In Is Poverty Unnatural?, Tim Worstall describes the cause of “this week’s head scratching”:
Nelson Mandela came to London to give a short speech on the subject [of poverty] and as reported said this:
Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.Now I certainly agree with the latter part there, that we can overcome poverty, but I cannot quite choke back the scream of outrage at the stupidity of the former part, that poverty is unnatural or man made. Absolute poverty, in the form of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle is most certainly natural, it is how humanity has lived for most of its time on earth, and the current poverty of peasant farming can certainly be viewed as normal and natural. There was no one at all a few hundred years ago who did not depend upon it (even if they were part of the 2% that didn’t have to do it, they still depended upon it) and some two thirds of the globe still do.
No, what is unusual, what is unnatural and what is man made is wealth, this thing we’ve only been able to do reliably and consistently since the Industrial Revolution.
Mandela’s speech includes another “little gem”:
Aid should therefore no longer be conditional on recipients promising economic change like privatising or deregulating their services, cutting health and education spending, or opening up their markets: these are unfair practices that have never been proven to reduce poverty.
Worstall refers to that as “a prime example of idiotarian thought.”