libertythor
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- Joined
- Sep 23, 2007
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I see a ton of reservations about Root (most of us), Baldwin (a lot), and Barr (a lot). This puts any third party GOTV effort in jeopardy of division. Is it possible for people to band together here and blog and prop up Mary Ruwart for the LP nomination? She is a Libertarian purist that COMMUNICATES the ideas well from the standpoint of compassion. Ron Paul got as popular as he did by COMMUNICATING effectively the ideas from a compassionate standpoint as well. I just don't see many of the others being able to do that.
Would Mary Ruwart be a good unifying candidate...with Barr as the VP nominee?
Here is a link to download her book "Healing Our World:
The Other Piece of the Puzzle" for free. LEGALLY
http://ruwart.com/Healing/ruwart_all.html
Yes lets keep working to get RP delegates for the GOP convention, but lets also assure a good unifying 3rd party candidate.
Mary Ruwart is well-known enough within the LP that with some fundraising and some internet blogging and promotion, she would have a great shot at taking the Libertarian nomination for President.
SHE KICKS ASS ON FOREIGN POLICY....MORESO THAN ANY OTHER CANDIDATE BESIDES RP:
Check out this excerpt from her book:
BEACON TO THE WORLD
The most effective way to help poorer nations is to practice non aggression.
We are fortunate. We live in a nation founded by people who knew that aggression through-government creates poverty and strife. Consequently, we have become the wealthiest nation on earth. How can we apply our new understanding to help the developing nations, where people still die regularly of starvation and disease?
Creating Poverty in the ThirdWorld
Before we can help disadvantaged nations, we need to know what creates their poverty in the first place. In Chapter 2, we found that resource endowment had little bearing on a nation's wealth. Indeed, most developing nations have more strategic minerals than Japan, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Lack of natural resources cannot account for the plight of the Third World.
Despite popular myths, rapid population growth and high population density are not major factors in Third World poverty either. Hong Kong and Singapore, with annual per capita GNPs in excess of $6,000 in 1985, had more than 10,000 people per square mile. In contrast, India and China, with fewer than 1,000 people per square mile, have per capita incomes of less than $400! (1) Developing countries that enjoy the highest economic growth rate often have the highest population growth rates as well! (2) Between 1775 and 1975, the United States had the biggest population explosion in history, (3) yet Americans now earn the highest wages in the world. Clearly, rapid population growth and high population density are no more responsible for poverty than inadequate resource endowment.
Poverty in today's world is primarily due to aggression-through government. When we look closely at Third World nations, we see this aggression everywhere. Jobs, and consequently the Wealth Pie, are constantly limited by it. In spite of all the examples given in the previous chapters, our country still enjoys more freedom - freedom from aggression - than most nations. The level of aggression in undeveloped countries is difficult for most Americans to imagine.
For example, in Peru, it takes an average of 289 days to obtain a business license. It takes the equivalent of 32 times a Peruvian's monthly minimum living wage to open a small garment factory. (4) Small industrial firms spend approximately 70% of their profits to pay taxes and meet legal requirements. (5) A license to homestead state land takes an average of 83 months and the equivalent of 56 months of minimum wage pay. (6) Building a market "mall" legally can take 17 years. (7) A license for a new bus route takes approximately 53 months to arrange and is only rarely granted. (8) Under such restrictions, it is surprising that Peru-vians create any wealth at all! The pattern is repeated, with some variation, in the poorer nations of the world.
Thus, the most effective way to help other countries is to export a repugnance for aggression-through-government. The best way to teach an idea is simply by living it and letting others observe the benefits. When our country was founded, it was the first Western country to reject monarchial rule in favor of a less-aggressive representative system. Today, a scant 200 years later, the few remaining Western monarchs are mere figureheads. Our system worked so well that it was emulated throughout the world. We did little to produce this paradigm shift other than living our ideal.
Supporting Dictators
Today we reenforce the belief in aggression-through-government by practicing it in our dealing with our Third World neighbors. First, we tax our neighborsat gunpoint, if necessaryto provide foreign aid. Most of this money goes for security assistance to underdeveloped nations. (9) To keep Third World governments friendly toward us instead of aligning with the Soviets, we've supported dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Sergeant Samuel Doe (Liberia), Mobutu Seko (Zaire), and Zia ul-Haq (Pakistan), to name a few. (10) Much of this assistance was used to suppress the citizenry from protesting domestic policies of aggression. For example, almost three-fourths of U.S. aid to El Salvador during the early 1980s went to support the government's war against protesting civilians. (11) The Shah of Iran's cruel Savak and Idi Amin's "public safety unit" for internal security were trained with our help. (12) In Latin America in the 1970s, U.S. foreign aid was given to nations with the worst human rights violations. (13) Aid through aggression promotes aggression.
