Gates Foundation museum: foreign aid

I recently went to the Gates Foundation sales promotion office at the front of their Seattle headquarters.

I will first deal with the billions that these goodhearted people are pouring on the third world in hopes of making them more like us.

The displays were lovely and heartwarming. The foundation is spending roughly $75 million to convince the public that the $30 billion they are giving away is worth while. My commentary is made up of two blog's paralleling the two major categories of Gates Foundation charity. Third World aid and education in the US.

My background in Third World aid consists of having been on a major Third World development organization for seven years and spent many months visiting projects in Laos, India,  Nepal, Guatemala and West Africa. I saw dozens of projects. I saw dozens of miserable failures.

The aid field is a complete Lefty bubble of fantasy.  Nine out of ten projects are flat out harmful and the last one is ineffective. Projects fail for only two reasons. (1) People lack resources because they lack stable government and consequently (2) they lack adequate commercial development.

I could fill this blog for weeks with reports on Third World development project disasters. There is no shortage of stories.The Gates Foundation should be filling its display hall with those stories of failures for a real public education.

If you doubt me, do a simple mental experiment. I propose we bring 100 5-year-olds and their parents from every hellhole in the Third World to Los Angeles with appropriate visas. I am certain that 80 of the 100 children will be successful middle-class Americans by the time they are 35 years old.

They are not lacking in money in the Third World. They are lacking the opportunity to be healthy, fully developed and contributing human beings. Inadequate market, inadequate opportunity.

The idea that the Third World is not filled with competent people of goodwill is Bill and Melinda Gates' style arrogance. The Third World lacks what Los Angeles has: stable government and a vast commercial world of opportunity.