Stefan Molyneux
  • yesterday
As you can imagine, since it is a government program, it is neither foreign nor aid

GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!

https://peacefulparenting.com/

Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!

Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material, as well as targeted AIs for Real-Time Relationships, BitCoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-Ins. Don't miss the private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!

See you soon!

https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Transcript
00:00Good afternoon everybody, hope you're doing well. It's Steph. It is the 16th of
00:04March 2006, quarter past four. I'm going home to have a little nap before going
00:11out tonight to see the fine rock band Queen. A friend of mine got me tickets
00:17and away we go. So I hope you're doing well. I'm gonna try a new topic today.
00:22This is something that I've been meaning to talk about for quite a while, haven't
00:26gotten around to it because I keep getting pulled off by my own ADHD
00:30approach to the emails that I receive. And so I think it's worth having a chat
00:35about this little topic of foreign aid, which is a very fascinating topic and
00:39something that baffled me for quite a while. Because I couldn't really
00:43understand the motivations for politicians to get involved in something
00:48like foreign aid. It was just, it just never really kind of made sense to me.
00:51Like I could understand why they would want to get involved in horrible things
00:56like the welfare state, because they get to buy votes, right? They buy votes with
01:00the money that they spend on the citizen. So that sort of made sense to me. What
01:05didn't make nearly as much sense to me was why they would be interested in
01:09buying the votes of people in Tanzania. It didn't sort of make any sense. I couldn't
01:13figure it out. And then I actually knew a woman who worked for Save the Children
01:20and she sort of turned me on to a couple of the things that helped me down
01:26the road of trying to figure this stuff out. So I'll sort of share some of the
01:30things that I learned and hopefully it will sort of make some sense of the
01:34world to you as well. Because it certainly baffled me for quite a number
01:37of years. And it was only because I had not been sufficiently well versed in
01:41libertarian principles that I had any doubts whatsoever. But it was sort of
01:45good to clarify it in my own mind. I think it'll be helpful for you. As I've
01:49said in another podcast, you always have, in society or in people's minds, you
01:56always have this fantasy that somewhere, somehow, violence works. Somehow,
02:00somewhere, in some dimension, under some circumstances, up is down, black is white,
02:06rocks fall to the sky and rainbows are banana-shaped. Oh wait, no, rainbows are
02:11mostly banana-shaped. But not perfectly. You see? That's my point. I can save the
02:16metaphor. Really, I'm going in after it. So violence is considered to work in
02:22some manner, somewhere, somehow. And it is that little gap that most people, and I
02:29put myself in this category up until about a year ago, most people keep a door
02:34open, a window ajar. They absolutely retain this fantasy that violence works
02:42in some manner, in some place, under some circumstances. And you just, you have to
02:48find some way to tweak things so that violence can work. Now, the sad fact, of
02:54course, is that violence never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,
02:58never works at all. Violence never works. And I'm not even going to pick up the
03:04stick of self-defense here. I'm just going to talk about the kind of violence
03:07that we know we're against as libertarians and forget about that other
03:10stuff because it's tiresome to keep repeating it. And I think we all know
03:14where I stand on that, at least. So violence doesn't work in any way, shape,
03:18or form. And if you want sort of a clear example of that, there's tons and tons of
03:23places to look. Anywhere where you see violence occurring, you know that there's
03:26predation, destruction, and horrendous things going on. Violence doesn't work.
03:31And one of the ways in which you can get for sure that violence doesn't work is
03:35to look into the realm of foreign policy. So I actually read a book once called
03:39Confessions of an Economic Hitman, wherein a gentleman described how
03:44foreign aid works in the real world. Now, foreign aid is generally considered to
03:50be the welfare, I mean by libertarians or whatever, it's generally considered to be
03:54the welfare state for nations. That is not true. That is just not true. And it is
04:01sort of logically you can figure out that it's not true because the nation
04:03state is not something that votes, right? So people in Tanzania, and I will use
04:08Tanzania as an example off and on in this podcast, because it has received one
04:13of the largest donations throughout history of foreign aid, but people in
04:18Tanzania don't vote. So why are American politicians, or let's just use America, I
04:25mean Canada's got its own foreign aid messes as everyone does, why are American
04:29politicians so eager to tax Americans to give money to the government in Tanzania?