Third World citizens see their dictators kept in power by our aidand hate us for it. Licensing laws, prohibition of homesteading, and other aggressive practices prevent the disadvantaged from creating wealth for themselves and their loved ones. This aggression is so pronounced in Third World countries that the rich have become immensely richer and the poor are barely surviving. This system is kept entrenched largely through our massive security assistance.
Most of this aid goes to loans and grants for the purchase of U.S.-made military equipment. (14) Security assistance becomes a subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer to the weapons manufacturers and dictators of the world. In the past, we've justified our aggression with the argument that we are keeping the Third World "free from communism." The next chapter shows that the opposite is true.
You can probably hear the representative from the weapons factory explaining to your local congresswoman. "Ms. Congresswoman, we charge top dollar for our weapons. Of course, our stockholders and our employees, who are your constituents, profit handsomely as a result. In fact, the local economy depends on us. If you don't vote for this aid package, we might have layoffs. People in these parts could get mighty angry come next election, and we couldn't blame them. In fact, we might even help them by throwing our financial support toward someone who stands up and fights for those who put them in office."
The congresswoman sighs and agrees to vote for the subsidy. After all, if she doesn't, the weapons manufacturers will back someone who will. Eventually the arms manufacturers will be successful, and the aid package will pass. Why should she sacrifice her career for something she can't stop? If the voters she represents care more about their paycheck than the exploitation of the Third World, why shouldn't she?
Tomorrow she will vote for range land subsidies in exchange for support on the foreign aid bill. Both sets of constituents will be happy, even though they are simply subsidizing each other's special interests and paying their congressional representatives handsomely to negotiate the deal. The voters in both districts end up with less than they would have if they had honored their neighbor's choice. The voters are reaping as they have sown.
Purchasing Poverty
Security assistance is just the beginning. Even humanitarian aid ends up subsidizing aggression. First, the aggression of taxation is used to subsidize U.S. agriculture, creating a surplus. (15) Next, taxes are used to buy up the surplus. The crops are shipped to foreign governments, which are given tax-subsidized loans to finance the food purchase. Sometimes the food is simply given away. (16) The governments dispose of the food as they see fit.
In the famine of the mid-1980s, Bangladesh sold "free" food at market price in urban areas and at one-fifth the market price to its military. (17) Somalia allocated 80% of food aid to its military and government employees. (18) During the famine in Ethiopia, the government sold donated food or diverted it away from the hungriest provinces as punishment to those areas for harboring rebels. (19) Haiti's Jean Claude Duvalier converted aid into personal gain. (20) When we remember that poverty and starvation in these countries are caused by the aggression of these same leaders, we should not be surprised that our aid becomes a tool for more aggression.
When concerned Third World governments do give away donated food or sell it cheaply to those in need, the results can be just as devastating. Local farmers are undersold and put out of business. As a result, fewer crops are planted the following year. To prevent such a disaster, angry Haitian farmers chased away helicopters bringing in U.S. rice in 1984. (21) Some farmers will turn to export crops and the uncertainty of the world market to avoid the problems caused by our largess. The country becomes dependent on imports to feed its populace.
Ironically, poor rural farmersthe ones we are supposed to be helpingare hurt the most by food aid. If the peasant farmers manage to survive our security assistance and food aid, however, our aggression causes still more problems.
Subsidizing Environmental Damage
U.S. citizens are taxed at gunpoint, if necessaryto fund the World Bank. The Bank, in turn, lends Third World countries money for development projects that frequently promote environmental degradation. Forests were destroyed to build subsidized dams in Brazil and India and cattle ranches in Botswana. (22) Poorly managed irrigation projects have resulted in millions of hectares becoming flooded, waterlogged, and salinated. (23) Development through aggression results in projects controlled by those who wish to exploit rather than by those who wish to serve.
