Live Trade

I was speaking with a Nigerian student about Ms. Moyo's ideas as reviewed below. The problem keeps arising "the aid does not get to the people who need it." I say the people do not need aid, they need freedom. He being Moslem checked his beliefs against mine, and agreed there is no bar to freedom in Islam, since it is a gift from God. (Again, freedom to contract, freedom from interference in contracts, at its most basic level.)

I made the argument that it is entirely rational to live in poverty since anything these people get will be taken away from them. Why work hard when you will lose it all? He hesitated and then laid the blame on the exploiters.

He laid the blame at corrupt officials and foreign intervention, so I asked how and when will officials stop being corrupt, and foreign governments stop interfering? Of course never.

The problem is huge territories of competing tribes that were arbitrarily put into countries wherein one group is played off against the other certainly serves imperialism.

We see from examples that freedom peace and prosperity seems to be best in small, strong currency, laissez faire countries, but rather accidently in creation. I'd argue that a push for small national units by means of nonviolent resistance is the most likely way to set up a happy accident just waiting to happen. Moslems and Hindus worked together in the nonviolent movement to rid India of British colonialism. The evidence of this is rather overwhelming.

The student after a while then related the story of Burkina Faso, a country who elected a leader who made reforms allowing people to self-support themselves (I think he was referring to the 1984 Sankara leadership. He said this threatened French interests and the efforts were overthrown. Regardless if accurate, the idea that anything you earn will be taken is destructive.

Freedom is God given, not government given. Getting the "right people in office" will never happen. The only place we need the right people is where people actually work, and we've got that already. Burkina Faso regularly has violent overthrows and even worse results. Nonviolent movements intrinsically provides the training necessary to be free. Free markets are based on nonviolence, and you cannot have a free market without a nonviolent foundation.

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