I’m going to have to put it off till tomorrow, but I’ll read the debt-relief articles, certainly. I can understand how getting out of debt is a necessary hurdle before certain things can “get better” — for a person as well as a nation. I’m not completely convinced what the solution is, so I’ll reserve further comment; in general, though, I would favor private giving over government giving. If a government chooses to forgive, delay, or eschew interest on some or all of a nation’s debt, that may be fine also. I think there are economic ramifications to some of this that I’m not qualified to comment on.

Thanks for your reply, too. It is a distinct pleasure to know people with whom one can disagree without getting into an argument… :)

1. Yes, time is important. But at a governmental level it’s not really going to happen. That will happen at a personal and charitable organisation level.

2. I don’t know about the US, but in the UK we have a huge debt crisis, with people in huge amounts of debt on credit cards and loans. Most of them are only able to pay off their interest each month, without making a dent into the actual base debt. This is, AIUI, the same situations with many of the countries in Africa. People can sometimes declare bankruptcy and clear their debts; countries can’t. Without changes at governmental level (both in the western gov’ts and the african gov’ts) the time and money spent by relief agencies will have a far less long-lasting and far-reaching effect (IMHO).

3. The campaign to wipe clean their debts started years ago with the Jubilee 2000 campaign ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubilee_2000 ) which was also supported by many of the same figures who then started Make Poverty History in 2005 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Poverty_History ). Those 2 articles on Wikipedia alone will provide enough reading on the pros and cons of debt relief ;)

4. It’s not about giving. It’s about clearing away debts so that we’re not giving with one hand, and taking away with the other.

Hope that helps.

The other problem is that there is very real disagreement among schools of economic thought as to what the “cause” of poverty is; neither side is “stupid,” they just disagree. Advocates of Keynes and Galbraith are going to disagree with advocates of Hayek, Milton Friedman, or Thomas Sowell; all those men are brilliant, they just happen to disagree on some very fundamental economic issues. I have a feeling that you and I, on the economic issue at least, are coming from similarly varying perspectives… it’s possible that we just won’t agree on this particular issue.

Also, you are quite correct; “The ONE campaign” is merely the US arm of the “Make Poverty History Campaign”. I had a feeling that it could not possibly be focused on the US alone, but for the purposes of this post, I hadn’t looked into that.

Echoing what Brian Glass said and linked back to, I have to say that I do agree that if all we do is debt relief, and no other changes are made in governments, I have my doubts how much real effect this would have on extreme poverty worldwide.

@Andrew: You’re probably right. I’d be tempted to say that both are necessary, especially considering that there are probably many who would be willing to go overseas to serve for a short time, but who can’t afford to. Even if workers from the west can pay their own way to get there, whatever organization(s) they work with will certainly need funding… That being said, it’s a very good point.

http://brianglass.wordpress.com/2005/07/06/live8/