04:35Sort of an interesting question, right? You're negatively affecting those who do
04:39vote for you by increasing their taxes, and you are positively affecting people
04:43who don't vote for you by giving them foreign aid. So it really doesn't, it
04:49doesn't make any sense, right? So the answer is, I'm not going to be too cagey
04:53or coy, the answer is quite simple. The answer is that when foreign aid goes to
04:59foreign governments, they have to use the vast majority of it to buy services from
05:03American companies. That's the answer for you. So that is really it. Okay, I
05:11guess I'm done. Wow, I still got a long drive, what am I going to talk about?
05:15One of the ways in which this myth was pretty much cemented was with this
05:20bizarre fantasy of the Marshall Plan, right? So that, and you heard this kind of
05:23nonsense from people who were pro-Iraq war, saying that you can destroy a country
05:29and then rebuild it. And the example of that is the rebuilding of Germany and
05:36Japan after the Second World War in 1945 under the Marshall Plan. Oh gosh,
05:42$12 billion, I think it was, was earmarked to get all of these countries back up on
05:46their feet, and France got a good chunk of it and so on. Well, it's all nonsense,
05:50as you can imagine. I mean, you just look into the facts of the Marshall Plan,
05:53you'll realize that very quickly what happened was, well, of course, the vast
05:57majority of the money never left the country, right? It went to US companies to do X, Y, or Z,
06:01and the vast majority of the money involved in the Marshall Plan went to corrupt state
06:06slash corporate entities on the home soil, and never went anywhere remotely close to the areas
06:11that it was intended to go to. That's one of the answers about the Marshall Plan.
06:15The other one, of course, is that the money that did go, say, to the government of France,
06:20the French government simply used that money to fund a war in Indochina.
06:24I mean, it's bizarre, even if you did get foreign aid to actually go to the government,
06:29and it does sometimes, but even if you did get foreign aid to go to the government,
06:33the idea that that government is going to use it for the benefit of its own people is just
06:37hilarious. I mean, if it wasn't so unbelievably destructive in terms of lives ruined, and arms
06:45bought, and economies destroyed, and wars fought, and women raped, and children destroyed,
06:53if it wasn't for all of that, it would be kind of like a grim joke, right? The logic of foreign
06:57aid is sad and funny at the same time. Because the logic of foreign aid is, okay, Mr. Mbatu,
07:05Mr. Leader of, I don't know, whatever that African clicking noise is, Urdu? I don't know.
07:11But, oh, Mr. Leader of Tanzania, you who are so mighty and wise, we're going to give you $100
07:15million to use for the benefit of your people. You slip off that muumuu, and we'll slip you
07:21something real nice for you to take care of your people with, which is really kind of interesting.
07:26Because, of course, if Mr. Leader of Tanzania had any interest in helping his people,
07:32then there would be a free market, and you wouldn't need foreign aid to begin with.
07:35Like, it's kind of funny, in a way. Like, it's kind of sad, but it's kind of funny,
07:39like a lot of these things. It's like going to the local mafia don and giving him $10 million
07:49to go and help the shopkeepers in his neighbourhood, when he's already charging
07:55them protection money. I mean, isn't that kind of funny? So, the shopkeepers are desperately poor,
08:02because they have to pay half their money, or three quarters of their profits, to the local
08:06mafia don. And so, what does the federal government do? It gives $10 million to the mafia don.
08:12Now, do you think that the mafia don, in that situation, is going to take that $10 million
08:20and hand it out to the shopkeepers that the mafia don is already taking the money from,
08:27who are only poor because of the mafia don? It's madness! It really is.
08:33And it doesn't take that much time to figure it out. I mean, I'm no epoch-spanning genius
08:40who can levitate and make spoons bend with his mind. It's just obvious. If people are poor,
08:47it's because they're oppressed. If you give money to the oppressor, what do you think he's gonna do?
