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Australia's overseas aid should focus on domestic reforms : Comments
By Benjamin Herscovitch, published 27/11/2013Despite this admission, facilitating necessary domestic policy reforms in ODA-recipient countries does not feature among the Australian aid program's five strategic goals.
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So it's a case of physician, health thyself, surely? One look at AusAid's website will show you that it's nothing but a vehicle for statists and totalitarians to indulge themselves in any dream of social engineering that they feel like - all paid for with other people's money of course.
There are two fatal flaws under all overseas aid. Firstly, they never call it "violence-based thieving overseas aid" do they? But the government always gets the funds by threatening to attack and imprison it subjects. The moral dimension is always disregarded.
And secondly, it’s always assumed that the money if spent by government is going to go to satisfy the more urgent or important wants of people here and overseas, than if it were left in the hands of its owners and producers.
But of course that's precisely the flawed reasoning underlying communism itself! If it were justified there would be no justification for private property whatsoever. Society would be both fairer and more physically productive with *all* productive property in government hands.
Not only does this idea have no basis in reason or reality whatsoever but we've just come through a century when it's caused millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of human deaths, mostly by starvation of people by their own governments!
Involuntary communism under any name has no ethical or economic justification whatsoever. Violence- and thieving-based foreign aid should be abolished, freeing more Australians to fund their charitable giving voluntarily.