🚀 go-pugleaf

In ed.general Jon is Away! <jon@restlesslemon.co.uk> wrote:
> M Holmes wrote:

>> The point you've clearly missed here is that the government doesn't have
>> any money but that which it extorts from us individuals.

> Not strictly true. The government also has money which it "extorts"
> from corporations, and has the ability to impose requirements on those
> corporations. The former is direct income, the latter allows for
> indirect spending.

> Ultimately the corporations derive their money from the individual, but
> that's similar to claiming that eating steak is vegetarian, since cows
> eat grass!

All very true, but unimportant as far as my gainsaying of the claim that
governments should be lobbied because they can spend more than us mere
individuals.  Since all the Gummint money comes from us individuals
(whether routed through the corporate maw or not) then we could quite
clearly spend it on Africa without wasting most of it by passing it
through politicians. 

I submit that the reason the Global Whiners target the politicians is
that they know that by and large we've already figured out that blowing
money on Africa doesn't do a great deal of good and so they're
targetting those folks who can purloin our money with menaces and spend
it on Africa (or more likely African dictators and politicians) anyway.

However, to show I'm not yet completely cynical, I will salute those
campaigning to abolish the CAP (and the yank equivalent); the World
Bank, and the IMF, and replace them all with global free trade.  That'd
do a hell of a lot more for Africans than all the rest of the demands
put together.  The most saddening part of the whole charade is that what
Africans really need is a great deal more capitalism and global trade
rather than less of it. 

If it can get a couple of hundred million Chinese out of povety, it can
do the same for Africans - provided we don't let misguided protestors
stand in the way of helping it happen.

FoFP