08:56I did not want to oppress my people. I just wanted $500 million in a Swiss bank account.
09:02Now that I have the $500 million, all the excess will go to the people.
09:06Of course not! I believe that if you know anything about African history, there's
09:11a little bit of French influence, and that's what I was trying to capture
09:14in that really, really weird accent. Honest, really, it wasn't just an accident.
09:18So, I just think it's kind of funny, the idea that you're going to give money to dictators,
09:22and the dictators are going to use that money to help the people. Because if they were interested
09:25in helping the people, oh, they wouldn't be dictators to begin with, I hate to tell you,
09:29but it seems to be the case. So, the very premise behind the idea of foreign aid is
09:37just ludicrous to begin with. You're paying thugs, right? I mean, once you understand that
09:41governments in general are composed of thugs, sycophants, and rhetoricians, right? That's the
09:47people good with words, the people good with flattery, and the people good with guns, right?
09:52That's the tripartite nature of government. That's the father, the son, and the holy ghost
09:56of the antichrist we call the state. So, these people are not going to do any good with your
10:03money. They are not going to hand it out to anyone who's going to do any good with their money.
10:08There's not a lot of foreign aid going from America to Canada, because Canada has a free
10:13market to begin with, somewhat. So, the way that the money actually goes in these situations,
10:19of course, is it goes from the taxpayers to the government. Now, the government wants to give as
10:25much money as possible to American firms so that it can buy their votes, it can get their money for
10:30the next round of re-elections, and it wants multi-year projects. I mean, that's sort of a
10:34basic fact with the government. So, I'm just making up... Actually, you know what? I'm not
10:39even going to use real names, because God knows I don't want to get sued. So, let's just say Company
10:44XYZ is a builder of dams, and what it's going to want... If you're the government, what you're going
10:52to want to do is you're going to want to get foreign aid money earmarked for development in
10:56Tanzania, and you're going to want to get XY company to have a contract to go and build five
11:01dams in Tanzania for $50 million a dam. But it's going to take 10 years. And why do you want the
11:1010-year funding? Well, because you want them to be around for re-election, because the funding is
11:16going to be signed with the current administration. So, you're going to want to bind this company into
11:20you for the long haul so that they will give you the money when it comes time for re-election,
11:25because if somebody else comes in, why, that contract could just be cancelled. Now, of course,
11:30you can do it in other ways. I mean, you can just do a, say, build five dams in North America or in
11:38America. But the problem is that lots of people want to build dams in America. So, if you're going
11:43to build five dams in America, then you're going to have what are called the request for proposals
11:49going out. You're going to have a whole bunch of competitors who are going to try and compete with
11:52each other to get the business. And if the business goes to an obvious political appointee,
11:58then you're going to look not so good, right? They're going to raise fuss. They're going to
12:02file with the Ethics Commission. They're going to get all testy on you. But because they spent
12:08two months putting these RFPs together, and it does take a long time for this kind of work.
12:12So, if you hand it out to some overpriced crony, the competitors within the United States are going
12:18to get kind of cheesed, boy. And that all makes sense. But I don't know that there's a whole lot
12:24of congressional oversight and RFP competitive situations going on in the badlands of Tanzania.
12:31So, you can basically scoop that money up. You can spend it out there in Tanzania. You can buy
12:38all the troll heads and, you know, whatever you want. You can buy whatever you want.
12:44You can build yourselves a nice gym out there. You can pay everyone $1,000 an hour. You can do
12:49whatever you want. Nobody but nobody is going to go out and check up on you. And there's going to
12:56be no real competition or RFP situation, which is going to get you into trouble with domestic firms
13:01when you go with some blatantly political crony to do the work. So, you kind of want to move the
13:07American taxpayer's money far, far away so that they can't know in any way,
13:14shape or form what the heck is going on. So, there's great profit for the government in
13:19foreign aid. And it occurs in sort of three levels. One is that it gets to control the
13:24money of the taxpayer, which is always a plus for the government. The second is that it avoids
13:29competitive scenarios and it gets all of that money to be spent hog wild out of everybody's
13:36oversight far, far away. And the third thing is, especially with multi-year contracts,
13:41but it occurs with shorter contracts as well, that it binds companies to the success of the
13:46administration so that they really have to cough up some dough for the next round of political
13:52campaigning in order to hang on to their lucrative contracts out there in Tanzania.
