Foreign aid - good or evil?

[Thorne]

I think what troubles Thorne is he thinks that, by helping others, he must be the loser.

Well, yeah! I've always known that! People are always ranting about how donations to charity are tax deductible. So if I donate $10 to charity, I get to deduct $1 from my taxes! I'm still out 9$, and the government is out $1. So where's the plus for me? (Numbers not necessarily right, but they get the point across.)

I understand what you say about some rulers deliberately keeping their populations ignorant up to a point, but I don't think withholding information stops people knowing they are starving, and as far as I can tell, such policies are rarely successful. You say yourself that, despite the USSR's attempts to keep Muscovites in ignorance of their own city's layout, they soon obtained Western maps instead.

Look at the common people in places like North Korea, and ask them if the policies are successful. Many of them have been told, repeatedly, and believe that the West is responsible for all of their problems, and their leaders are doing all in their power to save them. They don't get any real information from outside their own propaganda machines, so they have no way to know what's true. And the Muscovites didn't start getting good maps until after the start of detente when things started opening up and more information from the west was getting in. In fact, that kind of information seepage was, in my opinion, largely responsible for the collapse of the Soviet regime.

(I wish Britain would invade, by the way, if no-one else in Africa will do anything.)
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I am also prepared to argue for all necessary force to be used if those aid programmes are interfered with, whether that be by corrupt governments, tribal warlords, organised crime or petty embezzlers.

Now wait a minute, isn't that sowing the seeds of colonialism? Isn't that how the British and the American's wound up with their colonies and/or territories? It sounds like you're willing to use force to keep others from using force.

Latin Americans know how good life is in the north. There's no way they can be kept in igonrance of it.

And that's why they keep heading north. And that's why the Latin American governments don't try to stop them from heading north. They would be thrown out of their cushy jobs if they did!

The hunger North Koreans are experiencing is due (a) to the famine endured by that country in the 1990's following the collapse of the communist bloc, and to economic decline and falling levels of food production since.

This may be true, but how many of those who are staving know this? As I said above, they are told it's our fault, not the failure of the Communists.

I do not think ignorance is the explanation.

Ignorance is one contributing factor. Not the only one, by any means, but a large one, in my opinion.