Well, I’ve had the vapid Live 8 on for 15 minutes, and I can’t handle it anymore. To hear a bunch of preening MTV dickheads telling me how I should feel about African debt relief, not to mention a bunch of rock stars, 75% of whom will never be heard from in a few years, it’s just driving me crazy. (Think I’m joking about the 75%? Here’s a list of the performers and presenters who participated at Live Aid in 1985. See how many of them you’ve heard from recently.)
For the record, I don’t have any problem with African debt relief. But relieving the debt is only a fraction of the problem, and these clueless twats at this show are acting like debt relief is going to immediately change the world, and it isn’t. Think of Africa as someone who really, really can’t manage their money. If someone rings up $20,000 in credit card debt, is it going to solve the problem to just get the debt absolved? Of course not, because the problem wasn’t the availability of credit, it was the inability to stay out of trouble in the first place.
We in the west give out money to these nations that has fewer strings attached to it than most tampons. It’s time to change this practice. Let’s dangle debt relief over their heads and DEMAND that, in return for the relief, we expect democratic reforms, free market reforms, access to the entire continent by aid workers, those sort of things. We can help with debt relief, but not in the finger-snapping way that these ignorant MTV shitbags are claiming it will.
This reminds me of the Die Hippie Die! episode of South Park. Remember the hippies at the hippie music jam? “Wooooooo! We’re using the power of rock to change the world! Woooooooo!” Of course, none of them actually had any idea how to change the world, and none of them cared. This is what 99% of the people attending or viewing this event think, that Africa would be fucking Disneyland if it wasn’t for the greed of the poopyhead leaders playing golf at the G8 conference. It’s distilling a very serious issue down into a one-sentence concept.
I once said that liberals don’t believe in anything that won’t fit on a bumper sticker. This is the perfect example. “African Debt Relief NOW!” That’s a coherent policy for fighting poverty? It’s nothing but one small piece of an astonishingly large problem. If you want a better idea of what we’re facing, read this classic essay from Kim DuToit, a true African-American. This is like treating AIDS with a band-aid.
I’m not saying that debt relief is a bad idea. It’s a good idea, and overall I totally agree with it. But if we have a list of the ten most pressing problems facing Africa right now, debt relief is number 10, and we still have the other 9 to deal with. It would be like if you were in the middle of an earthquake, there was a tornado heading right towards your house, a huge flood was heading your way, a volcano had just erupted down the street, and some guy came up to you and told you that Congratulations! We’ve absolved you of your $200,000 credit card debt! I don’t know anyone who would turn down debt absolution, but how is that going to solve all the other problems or, in the grand scheme of things, improve your life?
It isn’t.
What else can the G8 do? Remove their astonishing levels of tariffs and subsidies for agricultural products. We have these here in the US to a degree most people don’t realize, but we’re pikers compared to Europe. Developing nations are, by definition, based on an agrarian economy. (Think of the US before the industrial revolution.) Until there is development of resources and of capital and infrastructure, the best way that a country can pull itself from poverty is to grow something and sell it to someone else. (This isn’t just for Africa, either. Most of the former Soviet Bloc states are based on largely agricultural economies, because while Western Europe was flourishing under varying levels of capitalism and technology, Eastern Europe had the benefit of Soviet technology. Which is to say, none.) So, if we want to help Africans, the best thing we can do is create a market for the stuff they can sell. Right now that consists of two things, agricultural products and African artwork. The African artwork market isn’t large enough to sustain a country, and they can’t sell their agricultural products here because of our protectionist tariffs. The best thing we could ever do for Africa would be to remove these tariffs, but there isn’t a chance in hell of the G8 ever doing this, because there is WAY too much money involved in protecting industries and jobs back home.
This whole event is such feel-good bullshit, and this was exemplified by an interview I saw a minute ago. They had some black female hip-hop performer (whose name I didn’t catch, and I didn’t recognize her) being interviewed by some MTV guy who probably graduated high school two years ago. He asked her if she had learned anything from the experience of performing here. “Yeeah, yeeah, yeeah. I learned about the G8 about a week ago, you know, when I got asked to take part in this.” I, as someone who takes a serious interest in global politics, am supposed to take advice from some ignoramus who had no idea what the G8 was until A WEEK AGO?
Give me a break. Hear that clicking sound? It was me turning off the TV. I can appreciate the need for debt relief without being preached to by a bunch of brainless morons who know absolutely nothing about this issue.