13:57But the idea, of course, that any of it goes to anybody in Tanzania who might use it is as
14:05unthinkable. And even if it did, what good would it do? I mean, it's just ridiculous how terrible
14:12the situation is for the people in Tanzania, because the money all goes to the government.
14:16The money goes to these American companies that do spend some of it there. But the majority,
14:20of course, goes back to the United States in the forms of obscene profits. They'll hire a
14:24couple of laborers. And even that's bad for the economy, because you hire a couple of laborers to
14:29do your dam building, but that country doesn't actually need dams. Or if it did need dams,
14:34they sure as heck doesn't need the kind and type and location of dams that are going to
14:37come through any kind of state program. That's a complete fantasy. So you're going to be putting
14:42people into getting them to move to locations where they're not needed and get them to train
14:46up on skills that they really don't need after the project, right? So let's say you have some
14:51fantasy jackhammer for creating these dams out in Tanzania. Well, what's going to happen? Well,
14:57you know, 1,500 Tanzanian guys are going to get real excellent at doing this fantasy jackhammering,
15:02and then you're all going to go home, and there aren't a whole lot of other fantasy jackhammers
15:06lying around Tanzania begging for their skills. So all the time that they spent learning that stuff
15:10is completely wasted and is negative, and they could have actually been doing something productive
15:14for the economy, right? So sending the wrong signals in the economy is a double disaster.
15:19It's not just that you waste the time and money that you've got there, but you also send people
15:22off in the wrong direction, as I talked about, I think, two days ago in another context.
15:27So the money goes to the government. The government uses the money, of course,
15:30to buy guns, right? So this is another reason why foreign aid is very popular, because foreign aid
15:35allows American arm manufacturers to sell a lot of guns to foreign governments. This is something
15:41that also, you know, don't underestimate this as a motivation either. You know, there are lots of
15:46laws that restrict the direct transfer of arms from the government to other countries, right,
15:51particularly if they're on a sort of blacklist. However, if you give foreign aid to these
15:56government heads, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, no strings attached, by the way,
16:01along with this suitcase full of hundred million dollars, you will also have brochures from Joe
16:06Psycho's House of Infinite Firearms. And of course, that phone call and that setup is easy.
16:11Now they've got all this cash, and they've got all this contacts, and by golly, they'd be more
16:16than happy to go and buy themselves some American arms. So foreign aid is, and it's all a boomerang,
16:22it's a complete boomerang. The money that goes to these foreign governments always comes back
16:28to the state. But it comes back to the state in an unverifiable way, right? It's instant money
16:33laundering. Where did you get this money from? Oh, this money came from the government of Tanzania.
16:38Well, isn't that just lovely? And of course, that's all anybody knows, right? Nobody can go
16:42and dig around and root around in the government of Tanzania's bank accounts and figure out
16:46just where the heck all that money came from. It may sort of be common knowledge, but it's kind
16:50of hard to prove. So it's a way of laundering the money, right? If you give the money to some
16:56foreign despot, then he can buy American guns and so on. And it's not just the police. I'm not
17:01picking on the Americans. It's everybody, right? I mean, it's how all governments work. I mean,
17:05any, there's no worse government or better government. Governments are simply either
17:10able to do things openly, or they have to do things covertly, because at some point in the
17:14past, people like us spoke up against the government and got the point across. But all
17:19governments are equally bad, right? All mafia people are equally bad. It's just if there's a
17:24cop cruiser going by, they won't actually kill the guy right there, right? They'll do something
17:29different or something later or something untraceable. So they're not, they don't become
17:33better. They just slightly conform to pressures in the short run, and then immediately go back to
17:38their original behaviour. So I'm not picking on American governments here. They have more
17:43temptation because they have one of the largest economies. But please don't for imagine a moment,
17:48imagine that any of this money is going to help people on the ground. It's unthinkable.
