Did you learn that the United States is rich because we have bountiful natural resources? That has to be nonsense. Africa and South America are probably the richest continents in natural resources but are home to the world's most miserably poor people. On the other hand, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and England are poor in natural resources, but their people are among the world's richest.



Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That's nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world's poorest people.

There's no complete explanation for why some countries are affluent while others are poor, but there are some leads. Rank countries along a continuum according to whether they are closer to being free-market economies or whether they're closer to socialist or planned economies. Then, rank countries by per-capita income. We will find a general, not perfect, pattern whereby those countries having a larger free-market sector produce a higher standard of living for their citizens than those at the socialist end of the continuum.

What is more important is that if we ranked countries according to how Freedom House or Amnesty International rates their human-rights guarantees, we'd see that citizens of countries with market economies are not only richer, but they tend to enjoy a greater measure of human-rights protections. While there is no complete explanation for the correlation between free markets, higher wealth and human-rights protections, you can bet the rent money that the correlation is not simply coincidental.

With but few exceptions, African countries are not free, and most are basket cases. My colleague, John Blundell, director of the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, highlights some of this in his article "Africa's Plight Will Not End With Aid" in The Scotsman (6/14/04).

Once a food-exporting country, Zimbabwe stands on the brink of starvation. Just recently, President Robert Mugabe declared that he's going to nationalize all the farmland. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the consequence will be to exacerbate Zimbabwe's food problems. Sierra Leone, rich in minerals, especially diamonds, with highly fertile land and home to the best port site in West Africa, has declined into a condition of utter despair. It's a similar story in nearly all of south-of-Sahara Africa. Its people are generally worse off now than they were during colonialism both in terms of standard of living and human-rights protections.

ohn Blundell says that the institutions Westerners take for granted are entirely absent in most of Africa. Africans are not incompetent; they're just like us. Without the rule of law, private property rights, an independent judiciary, limited government and an infrastructure for basic transportation, water, electricity and communication, we'd also be a diseased, broken and starving people.

What can the West do to help? The worst thing is more foreign aid. For the most part, foreign aid is government to government, and as such, it provides the financial resources that allow Africa's corrupt regimes to buy military equipment, pay off cronies and continue to oppress their people. It also provides resources for the leaders to set up "retirement" accounts in Swiss banks. Even so-called humanitarian aid in the form of food is often diverted. Blundell reports that Mugabe's thugs rip labels off of wheat and corn shipments from the United States and Europe and re-label them as benevolence from the dictator.

Most of what Africa needs the West cannot give, and that's the rule of law, private property rights, an independent judiciary and limited government. The one important way we can help is to lower our trade barriers.

First off, I agree with your statements about free market and poverty, we are better off. However, colonialism is not a good word for what multi national corporations do to African countries, at least not any more. Since the Africans have taken power among themselves, billions of dollars of payoffs to local kapo style regimes have crippled the people's ability to self rule. Chaos on the streets makes it easy for Shell and Exxon to tell the world that Africans are just savages and they have nothing to do with the situation. We now know thanks in part to rule of law here in America that these conglomerates are causing devastation by mining everything Africa has with little or no payoff to the people. This includes trees, oil, food, diamonds. The problem is not African lack of law, for it is easy to blame the governments who are supported by these companies. The essential problem is lack of our ability in larger countries, and lack of will, to inforce our own standards and raise our margins on products to make sustainable profit instead of draining the world into a bathtub sinkhole.

Court cases involving these very companies stay in the judicial system here for decades before any sollution if any arrives. There is simply nothing these people do short of terrorism to be heard on mainstream media or to advance the cause of their rights and the right of the land of Africa to be harmonious.

Loans are indeed out of the question. What we need to do is buff up our judicial system so that any company that sells in the U.S. has to meet or exceed our standard of living for their employees and our standards or better for pollution. We have to levy tax on gross polluters until they go out of business and we have to prosecute human rights violators from and connected to America in our courts but under universally accpted human rights laws.

We have to liquidate businesses who repeatedly are convicted of violating laws and or committing outright felonies. Opening trade opens the floodgates for abuse without tightening laws that protect the world and it's inhabitants. We have to stop giving aid in the form of cash donations and start giving it in the form of infrastructure improvements under strict contract scrutiny. And finally, we need as a people to stop relying on our governments to make energy choices ie: Instead of sending the Sierra club billions to lobby, we need to just buy solar panels outright for poor families and struggling businesses, along with bio diesel cars and trucks.

And, they are poor as well.

Chile is poorer than Sweden. The former is a libertarian haven (can we say Pinochet), and the latter is a socialist state. Latin America is poor, while Europe is rich.

Any correlation between "markets" and "freedom" probably stems more from the fact that, where there's money, markets will show up to try and get the money, and there's freedom because there's no need to whip the workers into submission, because they get the goodies of a liberal society. The form of government isn't as relevant as some make it out to be.

The main difference in the countries listed was that white power dominates in the rich colonies while nonwhite power dominates in the poor countries.

The correlation is pretty high.

Self-inflicted poverty is when low and moderate Americans vote into office people whose aims are to (1) Make income taxes less progressive so that the rich pay less and the poor pay more (either in taxes or lost government services). (2) Let Bible thumpers and other religious fanatics convince them to vote for candidates who will stick it to gays, athiests, agnostics, feminists and other alleged enemies while they plunder the poor to make the rich richer. (3) Vote for "free trade" enthusiasts whose aims are to weaken or destroy unions and send US jobs overseas. (4) Vote for jingoists and xenophobes who whip up hysteria over "Palestinian terrorists," dictators plotting to attack the US with nuclear bombs or other weapons of destruction, or dark-skinned foreign enemies while their real aim is to pour more tax money into the military-industrial complex - again to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.