Ron on "humanitarian aid"

[scotto2008]

I think this remark was off-the-cuff, but I loved it.

Neal Conan suggested the US military can provide humanitarian aid for natural disasters.

Dr. Paul chuckled and said:

"I would say that the best humanitarian aid would be to stop bombing people."

[Kludge]

Lol... Thanks for posting that.

[Lucille]

Awesome.

Seems like a good time to post this article (I believe I'll send it to Neal Conan as well):


"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid! (http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html)"

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

[continues...]

...and to shill for more libertarian forms of private charities for those in need:

Heifer.org (http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.183217/)

Kiva.org (http://kiva.org/) (There are several other microloan organizations out there.)

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
--Confucius

[frdmrdr]

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

lol

btw, I think the confucius quote has been updated:

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

[erin moore]

I heard that also. They also pointed out that they Navy was able to provide that relief beacuse we HAVE and Navy presence and they were there. Ron said its not enough to tax the people and maintain our empire (something to that effect) just because "someday, maybe theres a chance that something might happen and we would be able to help.

If we brought our troops home from around the world Americans would be trillions of dollars richer and their overwhelming genorosity would come even greater than it does now.

[JosephTheLibertarian]

I think this remark was off-the-cuff, but I loved it.

Neal Conan suggested the US military can provide humanitarian aid for natural disasters.

Dr. Paul chuckled and said:

"I would say that the best humanitarian aid would be to stop bombing people."

Yeah, but I don't think that it's wise to be purely ideological on every single issue. That's why Ron Paul looked bad to most people when it came to the Sudan issue. Can someone be a libertarian without being an idealist?

[Bruno]

Yeah, but I don't think that it's wise to be purely ideological on every single issue. That's why Ron Paul looked bad to most people when it came to the Sudan issue. Can someone be a libertarian without being an idealist?

I don't know...

perhaps the questions should be:

Can people donate humanitarian aid privately without expecting their government to do it for them in the form of re-appropriating tax $$ without the public's consent thereby increasing deficit spending and causing animosity within other countries that we oppose sanctions on?

(my apologies for the run-on sentence)

[JosephTheLibertarian]

I don't know...

perhaps the questions should be:

Can people donate humanitarian aid privately without expecting their government to do it for them in the form of re-appropriating tax $$ without the public's consent thereby increasing deficit spending and causing animosity within other countries that we oppose sanctions on?

(my apologies for the run-on sentence)

Who said anything about sanctions? Saying "let's do nothing" to potential voters just plain looks bad. That's all I'm saying.

[idiom]

RP would do the opposite of sanction them. Trade with them so heavily that the work their way out of poverty.

[maiki]

I don't know...

perhaps the questions should be:

Can people donate humanitarian aid privately without expecting their government to do it for them in the form of re-appropriating tax $$ without the public's consent thereby increasing deficit spending and causing animosity within other countries that we oppose sanctions on?

(my apologies for the run-on sentence)

People *do* give aid in forms of private charities. These tend to be far better managed, far less imperiaist, and work far better at improving the conditions of those in those countries. And amazingly, people give amazing amounts to private charity when they don't expect the government to do it for them. I guess "can" is the wrong question, because people "do".

[idiom]

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are seeing extremely high ROI from their aid.

Imagine how much more they could help with a tax break?