Chapter 11: Producers in the Larger World

I have addressed Producers and their situation in America alone. What about Producers in the rest of the world? As I write this, the Live8 concert to benefit Africa is going on. Let’s take a look at Africa.

Have you been to Africa? Having been to Kenya, I have seen it first hand. I have been to wealthy estates, the best hotels, and also to the slums. What I saw amazed me and relates directly to our discussion.

The aspect of African life that struck me was not starvation or disease. I saw very little of that, even in the bush and ghetto. The most amazing thing is that every street is packed. Every square foot of sidewalk is covered by street vendors. Every storefront is open for business, and the proprietors were of every nationality.

Along the highways I saw bags of charcoal just sitting by the road. Locals wait in the shade in the bush for someone to stop and barter with them for their products.

On a sightseeing stop along the Great Rift Valley, I was approached by an African wishing to barter for my baseball cap and wristwatch, or anything else American.

Those Africans, they are Producers!

I visited Bolivia in South America and found the same thing. Their cities have blocks long markets where all the Producers gather to buy, sell and trade. There and in Africa, there are no stalls or stores hawking legal or realtor services, and no phone books with back-cover advertisements from “A Law Firm Assisting Injured Persons.”

If there are so many Producers, and if the spirit of the people cannot be suppressed, then why is Africa so poor? Remember, we need but one thing to enable our achievement: Freedom.

African nations are a hodgepodge of despotism, socialism and communism. Even in Kenya, one of the freest nations on the continent, the picture of the president was posted in every business. My hosts warned me not to even mention his name in public for fear of being misunderstood as critical.

In South Africa, the 1980’s saw great upheaval, with the American news media bleating for President Reagan to punish the country for apartheid. The media frenzy culminated with the return of Nelson Mandela to prominence and power. Now Mandela has no problem with Communists or their ideals, and he is idolized as a hero in Africa and America. But even there some leaders acknowledge the importance of freedom. The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, said this regarding education:

“[T]he incorporation of the African people through colonial education into the capitalist world was deliberately incomplete, designed to create economic dependents, an exploited class of labourers, rather than entrepreneurs and economic producers. Thus, the natural capacity of Africans to produce was suppressed, Africa was impoverished by the destruction of traditional agriculture, thus reducing her own capacity to feed herself and Africans were forced into becoming nations of primary producers rather than working together as builders of enterprises and industries.”

Mbeki outlines that suppression of African Producers was part of the subjugation of the people by the European colonizers. That is, they were denied freedom. European colonial mediocrity damaged Africa for centuries.

Angola’s Communist roots go back decades. We have heard too little in the media recently of Robert Mugabe’s antics in Zimbabwe, especially his confiscation of the properties of white land owners. Slavery is alive and well in The Sudan, and the Rwanda genocide came and went without any American, European or African response.

Other African countries which are nominally democratic, with elected leaders and a constitution of sorts, are often ruled in the countryside by thugs and warlords. Somalia, on the Indian Ocean in northern Africa, is so fragmented that the CIA World Factbook lists it as having “no permanent national government.”

Even in the African countries that are nominally free, personal freedom may be restricted by local violence or regional rebels or guerillas.

Ignoring the free and capitalist example of America, the rest of the world focuses on Africa and on money as the solution to its problems. That was the thrust of the Live8 concerts in 2005. Not that the concerts raised any money for Africa, but their goal was to force the G8 group of eight industrialized nations to provide more aid and forgive African debt. This they got:

“Fri Jul 8, 2005, Reuters: The leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations said on Friday they would more than double aid to Africa by 2010, boosting it by about $25 billion a year to help lift the continent out of poverty.”

These monies are expected to relieve hunger, provide housing and medical treatment, and build industry and trade.

Will this happen? Not a chance. Why?

Money sent to third world countries has been documented time and time again to only support desperate regimes. Aid supplies and relief are intercepted and redirected to enrich local organized crime bosses and political leaders. Those billions of dollars will be consumed by Africa in the time it takes to cook one pot of rice, and at the end the pictures of starving children in slavery will persist.

The Live8 web site (www.live8list.com) listed several facts of interest about Africa:

“Over the last decade, 16 sub-Saharan African countries have seen average GDP growth rates above 4%, including ten with rates above 7%.”

That’s really great. Sixteen African countries have pulled themselves up to the mediocre growth level of Europe! Seriously, with that kind of growth, I would expect industry to be booming and hunger abating. Not true? Why?

Here’s why. All that new money is not getting back into the hands of the Producers because they are not living in free market societies. They are living under socialist dictators who do not trust individuals or individualism. The money is likely being wasted on wine and prostitutes high in government.

“Seven African countries are on target to achieve a two-thirds reduction in infant mortality by 2015.”

From 1950 to 1976, the Hungarians under the thumb of their communist puppet masters in Moscow achieved the same thing, with the rate falling from 102 per thousand live births to 30. ^[38] Seems that one does not need freedom to birth healthy babies.

“Educated mothers immunize their children 50% more often than mothers who are not educated.”

The communists know about immunizations, too. But those African children are going to grow up to the same squalor and slavery of their parents unless they get freedom and capitalism.

Without this freedom, the Producers will continue to leave Africa at every opportunity, going to America and Europe to find a better place to work. Those left behind are mainly Producers, but they have not the power or money or education to take their governments back the way the revolutionaries in America did.

How surprised I was to learn that the former communists Russia under ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin had implemented a flat tax, which took effect in 2001. The flat tax operates on everyone at the same tax rate regardless of income. This can be called a fair system, with the word fair requiring no qualifiers. We don’t call it fair for the poor, or fair for the rich, or fair for the working man. Fair is fair, and the flat tax is fair for everyone. At 13%, the tax rate is lower than similar proposals for a flat tax in the US. Russian tax revenue has grown considerably, and some attribute this to the flat tax.

Why is the flat tax significant for Producers? Because it removes a detractor of freedom, the progressive income tax which taxes larger incomes at larger percentages. Thus, the more money you earn, the less you keep proportionately, and that reduces your freedom per hour, so to speak. The flat tax provides a fair, level playing field for all members of society.

What an irony that the former communists in Russia beat the US to the fair tax. The very people who exported communism and economic slavery to Africa have embraced economic freedom. Perhaps they will be more successful exporters of economic freedom than we have been. That’s what the rest of the world needs, and badly.