Why does our government keep giving such destructive aid in our name and with our tax dollars? Of every aid dollar, 82 cents is spent on American products. (24) Thus, the aid programs are really a transfer of wealth from the American taxpayer and the Third World poor to American-based multinational firms. Like any special interest group, these firms have a strong influence on our representatives, because they can commit large amounts of money to the campaign chests of those who serve them best.
Not understanding how wealth is created, many sincere heads of state agree to borrow money for such projects in the hope that prosperity will follow. World Bank projects usually create subsidized government monopolies. Because of the inevitable inefficiency and high cost, the project cannot generate enough new wealth to pay for itself. The country ends up with a debt to the World Bank that cannot be repaid.
Sometimes, the World Bank steps in with more loans for agricultural development. In the early 1970s, Tanzania received more bank aid per capita than any other country. Much of this money was used to support the army's efforts to drive the peasants from their land to government villages or communes. (25) Generous loans to the governments of Vietnam, (26) Indonesia, (27) Ethiopia, (28) and Guatemala (29) funded similar resettlement programs in these countries. The communes were seldom productive. (30) Land taken from the peasants was awarded to political favorites. Once again, money taken by aggression from the U.S. taxpayer was used to support more aggression.
In Indonesia and Brazil, peasants who were robbed of their farms were often resettled on cleared rainforest land. (31) In some countries, the newly landless cleared the forests themselves in an attempt to create new farms. When the authorities caught up with them, the peasants simply moved on, clearing more rainforest as they went.
Governments claim the rainforests as their own, just as the U.S. government claims much of our western range land. The rainforests are populated by natives who create wealth by using the rainforests sustainably, just as the Native Americans once did on our Western Plains. Peruvian Amazon dwellers, for example, cultivate the rainforest profitably and sustainably by harvesting its fruit, rubber, and timber. They make up to three times as much as they would if they cleared the forest for cattle ranching. (32) Consequently, they have no incentive to destroy the forest that they have homesteaded.
Governments in developing countries, in their eagerness to repay the loans from the World Bank, use new loans to drive the natives off their homesteaded lands in much the same way as the U.S. government drove Native Americans onto reservations. The government rents the forest to loggers so that payments can be made to the World Bank. Since neither the loggers nor the politicians "own" the land and profit by caring for it, both groups have every incentive to exploit and no incentive to preserve or replant.
The Rich Get Richer with Our Help!
You can probably hear the public relations woman from the World Bank asking your local congressman to support more taxes for her organization.
"You see, Mr. Congressman," she begins sweetly, "those loans are guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayer. If these Third World countries default, the United States will be plunged into a depression. It's much better that we lend a bit more and restructure their economy. With the resettlement programs, we can control what is planted on the farms and the villages. By focusing on export crops and clearing the rainforests for cattle grazing, we can ensure that we are repaid. In addition, the American consumer will enjoy cheaper coffee and cocoa prices when more farmland is devoted to export crops instead of food."
"But those poor peasants!" protests the congressman. "We're playing God with their lives and their land. What about the loss of the rainforests?" The congressman is clearly frustrated. He had supported World Bank funding in the first place in the hopes of helping the less fortunate. Because he doesn't understand that more aid through aggression will make the bad situation worse, he once again supports the World Bank's plan.
Even if the congressman had objected to throwing the taxpayers' money down the World Bank's "black hole," he would have gained little. The American-based, multinational firms that profited either from the rainforests or from the purchases made by the dictators have every incentive to generously fund his opponent in the next election if the congressman doesn't cooperate.
When I was in high school, I could not understand why Third World people called us "imperialists." Why would these ungrateful primitives try to bite the hand that feeds them? Now, of course, I understand. My tax dollars are used to exploit those who have so little in order to benefit dictators, multinational firms, and banks. Our desire to control our neighbors once again ripples outward, fueling the flames of poverty and strife. We reap as we sow - the money that goes into the pockets of the well-to-do comes, in the final analysis, from us by either inflation or taxation.
Kicking Them When They're Down
Against the background of aggression funded by their rich American neighbors, it's a wonder that the Third World nations createany wealth at all. When they do, we once again knock out the lower rungs on the Ladder of Affluence through the aggression of tariffs.
