Well, the much-ballyhooed Live 8 concert has come and gone, and suddenly there's no more poverty in Africa, right? What was the point of all that, anyway? Turns out it was the same Liberal answer to everything: let's throw someone else's money at the problem! And it'll do just as much good as the original Live Aid concert in 1985: namely, none.

The purpose of holding the simultaneous concerts around the world, besides giving a shot in the arm to the careers of several dozen aging pop stars, was to "raise awareness" of poverty in Africa. And what are we to do with all this newfound awareness? Did the concerts actually raise any money? No. Did all that concentrated brainpower come up with a solution to world hunger (besides "dude, if the people are hungry, they should order a pizza")? No. Did they at least tell those who might want to make a donation to some worthy charity where to send the money? No. So what was the point?

In fact, the concert cost uncounted millions of dollars, between posh hotel rooms for the pampered performers and their entourages to limousines for ferrying them around to the $12,000 "goodie bags" each singer received. Why couldn't that money have been used to benefit the poor? The real point of this event was convincing you to tell the government that they need to take more of your weekly paycheck and send it to the corrupt leaders of African nations. This will make you feel good, apparently more so than if you simply contributed money on your own to private organisations that might actually help the people there. But taking money from its own people at gunpoint to give to people in other countries should not be the business of a democratic goverment. As President Bush said, when asked about American aid, "Aid is more than gifts from governments. It is also individual contributions. We contribute billions of dollars each year."

Yes, there are a lot of poor people in Africa, and they do need help -- real help, not temporary measures. The poor in Africa are really poor, unlike many of our house-owning, car-owning, air conditioner owning, cable tv-owning "poor" in this country. Those people in Africa really have evil dictators crushing their economy, destroying their rights and killing them, unlike the reedy Liberal exaggerations about such things we get to hear in America. That's why the poor in Africa require a real solution, not some feel-good concert in which a bunch of pampered poseurs posture on a stage without doing a single thing to actually alleviate the problem.

Pictures of starving Ethiopians were flashed on giant screens during the concert to encourage guilt, which these performers were using to convince people to urge their governments to send money instead of sending it themselves. What good will that do for the actual hungry people? Maybe some government agencies will send food. Everyone gets to feel good about that, for a short while. If they actually get hold of it (remember the warehouses full of rotting food and expired medicine in Iraq?), the people will eat the food and be hungry again the next day. Hey, maybe we can have another concert!

Maybe the governments of industrial nations will give money to the corrupt governments of those African nations. "Here, this is for your poor." "Gee, thanks! They could use some more rifles and bombs, I think." Maybe the leaders of the industrial nations attending the G-8 conference will forgive the debts racked up like high scores on a pinball machine by the corrupt politicians and petty warlords that run those poor nations. That will enable them to begin borrowing to pay for their Mercedes limos, weapons stockpiles and palaces all over again. Throwing money at the problem will never help, never!

As long as those nations have no infrastructure, no economic development and no free markets, there will be no jobs at which the poor can earn money to feed themselves. ("What?" I can hear the Liberals saying. "Asking people to work for a living? How mean!") Organisations like USAID (US Agency for International Development) try to improve conditions in Africa, but their efforts are hampered by the local governments. As long as those nations are controlled by totalitarian dictators and self-serving corrupt politicians, there can be no meaningful improvement in the lives of their people. The answer is not to simply send money and food -- that's a narcissistic feel-good band-aid kind of answer. The only realistic answer is to push for economic freedom and democratic change in those countries, and help the people build a real, sustainable economy. "Give a man a fish," the old saying goes, "and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life."

Try telling that to some of these self-indulgent, egotistical singers that appeared at Live 8, though, or most of the fans in the audience, and their eyes just glaze over. "But we're sending good wishes, and asking for the government to send money; that's what's really going to help," most would say. Roughly translated, that means, "we think the government should decide where to spend our money -- yours, too." It makes a thinking man want to scream in frustration. If the people who performed at the concerts simply donated, say, 10% of their personal income -- which they get from us in the first place -- to fund some serious economic development projects, there would be no need for them to demand that the government take more of our money to send. That, however, wouldn't give them a chance to strut in the spotlight.

The only poor beneficiaries of the concerts were the waste disposal crews, who (I have heard) received double overtime pay to clean up the unbelievable mess in Philadelphia. At least Live 8 wasn't a total waste.

UPDATE: In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Kenyan economist James Shikwati explains how aid pouring into Africa from industrialised nations keeps the Africans in poverty, begging, "For God's sake, please just stop!" Food aid puts farmers out of business. Clothing puts tailors and textile workers out of business. Malaria is a worse problem than AIDS, but "There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical." Shikwati confirms everything we've been saying all along. "No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products."

Hat tip to Betsy Newmark of Betsy's Page for the Spiegel interview.