favored projects that misdirected the local economy away from the market-based projects that would have ultimately allowed people to climb out of poverty and starvation themselves.

Debts have been forgiven in the past too, $33 billion from 1989 to 1997 alone, according to Dr. Benjamin Powell at San Jose State University. What happened? Well, they borrowed more during that time. $41 billion more! Have poverty and starvation gone away? These “solutions” have not helped and they never will.

Here’s another saying, “Give a man a fish and he eats today. Teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” How about, “Give a man a fish and you encourage him to become dependent upon you and to become more willing to subordinate himself to your “expert leadership.” Teach him how to fish and he’s better off, though he might think you are wiser than you really are and might institutionalize some of your poor guidance. Stop enriching the local bullies who prevent him from fishing (and from freely trading and learning what really works) and he’ll save himself. But then he might empower himself to the point that you might begin to see him as a competitor, and you certainly wouldn’t want that, would you?

If we really wanted to help Africa, we would allow Africans to compete with us on an even basis. We would stop subsidizing our own politically connected agricultural barons and allow third world farm products to compete.

The real solution to poverty in Africa (or anywhere else) is greater economic (and individual) liberty. Free people solve problems and overcome challenges themselves when they need to and when they’re allowed to.

©2005 by Richard A. Cheatham. All rights reserved. Mr.Cheatham is a professional speaker/writer whose weekly column, “Drawing Back The Veil” appears weekly in The Lynchburg Ledger. Mr. Cheatham is syndicated through Press Media Group, LLC, 434-332-2845. Contact him through, Living History Assoc., Ltd., at www.LHALtd.com or DrawBackVeil@aol.com.