Tariffs are taxes paid by traders of foreign goods sold in the United States. The price that consumers pay is raised proportionately, so fewer goods are imported. If American citizens want to buy a product directly from a Third World vendor, bypassing the tariff, they'll be stopped - at gunpoint, if necessary. This form of aggression, which prevents Third World people from helping themselves, is used to protect American jobs. Like all forms of aggression, the outcome is very different from what was intended.
A Lose-Lose Situation
Tariffs actually harm the American worker. The extra money consumers would have saved by buying cheaper foreign clothing, for example, is not available to purchase other goods and services. For every job protected in the textile or apparel industry, at least one other American job is lost in another sector. (33)
Instead of creating new wealth, regulators who enforce the tariff law only stymie it. Thus, saving the job of one textile worker costs 3 to 12 times that person's annual earnings. (34) The consumer pays these additional costs. Tariffs and quotas increase prices for a family of four by an average of $2,000 per year, (35) which represents a hefty 32% of the purchasing power of families at the poverty level.36 As with all aggression, tariffs only make poor workers poorer.
Tariffs harm Third World entrepreneurs as well. Essentially, the tariff is a license that those businesses are required to buy for every item sold. The tariff is passed on to the consumer through increased prices. Fewer consumers buy the tariffed item, discouraging trade. The underdeveloped countries advance more quickly when they trade, (37) because division of labor and specialization make wealth creation more efficient. When wediscourage trade with tariffs, our aggression prevents Third World people from helping themselves.
Free from aggression, the marketplace ecosystem favors the entrepreneurs who serve their customers best. If a business enterprise in a poorer nation uses inexpensive labor to keep prices down, American consumers get more for their dollar. When Americans buy from the foreign vendor, they create jobs for the underprivileged. When Americans support the aggression of tariffs, they sacrifice the disadvantaged in a futile effort to help more-fortunate American workers who produce the same goods less efficiently.
Just because other countries foolishly harm themselves with tariffs is no reason for us to do so. Japanese consumers, for example, pay up to ten times as much for their rice as they would without the tariffs imposed by their government. (38) When we follow Japan's protectionist lead, we also pay more for less.
If other countries can produce certain items more economically, we benefit by turning our efforts to businesses in which we excel. Yankee ingenuity is our forte. By focusing on innovation, we focus on developing a creative and intelligent populace. Our current protectionist position means more menial jobs for our populace and fewer white collar ones. When we buy goods manufactured with the cheap labor of Third World nations, we help them while helping ourselves.
The Easy Way Out
If we truly wish to help Third World countries to attain peace and plenty, our first goal is to set an example they can imitate. Once Edison showed us how to make a light bulb, it was relatively easy to follow his blueprint. Likewise, we can show the Third World nations the way to prosperity - if we are willing to practice non-aggression.
To set this example, we must abandon the aggression of tariffs and taxation that gives special interests and dictators control of the Third World people. When we abandon these forms of aggression, we will have set the stage for development in the Third World. If we continue our aggressive practices, we will create poverty and strife abroad just as surely as we are creating poverty and strife at home.
Instead of using our resources to make the poor nations poorer, we can volunteer our support. Those concerned about the rainforests can supply funds to native people who are defending their homesteading claims. The Malaysian village of Uma Bawang, for example, recently took its state government to court to legalize native homesteading rights. (39) Most native people are much more careful in managing their homeland than distant politicians are. When we encourage ownership of the environment, we increase the chances that Nature's bounty will be nurtured, protected, and preserved.
Some people object to individual ownership of rainforests for fear an unscrupulous, wealthy person might buy these sensitive environments and destroy them. The marketplace ecosystem regulates such individuals with the feedback of profit and loss. Daniel K. Ludwig, the richest man in the world in the 1970s, cut down 250,000 acres of rainforest for a tree farm. He lost billions of dollars because the new trees were not able to grow well there; naturally, he stopped cutting down rainforests. (40) Few individuals can afford to duplicate his mistake. Politicians, however, are more likely to continue such practices, because they do not lose money by destroying the rainforests; indeed, they profit by it.
When we stop supporting dictatorship, stop subsidizing environmental destruction, start encouraging recognition of homesteading claims, and start trading with Third World nations non-aggressively, we will contribute significantly to their progress. Ultimately, peace and plenty in these countries are a product of the hearts and minds of their people. Until they, individually and collectively, forsake aggression, Third World people will, like ourselves, reap its bitter fruits.
