David Craig, on January 24th, 2020(Friday/weekend blog)
I haven’t had the time or sufficient brain power to fully think through this weekend’s blog. But I’ll start it anyway and see how things go.
How can you solve a problem you won’t admit you have?
The basic premise of this weekend’s blog is that you cannot solve a problem if you won’t recognise that problem exists. For example, if you have cancer but won’t accept that you have it, you’re rather unlikely to seek a cure.
Welcome to the ‘disintegrating countries’
We tend to think of the world’s 193 countries as belonging to one of three groups – developed countries, developing countries and Third World countries. The developed countries are, of course, Western Europe, the SA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Developing countries would include places like Vietnam, Thailand, China, maybe Russia, Costa Rica and I guess there must be a few more. Then we have the Third World countries which are too numerous to list here.
For the last half century or more, there has been a kind of unspoken assumption that with enough foreign aid and foreign investment, many Third-World countries will eventually start becoming developing countries. But since foreign aid really started pouring into many Third-World countries since around 1965 when many Western countries committed to helping the Third World, how many Third-World countries have actually become developing countries? Answers on the back of a postage stamp please.
What has really happened since the post-1965 big foreign aid splurge by Western countries is that most Third-World countries have become poorer in spite of the trillions in foreign aid and investment they have received.
Lootocracy – How to wreck a country
The poster boy for how a country gets impoverished and destroyed by its rulers is probably Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe – Once the bread-basket of Africa, Zimbabwe is now an impoverished sh*t-hole. Mugabe and his cronies stole or destroyed pretty much everything that was ever of value in Zimbabwe. When Mugabe was retired and his crony, the Crocodile, took over, our liberal progressive mainstream media assured us that things would now get better. In fact they got worse. With constant power cuts, Zimbabweans are now so poor that they are cutting down trees to make charcoal. And this deforestation leads to erosion of fertile soil and desertification. If Zimbabwe’s rulers are ever ousted, it will take hundreds of years to repair the damage they have wreaked on their own country through their greed and stupidity.
Angola – should be one of the world’s richest countries with its vast resources of oil, gas and minerals. Instead, over 80% of Angola’s population live in crushing poverty and poverty is increasing. But not all Angolans are poor. The IMF estimated that over $10 billion a year is looted from the country by its rulers.
South Africa – once the richest, most advanced country in Africa, South Africa is now following Zimbabwe on the well-trodden road to self-destruction. The former leader and his cronies stole billions – nobody really knows how much. The generally accepted figure is around $48 billion since black rule started in 1994. But the real amount is probably much higher. Meanwhile, South Africa’s former president is faced with the challenge of how to spend his many billions. And now South Africa’s great leaders want to ‘do a Zimbabwe’ – confiscate all the productive land owned by white farmers and give it to utterly venal ANC cronies who know nothing about farming and who will destroy the country’s agriculture and further impoverish the population
Here are probably the most corrupt evil people on this planet:
South America – here the problem is different. Here most of the countries are run by narco cartels. There’s a Mexican saying “how do you want to be paid – in silver or lead?” – do you accept a bribe or shall we just kill you? Given that choice, most Latin American politicians, police, prosecutors and other public officials take the bribes meanwhile their countries are collapsing into crime and misery.
Don’t mention the unmentionable
There are at least 100 Third-World countries which to a greater or lesser extent are just the same as Zimbabwe, South Africa and Angola. These countries – these lootocracies – are not progressing or developing. In fact they are becoming poorer every year as their populations rapidly increase and their rulers steal everything in sight. These are disintegrating countries and all will collapse into failed state conditions with starvation, impoverishment and civil war. All foreign aid given to these countries is a waste of money as it just gets stolen by the rulers.
The problem is that political correctness prevents us admitting that around half the world’s countries are ‘disintegrating countries’. Why? Because almost all these countries are either run by black leaders or else are religion of peace countries. So, to class them as ‘disintegrating countries’ would be waaccciiisssttt or Izlumophobic or both. And so we continue in the illusion that somehow these Third-World hell-holes will eventually start developing when, in fact, the opposite is happening – they are disintegrating.
And we will all pay the price as country after country collapses and their populations flee to the once prosperous, once civilised West:
Category: 
Singapore
A country that could have been described as developing
as recently as the 1980’s and is now much richer than the UK.
How?
A ‘tough guy’ leader under Lee Kuan Yew.
Not a liberal lefty, but a man who put education and discipline and hard work and anti-corruption policies at the front.
And still our ‘leaders’ ignore this reality, supplying weapons/military to ensure natural reources are extracted, while the looters live in luxury (often in our capitals), their money openly laundered by our banks. This is not just an african problem
�I don�t think people realise how the establishment became established. It simply stole the land and property off the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles, and have been wielding power ever since.�
Tony Benn.
Wealth creation, and participation and ownership of wealth, determines the difference between countries. It is always governments who destroy this activity. The Victorian period of wealth creation was not because of the government, it was because of freedom from the government. Wealth creation is only possible when there is inequality between people, but not the inequality imposed by the corrupt African rulers.
A successful country is one where everybody can participate in wealth creation and education is the way to achieve this. When people own wealth they also work to protect it and pass it down the generations. But there will be huge inequality and today this is not accepted. This is why the UK has stopped creating wealth and is living on debt and taxation is destroying wealth creation and the handing down of wealth. We also have another problem which is that the Victorian period was based on coal and iron. We no longer have the materials and we are destroying our energy supplies with ridiculous carbon reduction policies. The UK is well on the way to poverty because of our socialist politicians and I include the Tory party in that. The British are obsessed with state aid and this is increasing after Corbyn and Boris had to promise spending money he has not got. This is wealth destruction.
Wars destroy wealth and when we had absolute rulers the wars we more set pieces between armies to determine the right to ownership, mainly of land. They were not destructive wars. This changed in the 20th century with WWII and has continued ever since; and this is government destruction of wealth. Ownership of wealth prevents wars.
Last night QT discussed knife crime. This is also because youths are not involved in wealth creation. The education system has failed them and they have lived under a system of state support using wealth created by others. All the politicians can talk about is needing more youth services and policing. They need eduction and work.
In 1960, the income of the average family in South Korea was the same as that of a similar family in Kenya. Look at the difference now. Certainly, South Korea’s leaders of the 1960s and 70s were thoroughly corrupt, creaming 10% off the top of all deals. But the roads, hospitals, schools, universities, housing, railways, industries still all got built. And built by Koreans themselves.The difference is, the sheer scale of greed – Africa’s leaders don’t just steal 10%, they steal 100%.
All the former British African colonies were provided with democratic constitutions, and electoral and justice systems, when they were given independence. But frankly they weren’t ready for it. I recall that while revising for my A-levels in the early 1960s at my local library in central London, ex-pat African ‘Degree’ students would often approach me and ask me to comment on and correct their homework. I was very surprised to see that what they were studying for supposed ‘Degrees’ was in reality hardly even up to O-level standard. Thus the subsequent collapse of the infrastructures of post British-colonial African societies didn’t come as much of a surprise to me.
I also recall a former British colonial governor once saying that the main problem with Africans was ‘An imperfect grasp of the concept of Cause and Effect.’ A statement the truth of which has been amply proved over the last half century or so.
On most blog platforms, it is possible to have small images that appear on a page that when clicked on provide a full-sized image. So, how about doing that for your images? – I would have liked to have seen the people in the image of the South African gathering larger in order to read the sign above them and to see them more clearly. I have often wanted to see a much larger image of graphs on your site in order to be able to read the details.