Seriously?
Okay back to normal blogging. I’ll touch on the health stuff here and there but I made the point I want to make.
Anyway, I just read this article on NYTimes.com about Iraq buying and using “bomb detecting” devices that actually don’t detect bombs (but the Iraqi government insists that the machines work — basically claiming that experts world-wide are wrong). Seriously Iraq? This is mind-boggling:
Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each.
Now, to be fair, governments all over the world are legendary for being fantastic at spending ridiculous amounts of money on things that either no one wants or could be bought much cheaper. But wow, this is pretty absurd.
This reminds me of how Egypt reacted to the swine flu back in early May. In case you missed it or forgot, they killed off every pig in the country. Despite warnings from just about everyone, they insisted on killing off every pig and made up excuses about how it was a good move for the country overall.
After international health officials criticized Egypt’s decision to kill about 300,000 pigs, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of infectious diseases, Saber Abdel Aziz Galal, explained that the cull was “a general health measure,” according to Agence France-Presse.
“It is good to restructure this kind of breeding in good farms, not on rubbish,” the agency quoted him as saying.
“We will build new farms in special areas, like in Europe,” he said. “Within two years the pigs will return, but we need first to build new farms.”
General health measure? What? And you decide to do it right as a “swine flu” crisis is sweeping the world? C’mon. I’d also definitely bet against the government building new pig farms to replace the lost pigs. Plus, as the article details, Egypt relied on pigs to help with urban garbage disposal. Not surprisingly, Egypt has now realized how dumb they were acting when they killed all of the pigs. Cairo has a major garbage problem and no good options for dealing with it:
“The problem is clear in the streets,” said Haitham Kamal, a spokesman for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs. “There is a strict and intensive effort now from the state to address this issue.”
I really can’t put it better than the NYTimes already did with the following short passage:
It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials.
“The main problem in Egypt is follow-up,” said Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department at the Ministry of Agriculture. “A decision is taken, there is follow-up for a period of time, but after that, they get busy with something else and forget about it. This is the case with everything.”
It’s just so absurd that people who are running a HUGE country can possibly be so dumb. From spending money to killing pigs without thought — it’s just ridiculous. I’m not some extreme right-winger with some agenda against government. I’m actual for government involvement in many areas. I just can’t get over stupidity at the highest level of enormous countries.
Back when I was a teenager, I remember being fed a lot of lines about how less prosperous countries were poor because of colonial exploitation, big corporations taking over exploitation after colonialism, etc. After living in Costa Rica for 15 months and visiting Africa this past summer, I think I have a totally different attitude. Yes, the richest countries in the world cause problems for countries by doing things like giving aid without watching where the money is going — and thereby basically making politics the best way to get rich fast no-questions-asked. But, for the most part, these poorer countries do it to themselves. In Costa Rica, it’s the corrupt government which siphons off all of the tax dollars that are meant to improve the country. In Africa, government leaders steal hundreds of millions (actually billions over the whole continent) every year. Leaders do this stuff to their own people without any regard for the impact of their decisions.
Anyway, even just thinking about this stuff gives me a headache and makes me lose a lot of faith in human beings. I just can’t understand why governments and leaders act like they do and completely ignore rational thought.
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Comments
Have you read ‘White Man’s Burden’ by William Easterly? Pretty good book IMHO. Compare and contrast with ‘The End of Poverty’ by Jeff Sachs.
Nat,
Do you realize how naive you sound when you say, “I visited Africa this summer and now I realize the root cause of their problems and why don’t all these people who have spent their lives studying the subject understand that aid = corruption = poverty”?
I’m sure there’s some truth to what you say, but I’m also sure the issue is a lot more complicated that you presume. What does it mean to say, “these poorer countries do it to themselves”? You set it up as an either/or, rich countries or poor countries, but it sounds like what you’re really critical of are the GOVERNMENTS of (some) poor countries. For one thing, as I think you realize, those governments are often not particularly representative of or accountable to the majority of the population, so I don’t know if it’s fair to say “they do it to themselves” as though the whole country were to blame. Also, in many cases corrupt leaders are themselves remnants of colonialism/neocolonialsm, so again, not an either/or there.
Oh, and to be fair, there’s obviously plenty of corruption and bad decision-making in the governments of richer countries.
I don’t think I sound naive. Lots of people have posited that blind aid leads to corruption.
Second, when I say a name of a country does something, I am referring to the government of that country. It would obviously be retarded to say that everyone in the country is stupid. It’s even hard to say that the majority of non-represented populations are stupid. But I can say without the doubt the government of lots of countries are stupid.
Third, my point was that I was always fed a lot of “self-hate” lines in my youth and I now believe that most it was bullshit. Stuff about how bad America is and how lots of poorer countries deserve better simply isn’t correct in my opinion. It’s more like poorer countries just have horrible governments and a lot of those countries would be poor and fucked up no matter what. The aid thing was merely saying that America does cause some problems but the problems mostly lie within those countries.
The participation levels (ie, saturation, not necessarily amounts) of corruption in the first-world are way less than poorer countries. Obviously corruption happens everywhere but it’s all relative. Although, most corruption in the richer countries is thinly disguised as political contributions or lobbying so it can be hard to classify.
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Nat,
I would invite you to read The Bangkok Post but your head might explode.
Bill