BrianGarst.com

Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Advocate of the Poor

A man who’s trying to eliminate poverty won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The winner, announced at 5 a.m. EDT, is a Bangladeshi professor named Mohammed Yunus and his Grameen Bank, which — through a process called microcredit — has advanced the cause of economic and social development in Bangladesh and beyond, the Nobel Committee said.

“Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights,” the committee said.

Microcredit describes the process of giving small loans to poor a people without any collateral or financial security. The loan recipients are not eligible for traditional loans.

It appeared to be an “impossible idea,” the Nobel Committee said, but it’s working. “Yunus, though his bank, has developed microcredit into an ever-more important instrument in the struggle against poverty.”

Everyone has the potential to live a decent life, the Nobel Committee said, and Yunus and his bank have shown that “even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development.“

Capitalism has worked every single time it’s been tried. Yet these dunderheads thought it was an “impossible idea”? How does that figure?

I’m gonna let you guys in on a little secret. Hard work is how you get out of poverty. Not handouts, not foriegn aid, hard work. It really shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that a small loan of capital (which brings with it the responsibility of repayment) has done far more to help those in poverty than all the bleeding hearts and their aid-without-strings has ever done.

There’s nothing impossible about this formula; it’s tried and true. The impossible ideas are the ones that keep failing (socialism) and yet, for some inexplicable reason, keep popping up everywhere. But it’s good to see a well deserved award, for once.