Professor Mertz’s statement that the malaria problem in Africa is due to the fact that “capitalism is too competitive to spare a few dollars” so people can have mosquito nets speaks volumes about the state in intellectual discourse on American campuses. A man who teaches Japanese opines that the cause of malaria (and undoubtedly all other ills) is capitalism. That notion is laughable. As numerous scholars who actually have studied the economies of African nations, such as Ghana-born George B. N. Ayittey (among his books is Africa Betrayed, wherein he blames the lack of capitalism and the overweening interventionism and mismanagement of African governments for the poverty and misery of the great mass of the people — check it out here) conclude, laissez-faire capitalism is exactly what poor people need.
Mertz simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but that rarely stops the academic left from saying anything that they believe advances the “greater truth” that we must replace nasty, greedy old capitalism with socialism.