Charity, the root of all evil?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

How long have we been trying wealth re-distribution (calling it foreign aid, subsidies, or whatever)? How well is it working?

How do you deal with corruption? That is the component that exacerbates all of the problems involved. Minimize corruption and ALL efforts would improve.

[a completely inoffensive name]

How long have we been trying wealth re-distribution (calling it foreign aid, subsidies, or whatever)? How well is it working?

How do you deal with corruption? That is the component that exacerbates all of the problems involved. Minimize corruption and ALL efforts would improve.

Your first sentence is really misguided. Any sort of tax break or increase is a form of wealth re-distribution. Taxes themselves are inherently wealth re-distribution. The type of wealth re-distribution you are talking about hasn't really happened because for the most part, most of the wealth re-distributed is towards the wealthy through taxes. Welfare and Medicaid are really stopgaps that prevent large portions of the population from starving or dying, not really to carve up the entire wealth of the rich.

For the most part, charity has been the dominant factor then any sort of "wealth re-distribution" so you really should be asking "how long have we been trying charity? How well is it working?"

Your second sentence means nothing really. Where is the corruption? What is the corruption you are talking about?

[Yoyoma1910]

The work of charity is usually destroyed by the work of government, which is what happens when people opt for the political solution rather than the humanitarian.

Nations are never really honest, except in that you know they will be selfish in fulfilling their interests. Sometimes those interests are to make themselves look good, sometimes they are profit (which includes stabilizing other nations), but their interest is never really selfless. There are too many mouths to feed back home already.

Charity can allow people to circumvent those whose goal is to direct the funds of others. In some cases it also fulfills an imperative role of exposing the realities rather than the perceptions of a situation. My main thought in one of the more dramatic examples of this is the Belgian Congo.

[Furunculus]

it is not the concept of charity that is the problem.

the problem is twofold;
> permanently treating the symptom while refusing to treat the cause (aid instead of economic opportunity)
> do so on an industrial scale without recourse to public representation (gov't > eu > quango > dictator > Switzerland)

if we care not only about those dieing now, but the countless generations who will follow on in the same grinding poverty, at the same abject mercy of every 'minor' catastrophe, then we will make sure these people have economic opportunity.
> so, when drought happens in somalia in 2025 it is shrugged off in the same way that australians do so today, and when hurricanes hit bengal it is shrugged off the same way norwegians do today.
if we really don't give a damn about effecting a CURE for the most blighted parts of humanity but want to pretend that we care then we can continue as before supplying endless tents, water sterilisation tablets, and bags of food aid.
> so, when drought happens in somalia in 2025 hundreds of thousands starve just as they do today, and when hurricanes hit bengal hundreds of thousands are left homeless to die from disease just as they do today.

anyone who thinks that brussels billions of euro's in emergency aid does anything to help the long term prospects of the third world is naive.
anyone who thinks that brussels billions of euro's in CAP subsidies does anything but hinder the long term prospects of the third world is frankly deluding themselves.
anyone who claims to believe both of the above statements is either an utter moron or thoroughly dishonest.

[HoreTore]

Anybody who thinks emergency aid does anything for the long-term needs to take an english class.

It's not supposed to.

But it does save millions of people from dying in a particular crisis. It keeps people from dying today, but whether the will die in five years will be determined by other policies.

Like it or not, we will never stop pouring millions of dollars whenever a crisis occurs. Human nature, plain and simple.

[rory_20_uk]

So it's an exercise in making us in the West feel better, not changing anything. They'll die - just slightly later on. Oh, and often it's not even 5 years on. Sometimes we can get the timeframe down to months.

All it does is illustrate how self deluding people are.

[al Roumi]

This is an interesting disucssion (not sure why i need to point that outfor this thread among all the others) and you are raising many good points on what is wrong about the context of aid and how it is difficult to get right.

