This morning I had the unsettling experience of listening to a lecturer from the Mercatus Center of George Mason University (of which more below) preach to an OLLI audience why she thinks Africa has a bright future. The underlying gospel message was "if only unfettered 'free market capitalism' is allowed, all will be well." For the sake of the people of Sub-Saharan Africa, one must hope that the conclusions drawn from the shockingly incomplete and biased sermon are correct, but Ms Boudreaux's explanation of why the situation is improving is so far removed from any reasonable enumeration and analysis of facts on the ground as to beggar a point by point refutation. Indeed, one wonders what sources she may have used to reach her fanciful conclusions - the only sources she cited were a few commercial web sites, including one about public toilets in Kenya, and her personal experiences. Those of us who are concerned outside observers making a serious effort to keep ideology and personal bias out of our conclusions find it very hard to share even a smidgen of her optimism, for most of the published evidence suggests that in the most optimistic overview conditions are not getting any worse. Of course Sub-Saharan Africa is a very large area with many countries, and not all of them face an equally grim future, especially if Chinese mining companies expand at the rate currently projected.
It is worth briefly noting several statements and omissions in Ms. Boudreaux's sermon. A statement that Africa is somehow less prone to conflict than in the past can only come from a Panglossian ignorance of the contents of serious news sources which suggest that nasty conflict has died down only slightly and for the moment, probably due in some measure to sheer exhaustion of the combatants in several countries. Some of the largest, and until recently more pacific and successful, states, notably Kenya and Nigeria, are threatened by the kind of conflicts which in the recent past resulted in perhaps as many as 5 million deaths in Congo, hideous civil warfare in various West African countries, the deadly chaos in parts of Sudan and Somalia, and the genocide in Rwanda. The statistics of a year or two simply do not trump trends shown by the events of decades. Economic growth rates of 5 per cent were claimed, perhaps correctly though the source of the information was not stated, but when the labor force is growing at that rate or more, it merely means running fast to stay in place. Trying to make the sermon gender friendly, Ms. Boudreaux talked about female empowerment. Never mind that some parts of Africa have a longer tradition of active female participation in the economy, as entrepreneurs and decision makers and not just as labor, than many northern countries including the US.
Meanwhile the sermon completely omitted mention of most aspects of the severe environmental problems blighting Africa's future, not least those arising from climate change. Water is now a critically scarce resource in some areas and will become scarce in more regions should climate change be at levels currently projected. Africa may have a great deal of unused farm land, but that is a debatable point if one values wildlife, ecological balance, and the rights of indigenous people (to her credit Ms Boudreaux did mention that last concern). Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from rates of debilitating and fatal diseases, especially AIDS, far in excess of those recorded elsewhere, those diseases ravaging a population with some of the highest birth and death rates presently being recorded. Data on population size and growth, life expectancy, the sex-ratio and the dependency ratio should be startling to anyone with the background of even a single undergraduate demography course. No valid evaluation of Africa's future prospects can fail to include environmental and demographic variables.
I am not an African specialist and would not presume to offer a lecture on the subject without heavy dependence on and citation of sources. That said, I could with little additional research give a better balanced and more insightful lecture on the topic than the one I heard this morning! That is not a claim of virtue on my part but rather a severe indictment of the quality of the sermon I heard.
The message that human progress requires unfettered "free market capitalism" (some leftist critics call that same phenomenon "late-stage monopoly-capitalism") is the basis of the economic theology promoted by Mercatus affiliated "scholars." In fact, Mercatus is a propaganda mill (aka "think tank") serving some immensely wealthy capitalists who wish to negate all taxation and economic regulation and the radical right-wing in American politics who represent those interests in Congress and other legislative bodies. It provides messages of comfort to the comfortable while enjoying the status of a research center at a state-funded (second-tier) university, one with a fortunate location in the richest county of the United States. Of course, Fairfax is rich because it is home of thousands of highly paid government employees and various "beltway bandits," companies extracting rents from the federal government. While richer and more sophisticated than most of the state, Fairfax is a part of Virginia, itself a welfare state with an economy outside the Washington area heavily dependent on federal spending for the military and crop supports in agriculture, especially tobacco . The dependence on government expenditures for economic success makes the presence of Mercatus with its central creed of free market fundamentalism truly ironic!
In an article in the 30 August 2010 issue of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer "Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama" discusses the Koch brothers of Kansas, part of the big money interests behind the supposedly grass-roots "tea party movement." Wishing to halt taxation of their immense wealth and government regulation of various mining and industrial activities they control, the brothers have been active in funding right-wing politicians and causes. The Mercatus Center is important among recipients of Koch brothers funds. Mayer's article raises important questions about the propriety of a state university housing a partisan propaganda mill, especially one funded by private interests with a very specific agenda.
