Apparently the Swedish people have so far collected SEK 50 million (£4,5 million) in support of looters and criminal politicians. The money is supposed to be sent to Haiti, and some of it will, but as any amoeba would know most of it will be stolen, squandered and perhaps, in best case scenario, used to rebuild some official buildings so the elitists have somewhere to be.
Haitians don’t need charity and lots of aid-packages sent without thought, what they need right now is capitalism and individual freedom. Otherwise they, a couple of years down, will yet again need our money and help.
If you feel the need to help; send instruction manuals on how to build stuff, send them a collection of Ayn Rand books and maybe a fishing boat, some nets and seeds they can grow. The hundreds of millions poured in so far is more than enough, they don’t need more. If they cannot feed, clothe and help the needy for a couple of months with the help they’ve gotten already, well then these people deserve to die.
What they need now is to learn about construction and production. Maybe we should also throw in lots of guns and hand it out to all people in that country, right now only the criminal gangs have firearms. And besides, the populace could use some leverage against their current and future governments.
Sending books by Ayn Rand would be a major disservice. It creates people that believe that anything can be solved by throwing the word "free market" at it or that freemarket is somehow something that you can base an ethical framework on. Ayn Rands philosophies lead to negative externalities and a rise in monopolistic exploitation. That is, the "free market" is less free than a market with restrictions in place aimed at increasing competition and freedom.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't think you understand that there is a difference between "disaster relief" and long term "aid".
Disaster relief is highly temporary. Just so long that there is time to rebuild infrastructure and give people opportunity to help themselves. You can't be an effective capitalist if you don't have fresh water, food or any means to acquire that water or food in sufficient numbers.
"aid" on the other hand is long term "aid" (focused on patching symptoms and not the underlying cause of poverty and starvation) that knocks out local industry and makes people dependant on foreign "aid".
What's going on in Haiti is as it is 100% disaster relief and means to prevent robber-capitalism from confiscating that disaster relief and creating distribution problems (as detailed by Amartaya Sens research in the area).