At the root of the reasons for and against aid is a concern for the lives of others. Aid is easiest to understand in the hummanitarian sense -and there is a very clear deliniation (as HoreTore has been pointing out) between Humanitarian aid and economic Development aid. There are also other types of aid -each with their own purposes: e.g. prestige aid and military aid.

Humanitarian aid is un-ashamedly about an immediate response from those who have money/fiood to spare to those who have an urgent need of it becasue of some sort of disaster, be it natural (floods) or human (war, displacement). Let Rory be the liassez faire doctor and dismiss millions of lives if he pleases, given the choice and put on the ground to confront the staggering levels of misery that are the result of things like the floods in Pakistan or the ensuing mess of conflict in Somalia, I think(hope!) he might find it hard to be so disspassionate.

Thing is, humanitarian aid is absolutely no more than a sticking plaster. It's ambitions are no higher than seeing people fed, cured, sheltered and housed on a temporary basis.

Rory is then IMO quite right to say that the above is pointless if you do not address the causes of these disasters. Personaly however, I would go on to say that in fact, unless the vulnerability of people to disasters and their own capacity to resist, survive and recover from them are also addressed, then we probably should give up and abbandon them.

This is where development aid comes in.

As I said at the start, development aid is (or should be) first and foremost about improving the economy and the lot of the inhabitants and the running of a country. That's a massive field of political, industrial, service, social (etc) areas of work. Does this constitute meddling in other countries? er, yes, and the the extent to which aid agencies meddle depends to a large part on the assertiveness (and budget) of the government of the country in question. For example, somewhere like India for which the sums of aid are minute compared to their total budget, is highly assertive in setting parameters for which development agencies it will work with and on what areas (e.g. Kashmir is off limits... which makes the decisions of the aid agencies working in India difficult, effectively balancing the lives of Kashmiris against those of India's poor).

I think there are many misconceptions about the ways in which development aid is delivered. To start with, there are key differences between agencies, for example, US aid (by USAID, part of the State dept) is unashamedly about achieving and supporting US political interests, with aid money. France also uses aid to directly bolster its foreign policy objectives, as well as entrenching francophone culture. Nordic and Northern European countries (including the UK) tend to have much more of a focus on doing things independant of national foreign policy goals and with a focus on the interests of "normal" people in the recipient countries. The Uk though, has now said it will seek to support UK security interests more closely, but using the tools it has at its disposal -e.g. not by giving money for tanks/militias but making the state more responsive and work harder for its people, thus reducing the long-term likelihood of internal conflicts.

/wall of text.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Your first sentence is really misguided. Any sort of tax break or increase is a form of wealth re-distribution. Taxes themselves are inherently wealth re-distribution. The type of wealth re-distribution you are talking about hasn't really happened because for the most part, most of the wealth re-distributed is towards the wealthy through taxes. Welfare and Medicaid are really stopgaps that prevent large portions of the population from starving or dying, not really to carve up the entire wealth of the rich.

For the most part, charity has been the dominant factor then any sort of "wealth re-distribution" so you really should be asking "how long have we been trying charity? How well is it working?"

Your second sentence means nothing really. Where is the corruption? What is the corruption you are talking about?

Of course the type of wealth redistribution I was talking about (actually implying as I was being a bit indirect on purpose) hasn't really happened. It cannot. Any aid measures are stopgap in character. Real change and betterment can really only be created by those involved in that culture/society themselves.

Corruption is important because it is corruption that is the primary stumbling block to self improvement. Add some corruption in the charity providers etc. and the situation gets even a little worse.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the intention of charity -- it really is one of the enobling virtues -- but its impact in practice is often far less than it should be.

I am of the exact opposite opinion to one earlier post regarding taxation. Taxation is never truly an economy of scale in action because of the inevitable inefficiencies of governance. There are some things governments must be tasked to provide because to do so by private means makes even less sense. However, I believe the assumption that government taxation is the best means to raise funds for any/all projects, even well-intentioned ones like charity aid, is inherently flawed.

