Thursday 30 June 2005

Debt relief on bFM and elsewhere

Just got back from bFM and a very enjoyable interview with Simon Pound covering the counter-intuitiveness of African debt relief and Bob Geldof's Live Aid and Live-8 phenomena. Where did the "fooking money" go from the first Bob-Fest, and how is the latest feel-good frolic any different?

Julian Pistorius has very kindly put up an MP3 of the interview (thanks Julian). And the BBC's Radio 3 had a similar (but much, much more intellectual) debate this morning on the subject of altruism in general and the Make Poverty History campaign in particular. Contributors include evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Ayn Rand Institute fellow Onkhar Gate. Listen here, and read details here.

Some useful links to this and related subjects:
Live-8 losers, Not PC
Altruism: It's about us, not them, Not PC
Think before you bomb, Daniel Wolf, Spectator
How Band Aid came unstuck on reality of relief, Daniel Wolf, Scotsman
Cruel to be Kind, Daniel Rieff, Guardian
Debt Sentencing, Cox and Forkum
Capitalism is the cure for Africa's problems, Andrew Bernstein
They know it's Christmas but are they actually helping?, Samizdata
Africa must learn the boring stuff, Mark Steyn
The private sector, political elites and underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa, Moeletsi Mbeki
Reuters Live-8 site
Bono's DATA site
Geldof's Live 8 site
Make Poverty History site
World Bank Debt site

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So where did the debt come from anyway?