What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right
Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 2 months ago to Politics
Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town. Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health. That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, "a fecalized environment."
In plain English: s--- is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country. Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.
In plain English: s--- is everywhere. People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water. He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water. Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country. Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
citizenship-because-she-is-annoying~rvryucf3xzgshnfxjfyyd7bwqu
so thanks for putting it up in its own thread.
Some themes in the American Thinker article:
- The appalling status and treatment of women
- You steal everything you can
- Corruption rules from top to bottom
- The 'protestant work ethic' is unknown
- A Senegalese wanting to run a business has to go to another country otherwise relatives demand free stuff.
- A job does not means work
It is worth looking at the link in the article under African problems.
http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/14...
This 2007 paper, author- Miroslav Prokopijević
is fascinating, worth reading even tho' the translation needs translation in places.
This is my summary-
Foreign aid fails, it has to as the incentives are pure socialistic central planning.
The aid worker does not care about results, they know that gifts are always received.
There are commands, controls, monitoring, strategies, policies, plans, framework, action plans, performance indicators, procedure manuals, and guidelines.
Then there are the consultants, contractors, slogans and massive salaries paid to senior officials handing out money.
The prime performance measure is the satisfaction of voters in the donor nation that money is being spent. Performance measures are manipulated -by development economists, much as are temperature data -by climate scientists.
Foreign aid is not just inefficient and ineffective, it is counter-productive.
The worst examples are where the target nation takes up an enthusiasm for central planning.
The problem is not poverty but socialism.
Foreign aid entrenches the power of those responsible for the mess, preserves poverty, strengthens the state, and stimulates corruption.
The solution for poor countries is to rid themselves of foreign aid and to enforce property rights, freedom of contract and open their markets.
The donor blames the recipient for the inevitable failure, the recipients are lazy, inactive, disinterested, corrupt, and without appropriate institutions or understanding of the objectives.
Yes, but the donor could have seen this at the start.
My comments are:
A bit severe but the theme is all to true. There are many examples, I want to mention a counter example-
last week I read that water out of the tap in Phom Penh, Cambodia, is safe to drink. A solid achievement in that area outside of Malaysia and Singapore. The treatment plant was put in about 10 years ago by Japan, it is still there, maintained and working. In much of Africa such a plant would not be maintained, it would be looted and the parts sold, the shell of the building remaining as a monument to failure.
This article should be an economics text. It could have been written or inspired by Rand. An example of wish-washy altruism achieving nothing or making things worse.
With proper recognition of the cultural problems, incentives linked to proper results, encouraging capital accumulation, getting less government intervention and control, then just maybe some other approach could work.
If this experience can be widely applied it does provide an example of the difference in the mindset of Americans born before 1980 and all cultures worldwide lacking respect for (1) free markets (2) individual liberty, self reliance, and merit based reward systems, (3) constitutionally limited government that prevents concentration of power in the hands of elites, monarchs, warlords, dictators, aristocrats. Allowing immigration from such regimes is insanity.