We hesitate to abandon our aggression overseas. We are fearful that somehow selfish others will take control if we don't. In our hearts, we still aren't sure that non-aggression works in the real world. Let's take a closer look at the Communist threat that affected our foreign policy over the past several decades to see if our fears are well founded.
Would Mary Ruwart be a good unifying candidate...with Barr as the VP nominee?
Here is a link to download her book "Healing Our World:
The Other Piece of the Puzzle" for free. LEGALLY
http://ruwart.com/Healing/ruwart_all.html
Yes lets keep working to get RP delegates for the GOP convention, but lets also assure a good unifying 3rd party candidate.
Mary Ruwart is well-known enough within the LP that with some fundraising and some internet blogging and promotion, she would have a great shot at taking the Libertarian nomination for President.
SHE KICKS ASS ON FOREIGN POLICY....MORESO THAN ANY OTHER CANDIDATE BESIDES RP:
Check out this excerpt from her book:
BEACON TO THE WORLD
The most effective way to help poorer nations is to practice non aggression.
We are fortunate. We live in a nation founded by people who knew that aggression through-government creates poverty and strife. Consequently, we have become the wealthiest nation on earth. How can we apply our new understanding to help the developing nations, where people still die regularly of starvation and disease?
Creating Poverty in the ThirdWorld
Before we can help disadvantaged nations, we need to know what creates their poverty in the first place. In Chapter 2, we found that resource endowment had little bearing on a nation's wealth. Indeed, most developing nations have more strategic minerals than Japan, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Lack of natural resources cannot account for the plight of the Third World.
Despite popular myths, rapid population growth and high population density are not major factors in Third World poverty either. Hong Kong and Singapore, with annual per capita GNPs in excess of $6,000 in 1985, had more than 10,000 people per square mile. In contrast, India and China, with fewer than 1,000 people per square mile, have per capita incomes of less than $400! (1) Developing countries that enjoy the highest economic growth rate often have the highest population growth rates as well! (2) Between 1775 and 1975, the United States had the biggest population explosion in history, (3) yet Americans now earn the highest wages in the world. Clearly, rapid population growth and high population density are no more responsible for poverty than inadequate resource endowment.
Poverty in today's world is primarily due to aggression-through government. When we look closely at Third World nations, we see this aggression everywhere. Jobs, and consequently the Wealth Pie, are constantly limited by it. In spite of all the examples given in the previous chapters, our country still enjoys more freedom - freedom from aggression - than most nations. The level of aggression in undeveloped countries is difficult for most Americans to imagine.
For example, in Peru, it takes an average of 289 days to obtain a business license. It takes the equivalent of 32 times a Peruvian's monthly minimum living wage to open a small garment factory. (4) Small industrial firms spend approximately 70% of their profits to pay taxes and meet legal requirements. (5) A license to homestead state land takes an average of 83 months and the equivalent of 56 months of minimum wage pay. (6) Building a market "mall" legally can take 17 years. (7) A license for a new bus route takes approximately 53 months to arrange and is only rarely granted. (8) Under such restrictions, it is surprising that Peru-vians create any wealth at all! The pattern is repeated, with some variation, in the poorer nations of the world.
Thus, the most effective way to help other countries is to export a repugnance for aggression-through-government. The best way to teach an idea is simply by living it and letting others observe the benefits. When our country was founded, it was the first Western country to reject monarchial rule in favor of a less-aggressive representative system. Today, a scant 200 years later, the few remaining Western monarchs are mere figureheads. Our system worked so well that it was emulated throughout the world. We did little to produce this paradigm shift other than living our ideal.
Supporting Dictators
Today we reenforce the belief in aggression-through-government by practicing it in our dealing with our Third World neighbors. First, we tax our neighborsat gunpoint, if necessaryto provide foreign aid. Most of this money goes for security assistance to underdeveloped nations. (9) To keep Third World governments friendly toward us instead of aligning with the Soviets, we've supported dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Sergeant Samuel Doe (Liberia), Mobutu Seko (Zaire), and Zia ul-Haq (Pakistan), to name a few. (10) Much of this assistance was used to suppress the citizenry from protesting domestic policies of aggression. For example, almost three-fourths of U.S. aid to El Salvador during the early 1980s went to support the government's war against protesting civilians. (11) The Shah of Iran's cruel Savak and Idi Amin's "public safety unit" for internal security were trained with our help. (12) In Latin America in the 1970s, U.S. foreign aid was given to nations with the worst human rights violations. (13) Aid through aggression promotes aggression.
