Category: Students for Liberty

Live Aid and Ethiopia’s Marxist-Leninist famine

Students For Liberty write on Live Aid and Ethiopia’s Marxist-Leninist famine.

“October 23, 1984, the BBC aired a report by correspondent Michael Buerk with footage filmed in the Korem refugee camp”

In July 1985, over a billion people watched Live Aid. Months earlier, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written “We Are the World.” All of it was a response to a famine in Ethiopia. Almost nobody remembers who actually caused the famine.

What the world saw: on October 23, 1984, the BBC aired a report by correspondent Michael Buerk with footage filmed in the Korem refugee camp by Kenyan photographer Mohamed Amin. Within weeks, 425 television stations had rebroadcast those images of starving children to roughly 470 million viewers worldwide.

The crisis was framed almost entirely as a natural disaster, the work of a catastrophic drought striking a poor country. Television footage showed cracked earth, dying livestock, and skeletal children. The government in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, was barely named in Western coverage. Its policies were not named at all.

“On July 13, Live Aid filled Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and raised more than 100 million US dollars for famine relief”

Bob Geldof started calling musicians. On January 28, 1985, forty-six artists recorded “We Are the World” in a single night in Hollywood. The single sold over 20 million copies. On July 13, Live Aid filled Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and raised more than 100 million US dollars for famine relief. It was the largest humanitarian mobilization in history up to that point.

What was actually happening: in September 1974, a Marxist-Leninist military junta called the Derg overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. By 1977, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam had killed his rivals inside the junta and taken sole control. He built a Soviet-style state. He nationalized all rural land in 1975 and imposed grain quotas that peasants had to deliver to the state at prices below the cost of production.

“This is the mechanism Stalin had used to engineer famine in Ukraine in 1932. The state destroys the production incentive, then extracts grain by force”

This is the mechanism Stalin had used to engineer famine in Ukraine in 1932. The state destroys the production incentive, then extracts grain by force. When drought arrived in northern Ethiopia in 1983, there was no surplus and no buffer. Forced collectivization had already destroyed the country’s food reserves years before the rain stopped.

The drought was real. Droughts had hit that region for centuries without killing a million people. What turned a drought into a famine that killed roughly one million Ethiopians was the policy decision to keep extracting food from regions that were already starving.

“Mengistu used food as a weapon of war against the civilian populations in those regions. Blocking grain convoys, bombing markets in rebel-held towns, and burning crops”

Tigray and Eritrea were in armed rebellion against the Derg. Mengistu used food as a weapon of war against the civilian populations in those regions. Blocking grain convoys, bombing markets in rebel-held towns, and burning crops in contested territory were state policy. Researchers including Alex de Waal and Human Rights Watch documented this in detail.

Then came the resettlement program. The regime declared it would move 1.5 million peasants from the rebellious north to the south. Médecins Sans Frontières documented what followed: people loaded into trucks and aircraft, separated from their families, dumped in regions with no food, water, or shelter. Deaths during transport and at the destinations are estimated at 50,000 to 100,000.

“If the cause of the Ethiopian famine had been a right-wing regime, it would probably be in every school curriculum alongside Live Aid”

MSF France denounced the program publicly in October 1985. The Ethiopian government expelled them in December. Investigators later established that a large share of the international aid raised in the West was diverted into the resettlement program itself. The same money raised to save Ethiopians from starvation paid, in part, for the operation that killed between 50,000 and 100,000 of them.

In December 2006, an Ethiopian court convicted Mengistu of genocide. In May 2008, the sentence was upgraded to death. He has lived in exile in Zimbabwe since 1991, never extradited and never tried in person.

If the cause of the Ethiopian famine had been a right-wing regime, it would probably be in every school curriculum alongside Live Aid. The famine that produced the most-watched concert in history was caused by forced collectivization, forced grain seizures, and a deliberate policy of using hunger as a weapon against civilians. Four decades later, that half of the story still does not appear in most accounts of Live Aid.

