G8: The price of protest

Before I set sail with this, let me get one thing clear. I respect Bob Geldof. I like the fact that he ruffles all the right feathers — as much for his favourable views on Bush’s record in Africa as for his soft-left activism. I agree, in different ways, with Jim and Squander Two. He should have sold those Live 8 tickets for a fat profit but, hey, that’s a quibble.

I also support protest; I’ve even been on a few. I endorse violent protest, given the right circumstances. Most of all, though, I like direct action.

direct action action… directly affecting the community and meant to reinforce demands on a government, employer, etc.
(Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1995)

So, in the spirit of direct action, some sums.

250,000 people attended Live 8 in Hyde Park. Some surely pissed it up on an expensive away-day. Others probably walked down the Edgware Road with a packed lunch. One woman interviewed on the BBC had flown from Cape Town for the weekend (I hope she doesn’t think she’s an environmentalist). Say they spent, let’s go low, an average of £25 each on travel, a beer and a burger. That’s 6.25 million quid. Tidy.

Okay, let’s guess 150,000 people (at various times during the week) travel to Edinburgh for the concert and a jolly good protest at the golf club. Good on them. Edinburgh’s probably further for most: many will need a night’s accommodation, though crashing on student floors will be de rigueur. Some are coming from Europe and further. They all have to eat. Let’s be conservative, and say the average cost is £60 a head. That’s another 9 million quid.

Over 15 million quid on protesting. On a noble attempt to leverage the most powerful countries in the world to spend a whole lot more than that. That’s £15.25 million on an unknowable, on very indirect action that might just work. Or it might not.

It costs £18 a month to sponsor a child with World Vision. Your £18 pays for primary health care, clean water, school fees — probably a protractor, compasses and a pencil case, too. It also helps towards bigger local projects. In Kompong Tralach province in Cambodia:

The poorest families in the area are now benefiting more from a special programme which helps them create new sources of income. Families are encouraged to join Wattanak groups, for mutual support as they begin expanding into livestock-raising and vegetable gardening. There are five of these groups involving 138 families in two villages… Some families have already seen a significant increase in income…

Last year we reported on the setting up of children’s clubs. There are now 11 such clubs in the villages, involving 290 sponsored and non-sponsored children. The clubs’ activities help children develop in many different ways, and their leaders are given training. The project has helped vulnerable youngsters by assisting children whose parents have died of AIDS to go to school.
…
To improve transport to local markets, schools and clinics a number of roads were renovated… During 2003 the project supplied materials to build 120 wells in 69 villages… Medical staff at six government run health centres were also given training and provided with essential drugs and equipment… 124 teachers received training to develop their professional skills… A number of school buildings were refurbished and given sports equipment, books and materials and office equipment.

It goes on; two sides of A4. And this is just one World Vision project in one country. Let’s guess that World Vision catches children on average at 7 years old and sponsors them through to adulthood. That’s 11 years. So, at £18 a month: £2,376 for a better childhood. Bargain. For just the spare money doled out here in two protests in one week, that’s almost 6,500 entire childhoods. A straight opportunity cost calculation. Not charity, either: redistribution in action. Straight from the pockets of the rich to the villages of the poor, with negligible bureaucratic loss along the way.

This WIDER research paper (pdf) claims the British are already generous private donors of international aid. We give about $1 billion annually, around half as much as Americans (per capita, note, that’s much, much more). Our overseas development assistance budget in 2004/5 was just over £4 billion. But it’s still not enough: a billion people without clean drinking water, double that without sanitation. 15 million quid would have been a very welcome addition to the pot.

Owen has shown that aid works: on the eradication of disease, the provision of safe drinking water, and building stability and democracy, without which you can forget real development. But it doesn’t need to be government aid. It might be better if plenty of it wasn’t (it’s all our money, anyway). And the carpers, the poverty alleviation free riders? Screw them. (Or better still, read Jim doing it.)

What about all that leverage we’d lose if nobody went to Edinburgh? What if everyone had donated their train fares and nobody at all had turned up to hear The Killers on Saturday?

I’ll answer that with an honest question: does anyone really believe a march and a pop concert will change anything? It wasn’t the burning Porsche on St Martin’s Lane that downed the poll tax. It was massive private giving that shamed our government into increasing assistance after the Boxing Day tsunami. And whatever we get out of the G8, it surely isn’t going to be an international redistribution mechanism as efficient as World Vision’s.

Eight Men in One Room can change the world: the economic structure of it, anyway. But they won’t. These eight men didn’t get where they are by helping the world’s poor, but by pandering to lobbyists and agribusiness, and sending pork home from every international shindig. Ordinary people like us aren’t constrained. Given the choice between some very expensive awareness-raising plus a police baton charge or two, and 6,500 childhoods, I know which one I take. Every time.