Third World citizens see their dictators kept in power by our aidand hate us for it. Licensing laws, prohibition of homesteading, and other aggressive practices prevent the disadvantaged from creating wealth for themselves and their loved ones. This aggression is so pronounced in Third World countries that the rich have become immensely richer and the poor are barely surviving. This system is kept entrenched largely through our massive security assistance.
Most of this aid goes to loans and grants for the purchase of U.S.-made military equipment. (14) Security assistance becomes a subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer to the weapons manufacturers and dictators of the world. In the past, we've justified our aggression with the argument that we are keeping the Third World "free from communism." The next chapter shows that the opposite is true.
You can probably hear the representative from the weapons factory explaining to your local congresswoman. "Ms. Congresswoman, we charge top dollar for our weapons. Of course, our stockholders and our employees, who are your constituents, profit handsomely as a result. In fact, the local economy depends on us. If you don't vote for this aid package, we might have layoffs. People in these parts could get mighty angry come next election, and we couldn't blame them. In fact, we might even help them by throwing our financial support toward someone who stands up and fights for those who put them in office."
The congresswoman sighs and agrees to vote for the subsidy. After all, if she doesn't, the weapons manufacturers will back someone who will. Eventually the arms manufacturers will be successful, and the aid package will pass. Why should she sacrifice her career for something she can't stop? If the voters she represents care more about their paycheck than the exploitation of the Third World, why shouldn't she?
Tomorrow she will vote for range land subsidies in exchange for support on the foreign aid bill. Both sets of constituents will be happy, even though they are simply subsidizing each other's special interests and paying their congressional representatives handsomely to negotiate the deal. The voters in both districts end up with less than they would have if they had honored their neighbor's choice. The voters are reaping as they have sown.
Purchasing Poverty
Security assistance is just the beginning. Even humanitarian aid ends up subsidizing aggression. First, the aggression of taxation is used to subsidize U.S. agriculture, creating a surplus. (15) Next, taxes are used to buy up the surplus. The crops are shipped to foreign governments, which are given tax-subsidized loans to finance the food purchase. Sometimes the food is simply given away. (16) The governments dispose of the food as they see fit.
In the famine of the mid-1980s, Bangladesh sold "free" food at market price in urban areas and at one-fifth the market price to its military. (17) Somalia allocated 80% of food aid to its military and government employees. (18) During the famine in Ethiopia, the government sold donated food or diverted it away from the hungriest provinces as punishment to those areas for harboring rebels. (19) Haiti's Jean Claude Duvalier converted aid into personal gain. (20) When we remember that poverty and starvation in these countries are caused by the aggression of these same leaders, we should not be surprised that our aid becomes a tool for more aggression.
When concerned Third World governments do give away donated food or sell it cheaply to those in need, the results can be just as devastating. Local farmers are undersold and put out of business. As a result, fewer crops are planted the following year. To prevent such a disaster, angry Haitian farmers chased away helicopters bringing in U.S. rice in 1984. (21) Some farmers will turn to export crops and the uncertainty of the world market to avoid the problems caused by our largess. The country becomes dependent on imports to feed its populace.
Ironically, poor rural farmersthe ones we are supposed to be helpingare hurt the most by food aid. If the peasant farmers manage to survive our security assistance and food aid, however, our aggression causes still more problems.
Subsidizing Environmental Damage
U.S. citizens are taxed at gunpoint, if necessaryto fund the World Bank. The Bank, in turn, lends Third World countries money for development projects that frequently promote environmental degradation. Forests were destroyed to build subsidized dams in Brazil and India and cattle ranches in Botswana. (22) Poorly managed irrigation projects have resulted in millions of hectares becoming flooded, waterlogged, and salinated. (23) Development through aggression results in projects controlled by those who wish to exploit rather than by those who wish to serve.
Why does our government keep giving such destructive aid in our name and with our tax dollars? Of every aid dollar, 82 cents is spent on American products. (24) Thus, the aid programs are really a transfer of wealth from the American taxpayer and the Third World poor to American-based multinational firms. Like any special interest group, these firms have a strong influence on our representatives, because they can commit large amounts of money to the campaign chests of those who serve them best.