17:52What people need is freedom. What people need is freedom. They don't need the government money.
17:57They don't need state handouts. They don't need American taxpayers' money. All they need is the
18:01same damn thing that you and I need, which is freedom, which is the ability to do what they
18:06want to buy and sell and grow and trade and do whatever the hell they want without the government
18:10shoving a gun down their throat if they don't have a license that takes 10 years to get.
18:14All they need is freedom. All the third world has ever needed is freedom. All that anybody ever
18:18needs is freedom. And you don't get that by funding government. You get the complete opposite.
18:23I mean, imagine if there was some, I mean, just picture this if you like, if you want to sort of
18:26have a mental, a mental bit of funsies, imagine that there's some intergalactic trading company
18:33that has currency, which all the governments in the earth recognize, and the mothership opens up
18:40its load over Washington, and it gives $100 billion to the government. It gives $100 billion
18:49to the government. Know what? It gives $5 trillion to the government. What do you think the government's
18:55going to do with that money? Do you think that they're going to give it to us? Do you think
18:59they're even going to pay off the debt? Of course not. If somebody just magically gave the US
19:04government or the British government all of this money, there's simply no chance that the government
19:09would do anything whatsoever to help the people. Because of course, what you need to help the
19:14people is less to no government, and giving the government money just makes it bigger. So it's
19:19the exact opposite of anything that you would ever do if you had any kind of concern for these
19:25poor bastards in the third world who get by on a buck a day, if they're lucky, and live their entire
19:31lives watching their children starve to death and die of wreckage. If you had any, any concern about
19:36these people whatsoever, the last thing you would ever conceivably do is swell the size of their
19:40government, since it's the size of their government that is why they're poor to begin with. It's like
19:44trying to save somebody from cancer by injecting them with a tumor. It's completely bizarre. It's
19:50like trying to cure emphysema by chain smoking. It's exactly what got you there to begin with.
19:56So it's just important to understand that foreign aid has nothing to do with helping the people. In
20:00fact, it's quite the opposite, because violence never works. And if you want to look this kind
20:06of stuff up, I mean, I can read off some more statistics in the morning, but I mean, if you
20:10want to look this stuff up, it's pretty easy to figure out, right? All you have to do is you have
20:15to look at the ratio of foreign aid to economic development, right? According to this theory,
20:21and then, you know, you could say that if this theory is true, then economic development should
20:27be unrelated to foreign aid. And for it to be really true, it would have to be inversely related
20:32to foreign aid. Well, guess what, lucky folks, I've stacked the deck. I had an ace up my sleeve,
20:37and I've already looked it up. So it is absolutely true. The amount of economic development,
20:43the amount of wealth generation that occurs within a society is inversely proportional. Yes,
20:48you heard me right. You heard it here first, folks. Inversely proportional to the amount of
20:51foreign aid a country receives, exactly as any logical, rational, moral, economically-based,
20:59libertarian-based, free-market argument for morality, free-domain radio-based argument
21:04would predict. Of course, giving the government money is going to make things worse for the
21:08people, because the government is an agency of violence. And when you fund something,
21:12you increase it. And when you increase the government, you increase the amount of violence.
21:16And when you increase the amount of violence, you decrease the free market. You decrease
21:19economic productivity. You decrease the happiness and value of people's lives.
21:23It's ABC, folks. It's just so obvious, I can't even imagine. Tanzania has had one of the largest
21:31infusions of capital in the known universe, and is still, I think, the third poorest country in
21:38the world. It's active enslavement of foreign populations to give money to the governments.
21:45All you do is allow them to arm more people to point more guns at the population. That's all
21:52that's occurring. And the waste is unbelievable, as you can imagine. I mean, we call it waste only
21:57because the money could have been put to better use. But, of course, now we know enough about
22:03economics to know that it's not waste at all. In fact, it's very intelligently done in order
22:09to maximize the profits of the people who are the recipients of foreign aid.
