Posted on 01/15/2010 10:55:06 AM PST by dead
On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story...
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
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As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
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The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"There are people who have been trying to save Haiti, just as we're trying to save Africa. You just can't keep throwing money at it cause the dictatorships there just take it all. They don't spread it arou...and even if they did you're not creating a permanent system where people can provide for themselves."
Brooks:
"We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.... This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old."
Well, at least David Brooks is plagiarizing a good source instead of some leftist this week.
Culture does matter. The black culture in the United States is an impediment to black people. The difference between a black kid and a Jewish kid in a kindergarten class is that the latter will be raised in a Jewish family.
Years ago there was a WSJ article about US food aid to Africa (donated grain). The writer had interviewed an African farmer, who said, “You can’t compete with free.” That sums it up for me.
Black leadership everywhere it's ever existed has been an impediment to black people.
Even Liberia, which had every good intention, failed.
Bump for later reading
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