Not understanding how wealth is created, many sincere heads of state agree to borrow money for such projects in the hope that prosperity will follow. World Bank projects usually create subsidized government monopolies. Because of the inevitable inefficiency and high cost, the project cannot generate enough new wealth to pay for itself. The country ends up with a debt to the World Bank that cannot be repaid.
Sometimes, the World Bank steps in with more loans for agricultural development. In the early 1970s, Tanzania received more bank aid per capita than any other country. Much of this money was used to support the army's efforts to drive the peasants from their land to government villages or communes. (25) Generous loans to the governments of Vietnam, (26) Indonesia, (27) Ethiopia, (28) and Guatemala (29) funded similar resettlement programs in these countries. The communes were seldom productive. (30) Land taken from the peasants was awarded to political favorites. Once again, money taken by aggression from the U.S. taxpayer was used to support more aggression.
In Indonesia and Brazil, peasants who were robbed of their farms were often resettled on cleared rainforest land. (31) In some countries, the newly landless cleared the forests themselves in an attempt to create new farms. When the authorities caught up with them, the peasants simply moved on, clearing more rainforest as they went.
Governments claim the rainforests as their own, just as the U.S. government claims much of our western range land. The rainforests are populated by natives who create wealth by using the rainforests sustainably, just as the Native Americans once did on our Western Plains. Peruvian Amazon dwellers, for example, cultivate the rainforest profitably and sustainably by harvesting its fruit, rubber, and timber. They make up to three times as much as they would if they cleared the forest for cattle ranching. (32) Consequently, they have no incentive to destroy the forest that they have homesteaded.
Governments in developing countries, in their eagerness to repay the loans from the World Bank, use new loans to drive the natives off their homesteaded lands in much the same way as the U.S. government drove Native Americans onto reservations. The government rents the forest to loggers so that payments can be made to the World Bank. Since neither the loggers nor the politicians "own" the land and profit by caring for it, both groups have every incentive to exploit and no incentive to preserve or replant.
The Rich Get Richer with Our Help!
You can probably hear the public relations woman from the World Bank asking your local congressman to support more taxes for her organization.
"You see, Mr. Congressman," she begins sweetly, "those loans are guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayer. If these Third World countries default, the United States will be plunged into a depression. It's much better that we lend a bit more and restructure their economy. With the resettlement programs, we can control what is planted on the farms and the villages. By focusing on export crops and clearing the rainforests for cattle grazing, we can ensure that we are repaid. In addition, the American consumer will enjoy cheaper coffee and cocoa prices when more farmland is devoted to export crops instead of food."
"But those poor peasants!" protests the congressman. "We're playing God with their lives and their land. What about the loss of the rainforests?" The congressman is clearly frustrated. He had supported World Bank funding in the first place in the hopes of helping the less fortunate. Because he doesn't understand that more aid through aggression will make the bad situation worse, he once again supports the World Bank's plan.
Even if the congressman had objected to throwing the taxpayers' money down the World Bank's "black hole," he would have gained little. The American-based, multinational firms that profited either from the rainforests or from the purchases made by the dictators have every incentive to generously fund his opponent in the next election if the congressman doesn't cooperate.
When I was in high school, I could not understand why Third World people called us "imperialists." Why would these ungrateful primitives try to bite the hand that feeds them? Now, of course, I understand. My tax dollars are used to exploit those who have so little in order to benefit dictators, multinational firms, and banks. Our desire to control our neighbors once again ripples outward, fueling the flames of poverty and strife. We reap as we sow - the money that goes into the pockets of the well-to-do comes, in the final analysis, from us by either inflation or taxation.
Kicking Them When They're Down
Against the background of aggression funded by their rich American neighbors, it's a wonder that the Third World nations createany wealth at all. When they do, we once again knock out the lower rungs on the Ladder of Affluence through the aggression of tariffs.
Tariffs are taxes paid by traders of foreign goods sold in the United States. The price that consumers pay is raised proportionately, so fewer goods are imported. If American citizens want to buy a product directly from a Third World vendor, bypassing the tariff, they'll be stopped - at gunpoint, if necessary. This form of aggression, which prevents Third World people from helping themselves, is used to protect American jobs. Like all forms of aggression, the outcome is very different from what was intended.