“Forced collectivization had already destroyed the country’s food reserves years before the rain stopped”

Reproduced with kind permission of Students for Liberty. You can find the original X thread at https://x.com/sfliberty/status/2068101947178057799, find them on X at  https://x.com/sfliberty you can also find them online at https://studentsforliberty.org/.

Estonia’s Flat Tax

Students For Liberty write on how Estonia’s flat tax came to be.

“He had read exactly one book on economics: Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. He used it as a policy manual”

In 1992, a 32-year-old historian became Prime Minister of Estonia. He had read exactly one book on economics: Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. He used it as a policy manual. Western advisors and Estonian economists told him it would fail.

After gaining independence from Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia had a destroyed economy. Inflation over 1,000%. Output falling 30% a year. Massive shortages of fuel and food. 95% of the economy state-owned. 92% of trade locked to a Russia that had stopped paying. The standard recipe for transition economies was gradualism. Step by step. Protect vulnerable sectors. Let the market adjust slowly.

Mart Laar took office in October 1992. Months earlier, Estonia had already broken from the Ruble and launched a new currency, the Kroon, anchored to a strict currency board. The IMF had cautioned against the rigid currency board, warning it would leave no room for monetary policy. Laar refused to loosen it and made it the foundation for everything that followed.

“On January 1, 1994, he did the thing nobody had done before: a 26% flat tax. Same rate for individuals and corporations”

Then he abolished tariffs. Not negotiated. Not phased. Unilateral. Estonia became one open trade zone with no protection for agriculture and no protection for industry. Western advisors warned the domestic economy would collapse.

He privatized fast. By 1994 most state enterprises were in private hands, sold through open public tenders modelled on the German Treuhand to keep oligarchs out. On January 1, 1994, he did the thing nobody had done before: a 26% flat tax. Same rate for individuals and corporations. A basic tax-free allowance for low earners, but no progressivity above it.

No democratic country had ever implemented a flat tax of this kind. Mainstream Western economists called it reckless. They wrote that the poor would carry the burden and that state revenues would collapse. Estonian economists at home told him it would not work. He did it anyway.

“The reforms compounded. By 2003, Estonia had high-speed internet across the entire country and a working digital government”

Then the numbers came in. Estonia grew faster than any other country in Central and Eastern Europe through the rest of the decade. It pulled in more foreign investment per capita than any of its neighbours. By 2000, GDP was growing 6.4% a year.

The reforms compounded. By 2003, Estonia had high-speed internet across the entire country and a working digital government. That same year, a team in Tallinn shipped Skype. A country that had inherited barely functioning Soviet telephone lines was now exporting communication software to the world.

“He didn’t know no country had tried it. He found out afterward. He said that if he had known, he might not have done it”

In 2011, Estonia joined the euro. It met every Maastricht criterion and entered with the lowest public debt in the entire EU. Balanced books, stable inflation, debt below 7% of GDP. A former Soviet republic was the most fiscally disciplined country in the room.

Years later someone asked Laar where the flat tax idea came from. He said he had read Free to Choose and assumed the West had already done it. He didn’t know no country had tried it. He found out afterward. He said that if he had known, he might not have done it.

The experts knew too much. They knew every objection, every precedent, every reason a clean break could not work. Laar didn’t know the objections, so the objections didn’t stop him. He took Friedman at face value and acted.

Latvia copied the flat tax in 1995. Lithuania the same year. Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Georgia, and Ukraine followed over the next decade. Estonia’s GDP per capita overtook Greece’s in purchasing-power terms in the 2010s. The country now produces more unicorn startups per capita than any other in Europe: 7.7 per million people, more than double the runner-up.

Reproduced with kind permission of Students for Liberty. You can find the original X thread at https://x.com/sfliberty/status/2063023739772559698?s=46, find them on X at  https://x.com/sfliberty you can also find them online at https://studentsforliberty.org/.