What should one conclude about the prospects for the Bush-Blair plan to aid Africa? Let Andrew Bernstein help:
Most people forget that pre-industrial Europe was vastly poorer than contemporary Africa and had a much lower life expectancy. Even a relatively well-off country like France is estimated to have suffered seven general famines in the 15th Century, 13 in the 16th Century, 11 in the 17th Century and 16 in the 18th Century. And disease was rampant. Given an utter lack of sanitation, the bubonic plague, typhus and other diseases recurred incessantly into the 18th Century, killing tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands at a time.The effect on life expectancy was predictable. In parts of France, in the middle of the 17th Century, only 58 percent reached their 15th birthday, and life expectancy was 20. In Ireland, life expectancy in 1800 was a mere 19 years. In early 18th-Century London, more than 74 percent of the children died before reaching age 5.
Then a dramatic change occurred throughout Europe. The population of England doubled between 1750 and 1820, with childhood mortality dropping to 31.8 percent by 1830. Something happened that enabled people to stay alive.
What did that early period lack that the later period had?
What was it? The elephant in the living room, the answer that everyone already knows but many choose not to admit, is: Freedom.
I can understand that back in the days of Adam Smith and James Watt and that age of steam that the relationship between freedom and economic and physical progress was only dimly understood. Fine. There were far fewer excuses during the Progressive Era and the Depression. But the success of the brilliant Soviet/Popular Front propaganda, that the essential question of the day was Fascism vs. Communism, is explicable only by considering the high degree of mendacity involved. Ditto for its continuing success down to this day.
I don't claim to know who the next Aideed or Arafat or Mugabe will be. But I know where he'll be getting the contents of his Swiss or Liechtenstein bank account: from enablers like Bush and Blair, supported by idiots like Bono, mewling about "debt relief" for Africa. How about "oppression relief?" Anyone interested in trying that one?
Africa has the identical natural resource fundamentally responsible for the West's rise: the human mind. But it has neither the freedom nor the enlightenment philosophy of reason, individualism and political liberty necessary for creating wealth and health. Africa is mired in tribal cultures that stress subordination to the group rather than personal independence and achievement. All over the continent brutal dictators murder and rob innocent citizens in order to aggrandize themselves and members of their tribes.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Craig Ceely at June 19, 2005 01:03 PM