A Lose-Lose Situation
Tariffs actually harm the American worker. The extra money consumers would have saved by buying cheaper foreign clothing, for example, is not available to purchase other goods and services. For every job protected in the textile or apparel industry, at least one other American job is lost in another sector. (33)
Instead of creating new wealth, regulators who enforce the tariff law only stymie it. Thus, saving the job of one textile worker costs 3 to 12 times that person's annual earnings. (34) The consumer pays these additional costs. Tariffs and quotas increase prices for a family of four by an average of $2,000 per year, (35) which represents a hefty 32% of the purchasing power of families at the poverty level.36 As with all aggression, tariffs only make poor workers poorer.
Tariffs harm Third World entrepreneurs as well. Essentially, the tariff is a license that those businesses are required to buy for every item sold. The tariff is passed on to the consumer through increased prices. Fewer consumers buy the tariffed item, discouraging trade. The underdeveloped countries advance more quickly when they trade, (37) because division of labor and specialization make wealth creation more efficient. When wediscourage trade with tariffs, our aggression prevents Third World people from helping themselves.
Free from aggression, the marketplace ecosystem favors the entrepreneurs who serve their customers best. If a business enterprise in a poorer nation uses inexpensive labor to keep prices down, American consumers get more for their dollar. When Americans buy from the foreign vendor, they create jobs for the underprivileged. When Americans support the aggression of tariffs, they sacrifice the disadvantaged in a futile effort to help more-fortunate American workers who produce the same goods less efficiently.
Just because other countries foolishly harm themselves with tariffs is no reason for us to do so. Japanese consumers, for example, pay up to ten times as much for their rice as they would without the tariffs imposed by their government. (38) When we follow Japan's protectionist lead, we also pay more for less.
If other countries can produce certain items more economically, we benefit by turning our efforts to businesses in which we excel. Yankee ingenuity is our forte. By focusing on innovation, we focus on developing a creative and intelligent populace. Our current protectionist position means more menial jobs for our populace and fewer white collar ones. When we buy goods manufactured with the cheap labor of Third World nations, we help them while helping ourselves.
The Easy Way Out
If we truly wish to help Third World countries to attain peace and plenty, our first goal is to set an example they can imitate. Once Edison showed us how to make a light bulb, it was relatively easy to follow his blueprint. Likewise, we can show the Third World nations the way to prosperity - if we are willing to practice non-aggression.
To set this example, we must abandon the aggression of tariffs and taxation that gives special interests and dictators control of the Third World people. When we abandon these forms of aggression, we will have set the stage for development in the Third World. If we continue our aggressive practices, we will create poverty and strife abroad just as surely as we are creating poverty and strife at home.
Instead of using our resources to make the poor nations poorer, we can volunteer our support. Those concerned about the rainforests can supply funds to native people who are defending their homesteading claims. The Malaysian village of Uma Bawang, for example, recently took its state government to court to legalize native homesteading rights. (39) Most native people are much more careful in managing their homeland than distant politicians are. When we encourage ownership of the environment, we increase the chances that Nature's bounty will be nurtured, protected, and preserved.
Some people object to individual ownership of rainforests for fear an unscrupulous, wealthy person might buy these sensitive environments and destroy them. The marketplace ecosystem regulates such individuals with the feedback of profit and loss. Daniel K. Ludwig, the richest man in the world in the 1970s, cut down 250,000 acres of rainforest for a tree farm. He lost billions of dollars because the new trees were not able to grow well there; naturally, he stopped cutting down rainforests. (40) Few individuals can afford to duplicate his mistake. Politicians, however, are more likely to continue such practices, because they do not lose money by destroying the rainforests; indeed, they profit by it.
When we stop supporting dictatorship, stop subsidizing environmental destruction, start encouraging recognition of homesteading claims, and start trading with Third World nations non-aggressively, we will contribute significantly to their progress. Ultimately, peace and plenty in these countries are a product of the hearts and minds of their people. Until they, individually and collectively, forsake aggression, Third World people will, like ourselves, reap its bitter fruits.
We hesitate to abandon our aggression overseas. We are fearful that somehow selfish others will take control if we don't. In our hearts, we still aren't sure that non-aggression works in the real world. Let's take a closer look at the Communist threat that affected our foreign policy over the past several decades to see if our fears are well founded.
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BTW, I really like Mary too.
