Economic Issues - Foreign aid

[angus]

Yes.

Just say no to publicly financed imperialism!

[angus]

NO. We have a duty to poorer countries.

Spoken like a true imperialist.  Let's hope that's not the mainstream view.

[angus]

NO. We have a duty to poorer countries.

Spoken like a true imperialist.  Let's hope that's not the mainstream view.

Why's that imperialistic? I'm suggesting we help out poorer countries and ensure their citizens can enjoy a decent standard of living. I'm not saying we should invade them or enforce our beliefs on them...

But then I'm one of those 'one human race'-people, so if anything's it's more idealistic than imperialistic.

The bolsheviks and nazis were very idealistic.  But idealism and imperialism are not mutually orthogonal concepts, by any means.  Invasion doesn't have to involve armies, it can involve technology, food, people, ideas, etc.  At least you choose the adjective 'poorer' rather than lesser'  I'll give you credit for being less ethnocentric than opebo.

[angus]

NO. We have a duty to poorer countries.

Spoken like a true imperialist.  Let's hope that's not the mainstream view.

Why's that imperialistic? I'm suggesting we help out poorer countries and ensure their citizens can enjoy a decent standard of living. I'm not saying we should invade them or enforce our beliefs on them...

But then I'm one of those 'one human race'-people, so if anything's it's more idealistic than imperialistic.

The bolsheviks and nazis were very idealistic.  But idealism and imperialism are not mutually orthogonal concepts, by any means.  Invasion doesn't have to involve armies, it can involve technology, food, people, ideas, etc.  At least you choose the adjective 'poorer' rather than lesser'  I'll give you credit for being less ethnocentric than opebo.

I'm not entirely sure what you're implying with the first sentence, but I personally find the wealth gap which exists between the West and the third world to be almost perverse. (In that view, I actually find that Marx's model of the superstructure is not defunct, not by a long shot. It's simply the case that it applies no longer to individual countries or societies, but the entire world.) Besides, it cannot be a coincidence that aforementioned wealth gap is wider than ever and we are also witnessing the rise of religious extremism and groups like al-Qaeda. Redressing this imbalance, or at least aiming to redress it, would go a long to way to solve many of the world's problems, at least in my view.

If anything, it's imperialists who want to keep poorer countries poor, since it provides them with a cheap labour force and governments willing to do their bidding at the tune of the almighty dollar (or euro, or pound).

Do you also find it perverse that there's a gap between dick sizes of black, white, and asians?  The thing is, you cannot force all to be equal.  Nor should you want to.  Imperialism has many many forms.  One of the most apparently inocuous, and therefore most harmful, is that of the moralist, who is hell-bent on redistribution of wealth and power and everything else.  

Francisco Pizarro's priests were absolutely convinced that forced conversion to christianity was the right, moral thing to do to the Inca peoples.  Pizarro himself may have wanted power and wealth, but many were appaled at the lack of 'civilization' among indigeneous peoples, and swore to 'help' them.  This is a dangerous attitude.

As for idealism.  It is worse even than imperialism.  But the two do not necessarily show a correlation.  That was my point in the first sentence.

[angus]

Do you also find it perverse that there's a gap between dick sizes of black, white, and asians?

That's a flawed comparison, since there is hardly anything natural about inequality of wealth.

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It's not a question of 'forcing everyone to be equal', or suggesting that third world countries are given the exact same share as industrialised nations, that's simply misreading my statement. It's possible that I'm expressing myself in a clumsy manner, though I was simply stating a viewpoint that justifies the existence of state-sponsered foreign aid; as opposed to abolishing the whole thing and letting people in the third world fend for themselves, when there already are trade tarriffs and so forth in place which contribute to the extreme poverty some of these countries are finding themselves under. Perhaps repealing these tarriffs would help, but, hey, the more the merrier.

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I'm not sure how you can link that to anything I've said since my views are not about enforcing ideals or beliefs. The Inca chose their religion, whereas hardly anyone, be it here or abroad, actively chooses to live in poverty.

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But surely there is also a pragmatic element to noticing the link between third world poverty and the rise of religious fundamentalism?

The reason I described my viewpoint as 'idealistic', was because I realised that there is an impractical element to it, not because I want to enforce it on all and sundry. Let's just say I have a crap grasp of semantics.

okay, I wasn't looking for an argument.  Or maybe I was.  But yes there's a darwinistic quality to the unequal distribution of wealth.  Even within a subgroup of species, this uneven distribution plays out well, and left on its own guarantees success via natural selection.  Leftism destroys this balance.  It's very much like the invention of corrective lenses, as we have discussed before.

Secondly, all my analogies are flawed.  It is intentional.  This is how I find out whether anyone is paying attention.  Otherwise I'd be just another dull troll.

I am unaware of any correlation between poverty rates and the rise of religious fundamentalism.  I'm not even sure I know what religious fundamentalism means.  But that doesn't mean the link doesn't exist, just that I'm not aware of it.

I'm sure you have no intention of enforcing any beliefs, so I chose a bad example with the Spanish Conquistadors.  But the suggestion that we 'help' others has been made very often in the past, and any serious reading of the history of nations would render the astute student wary of such suggestions.

Idealism has caused great hardship.  It has also built great institutions.  I wouldn't argue that it contains an element of impracticality, which is neither bad nor good.  I just wanted to point to some of the worst examples of idealism I could, specifically, in order to quell any notion of holding idealism up as a principle to be cherished.

Ultimately I tend to overreact toward leftist statements, as I too was raised to believe that the GOP was basically a bunch of greedy amoral capitalist pigs.  As an adult, I have found that private charities and private aid, often from Republicans, have done more good than harm.  Now I consider it a personal quest to dispel the notion that Republicans just want to burn your house down, pollute the air and water, force people into grueling labor, and get richer on the backs of poor uneducated fools.

[angus]

NO. We have a duty to poorer countries.

Spoken like a true imperialist.  Let's hope that's not the mainstream view.

White Man's Burden.

I think I may have voted maybe.  In general, and on principle, I strongly oppose foreign intervention by the US government, including public funding of imperialistic projects.  This was Washington's advice.  It was ignored, for the most part, like the rest of his excellent advice.  But there has been an exception or two.  For example, after the recent earthquake in Iran I was glad to learn my government was generous enough and willing to shell out some dollars to help those people.

[angus]

alright.  we are not directly ruling any country except about 60% of what used to be Mexico, a third of what used to be France, a quarter of what used to be England, and a good bit of what once was Spain.  But why quibble?  Extracting tribute?!  Surely, the blood and oil soaked deserts of mesopotamia represent some tribute.  Enslaving?  No.  not enslaving, liberating.  I would not argue that point.  Not demanding allegiance?  That is a stretch, and depends on your definition of 'demanding allegiance'  The Hugo Chavez fiasco might not have been demanding allegiance, but it certainly offered reward for getting on the right side.  Schroder came crawling on his knees to Washington to try to get some of those exclusive contracts, not because of any demand, I'll allow, but out of a sense of misplaced prioities, to be sure.  We can go on and on about demanding allegiances, but that would be twisting the facts.  As for robbing resources.  I agree with you on that one, unlike other empires in the past, we do not rob.  We purchase.  Suckers walk, money talks.  That is the american way of empire.  Nor do I buy into Mohammed Atta's inflammatory description of 'McEgypt' in his call to the faithful, but the case can certainly be made for exportation of culture.  (which is at the heart of imperialism, in my opinion)

I vote for a Republic, if given a choice.