22:13So when they build tennis courts up in the mountains where nobody goes, or they build
22:16a hospital when there's already five other half-empty hospitals in the village, why do
22:21they do that? They do that because they're not building for where they maximize their return on
22:25their investment in terms of having customers. They are building as cheaply as humanly possible
22:31where the resources already exist and the labor skill is already there so that they can get
22:35whatever they need to get built, built as quickly and easily and cheaply as possible so that they
22:39can make the most profit that they can. I mean, it's completely obvious, right?
22:45I mean, if somebody said, I will give you $5,000 to make me a shelving unit,
22:52and I don't care whatsoever what that shelving unit is like when you're done,
22:57and you can build it wherever you want, and you can use whatever materials you want,
23:02and I don't care how long it lasts, are you going to go and build them some mahogany
23:07treasure piece with glass doors and lights and all this kind of stuff? Well, of course not,
23:13because you're getting $5,000 to build some shelves. What are you going to do? You're going
23:18to frickin' nail up some planks in your own basement and then say, woohoo, $5,000, there you
23:22go. Took me 20 minutes and cost me four bucks. Anybody's going to do that. Anybody. And anybody
23:29who doesn't do that is kind of like stupid in a way, right? I would, and you would too.
23:37This is how violence corrupts everybody it touches. There aren't any customers, right?
23:43Who are the customers for the money? Well, the politicians have the money, which they obtain
23:49through force. They can wave the contracts around and do whatever the heck they want,
23:53and basically governments control everything in this situation, and so they're the customers.
23:59And what do they want? Well, they want some kickbacks, of course, right? I mean,
24:03don't imagine that all of the foreign aid goes out to the countries or to the companies who are
24:08being paid. I mean, and a lot of it is going to come back in kickbacks. I mean, this is as true
24:12in the UN as it is anywhere else, right? You're starting to spend tens of billions of dollars on
24:16foreign aid. Well, how are you going to decide who gets the money? Well, you're going to decide
24:21based on who's going to give you the most money back, right? I mean, that's standard bureaucracy
24:25stuff. And don't for a moment imagine that it's not rampant within the US government,
24:29as opposed to any other governmental agencies. It's just not. I mean, if you've been to,
24:35and I won't even mention the name of the company, but a company that does business with the military,
24:40and if you look at the amount of, well, the salaries of people, which you have some idea
24:45about, versus the cars they drive, you just know in your gut that there's a lot of kickback stuff
24:49going on. It's just inevitable. There's nothing you can do about it. There's simply no way,
24:54and there's no way on hell to track the money that the government spends. That's completely
24:58impossible. I mean, don't even imagine that anyone can try. And it's like trying to count
25:03atoms of air in a room with your bare eyes. I mean, it's just never going to happen. And
25:07even if you could, by the time you've counted like 20 of them, they've all moved anyway.
25:11I mean, the government is one giant, enormous money laundering mechanism. That's all it is,
25:15right? If it goes to the mafia, it has to be laundered, but if it goes to the government,
25:18it's pre-laundered, so everybody's much better off from that standpoint. So it's a lot of
25:24kickbacks, and those are the clients as well, right? The customers in that sense. You get the
25:30contracts because you get the kickbacks, and then you go and build your crap, whatever you do,
25:34over in the third world, and you think that you're doing some good, and you do this, that,
25:37or the other, and you get some nice photos, and you also do other sort of ridiculous things.
25:42So, for instance, one of the things that I'm sure you're aware of, which is very big in the
25:45World Trade Organization talks, is agricultural subsidies, because one of the things that happens
25:50in the West, of course, is that agricultural subsidies to the tunes of hundreds of billions
25:55of dollars are dumped on the farmers, and what do they do? Well, they take all of their food,
25:59and they dump it into the third world, and what does that do to the third world? Well,
26:03it destroys local agriculture, right? So, I mean, there is a