Live8

It's going on here in Philadelphia and several other cities. Amybear and I will be staying home or going where it isn't. We considered watching it on MTV or VH1, the only problem is that the coverage on cable TV really stinks. It is all crap politics (perhaps I'll write something on that later) and no good music.

Fortunately the AOL internet coverage is much more flexible. They're streaming each stage individually so you can watch the music and skip the political indoctrination.

UPDATE: We watched Live8 for most of the day. The best coverage seemed to be the AOL roll-your-own and the ABC highlights in prime time. The MTV coverage was so bad Amy and I went shopping. A few notes to MTV/VH1:

• Your stations are about MUSIC. Show the MUSIC, not talking heads and celebrity interviews which is why...
• My local radio station, 93.3 WMMR, had better coverage than the cable guys. They actually aired the music, only cutting in celebrity interviews to fill the dead air.
• You have two cable channels. There are 10 stages across the world. Why are you showing the exact same thing on both channels?

I don't really know what Live8 was supposed to accomplish politically. As a charitable organization the Live Aid of the '80s was a failure, Geldorf raised $2 billion and only $500 million actually got to the starving kids. $500 million is great but that means only 25% on the money actually got to starving children, mostly because of rampant corruption mostly within the nations themselves.

Which brings me to the real problem with Live8. People aren't starving in Africa because of poor economic development. They aren't starving because of disease. It isn't because of the mammoth government debt they cannot afford to pay back. These are problems yes, but they are fundamentally just symptoms. The solutions proposed by Live8, debt forgiveness and foreign aid grants (not loans), have been going forward and will address these symptoms. They do not address the disease.

The disease is rampant and systemic government corruption. Many of the people in Africa are starving because food, water, and medical care is used as a political weapon against opposition to the government. The cure is free democracy across the continent. If the G8 wanted to eradicate poverty in Africa within a few years (or at least reduce it to developed world levels), there are two things they could do. They could train and finance democratic rebels (the Afghan model) or they could use their militaries to unleash a wave of violent regime change (the Iraq model). Simply giving money to corrupt regimes will be as unprofitable as it was at Live Aid twenty years ago. Yes a pittance will help the poor, but the majority will actually go to supporting the oppressive governing class that is the real problem in the first place.

UPDATE2: QandO has similar thoughts about the problems in Africa.