[Jack Jones]

I think it was Gerrr8. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see an end to poverty and AIDS. What I seriously doubt, however, is the world leaders ability to do a darn thing about it, other than to use it as an excuse to strengthen their national interests at the expense of ours.

I find the MakePovertyHistory response scarier yet. It smacks of socialism. Are they really so naïve as to believe that the UK could “eradicate poverty?” Do they really think that redistributing wealth would do anything other than stifle ambition and reward incompetence, laziness, and ignorance? They blame “rich countries” – AKA, U.S. – for trade injustice, as if trade justice outside Capitalism could exist. Encouraging third world countries to adopt protectionist policies would only shut them out; showing them how to play the free trade game is the only way for them to pull themselves out of poverty. Ensuring that aid is focused on the poorest, as they suggest, is as bad an idea as how we trust it to their despots. The aid should go toward developing economic opportunity, not toward making slum life a little easier, and certainly not flushed down the gilded royal toilet.

It’s been said that an incoming tide raises all boats. The bleeding hearts should get on board with free trade.

PS: I don’t mean to say that a genuine concern about the world’s ills makes one a bleeding heart; we all would want an end to poverty, AIDS, and all. To my mind, what makes a bleeding heart is when, out of envy of some and sympathy toward others, they’re ready to rush headlong into feel-good, but make matters worse solutions. An example of that would be the Child Immunization Act passed under the previous administration. After all, who could be against immunizing every child in America? And how many weren’t against those super rich drug companies making a profit from the effort? Thus, the bleeding heart solution was to make immunization affordable by freezing the price. The result was that the receipts from all those shots would not cover even one lawsuit from something like an allergic reaction. So, the American companies simply stopped making flu vaccine out of fear of bankruptcy. The Brits produced a tainted batch, which resulted in a shortage last fall. In the end, the people most at risk caught their death of colds standing in the late autumn rain waiting for the shot, which many most likely would not have gone to get had there not been such a big deal made about the shortage.

I hear the same kind of naivety coming from the MPH as they blame the multinational companies and rich countries and suppose that by whacking them we can put all that’s evil back into Pandora’s box.