Catholic charities, the Gates foundation, USMC charities are all well run organizations that don't skim off the largest slice for administration etc. They are better positioned and constituted to make charity effective.

[Shibumi]

First of all, I beg forgiveness for my lack of activity. As thread starter, I feel like it is my obligation.

I did however get stressed of time, and I didn't count on the activity this thread got. I guess that is positive.

I will take time ASAP to write more profoundly, should be tomorrow or the next day. However, in short, I have some notes.
Emergency aid should be a no-brainer. That is NOT what I intended this thread for. If my country would be hit by a tsunami, I would be the first to beg foreign powers for help.

So let us leave that issue aside, shall we?

And move on to the general aid, the do-gooders who spend their XXX$ a month on aid. If you wish, you may also discuss nations aid packages, although I personally would deem that is worthy of a topic of its own.

Till then!

[Fragony]

@Brenus surplus dumping gets mentioned a lot, doesn't make it cliche. Market protectionism is a big problem for Africa, dumping goods is kinda criminal

[al Roumi]

“simply DESTROY the common agricultural policy as well as removing tariffs on cheap manufactured goods.”
Good idea.
Let’s buy their food to feed our cattle and let them die of starvation. Their Rich will become richer and well, market economy will do the rest, like in Ireland during the Potatoes Crisis. The Irish were dieing but Ireland (the Rich) was exporting food…
Let’s exploited their masses to provide the ones who will be able to live/work in Western Countries to have even cheaper products…

Interesting defense of the CAP there. To avoid repeating the errors of the potato famine though, what you need is fewer large estates and less state control of import/exports. I was under the impression that at the time of the potato famine, the British empire had strict rules on selling prices and markets. Irish agricultural produce was being exported as part of a macro economic policy of growing things elsewhere to their point of sale, or at least feeding England.

If it were farmers cooperatives and not large scale semi-feudal estates, individual producers and even subsistence farmers would have more say over their balance of consumption/export.

[Brenus]

“Market protectionism is a big problem for Africa, dumping goods is kinda criminal” Agree with the second, absolutely against the 1st.
If you want Africa (because her we speak mostly about Africa, don’t we?) get out of poverty and famine you have to put more fence than ever to stop their greedy and corrupted leaders and elites to sell us food and others products they can sell to us, to stop to loot their best brains…
Market Protectionism is the key for development as shown by China and USA.
Until it won’t be profitable to sell to your own internal market, you will sell to the guys whose got the money…
So, to develop Africa, and in not ruining the Local European Market, taxes at the EU borders until the products get prices were competition would be about quality and quantity, not prices…
We do the same for Manufactured goods coming from India and China, in order to stop Children Exploitation and slavery….
The taxes levy could be used to build and develop micro economical projects in the countries of the incoming goods…
I know, will never happened.

“To avoid repeating the errors of the potato famine though, what you need is fewer large estates and less state control of import/exports. I was under the impression that at the time of the potato famine, the British Empire had strict rules on selling prices and markets.”
Absolutely not!!! The English Prime minister was in favour of a total free market and he refused to sent food in order to avoid to destroy the prices… He encouraged the exportation of food for the big landowners, refusing to interfere wit the “Market Laws”.

[gaelic cowboy]

Seeing as the Famine came up here I'll chip in with my two cents.

The real problem was that the market was left to totally decide the value of the remaining food in Ireland, this is fine if the people have means but landless cottiers rarely do.


We saw this a while back when everyone got in a tizzy and started blaming the West for growing more bio-fuel. The thing was if you watched the news reports it was always people were rioting at high prices not that there was no food in said countries.

[Brenus]

"The thing was if you watched the news reports it was always people were rioting at high prices not that there was no food in said countries." Yeap. And it how the French Revolution stated. Riots against the speculators stockpiling the wheat...
And it finished with a headless monarchy...