A Talk with a Libertarian about Aid
Recently I got in touch with four high school friends whom I haven’t seen since 1947. That’s a 58-year hiatus in friendship. Naturally, we have all changed — none more remarkably than Ted, who somehow became a Libertarian along the way. Never having met a Libertarian before, I began a political discussion. Fortunately, it has forced me to respond to comments that would never have been offered by anyone I meet here in Canada. (I live among left-liberals and a handful of wistful retired socialists.) Ted and I are sparring by e-mail, and I enjoy confronting his startling arguments.
For example, last week I forwarded a piece from Harper’s to him about how Americans are more likely than any other society to claim they are Christian, yet of all the rich countries, they are the least peaceable and least generous to the poor. Like other countries, the United States has pledged to give 0.7% of GDP in development aid, but actually gives only 0.15%. That’s fifteen cents a day, per capita. To be sure, lots of other countries have also failed to fulfill their pledges, but the Americans’ shortfall is the most extreme. (This is not just my anti-Americanism showing, since I was born in the United States and retain dual citizenship.)
Ted tried to argue that Americans prefer to make their donations privately. Sorry; that doesn’t explain the gap. If you add in private charities, the American donations come to twenty-one cents per capita — far less than the 70 cents per day that was promised. I remember Ted as a devout Catholic, and I figured this little datum would be a painful thing for him to acknowledge.
Not so. He replied by arguing that development aid doesn’t work, and he closed with this aphorism (which I recall hearing Reagan utter as well): “Don’t just hand out fish. Teach people to fish for themselves.“
Fair enough. That’s an argument I haven’t heard for a long time and I must deal with it honestly. There’s actually such a thing as becoming dependent on others. Last summer at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Nova Scotia, I talked with an African woman who was extremely troubled by seeing it happen in her village. She said the villagers used to be hard-working farmers but now the young men sit around waiting for the UN truck to arrive with food.
Such problems can actually arise. It happens especially in situations of near-famine, such as the one in Niger right now. Many people are going hungry, and only recently has the rest of the world begun to send them food. The delay came from legitimate concern that free food can disrupt the market and destroy the incentive for local farmers to produce. (That’s also why it’s harmful to Third World countries to sell them cheap food from highly productive European and North American farms. “Dumping,” it’s rightly called.) Sometimes in an emergency, it is necessary to provide free food, but that is not an ideal solution to hunger. Instead, money should be spent whenever possible — to use Ted’s metaphor — on “fishing rods and nets” and other elements of infrastructure.
The economist Jeffrey Sachs, who leads the UN’s project on the Millennium Development Goals, points out that in many situations, people cannot get out of poverty by their own efforts. Nor is it fair to blame the African governments for the poverty. Yes, there is always room for improved governance. However, as Sachs notes, some “slow-growing African countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Benin, and Malawi have less corruption than the fast-growing Asian countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.”
The Millennium Development Goals can be met, says Sachs, by increasing “investment in people (health, education, nutrition, and family planning), the environment (water and sanitation, soils, forests, and biodiversity), and infrastructure (roads, power, and ports). Poor countries cannot afford these investments on their own, so rich countries must help.“
Amen! Yet I wonder whether my political debate makes any difference. I really want Ted to join in eagerly in the work of saving Planet_Earth. My personal goal is to discover how to touch people’s hearts in ways that make that happen. There has to be a way. But debate may be less convincing than sensitive stories depicting generous, wise people. I’m not sure.
Ted?
For example, last week I forwarded a piece from Harper’s to him about how Americans are more likely than any other society to claim they are Christian, yet of all the rich countries, they are the least peaceable and least generous to the poor. Like other countries, the United States has pledged to give 0.7% of GDP in development aid, but actually gives only 0.15%. That’s fifteen cents a day, per capita. To be sure, lots of other countries have also failed to fulfill their pledges, but the Americans’ shortfall is the most extreme. (This is not just my anti-Americanism showing, since I was born in the United States and retain dual citizenship.)
Ted tried to argue that Americans prefer to make their donations privately. Sorry; that doesn’t explain the gap. If you add in private charities, the American donations come to twenty-one cents per capita — far less than the 70 cents per day that was promised. I remember Ted as a devout Catholic, and I figured this little datum would be a painful thing for him to acknowledge.
Not so. He replied by arguing that development aid doesn’t work, and he closed with this aphorism (which I recall hearing Reagan utter as well): “Don’t just hand out fish. Teach people to fish for themselves.“
Fair enough. That’s an argument I haven’t heard for a long time and I must deal with it honestly. There’s actually such a thing as becoming dependent on others. Last summer at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Nova Scotia, I talked with an African woman who was extremely troubled by seeing it happen in her village. She said the villagers used to be hard-working farmers but now the young men sit around waiting for the UN truck to arrive with food.
Such problems can actually arise. It happens especially in situations of near-famine, such as the one in Niger right now. Many people are going hungry, and only recently has the rest of the world begun to send them food. The delay came from legitimate concern that free food can disrupt the market and destroy the incentive for local farmers to produce. (That’s also why it’s harmful to Third World countries to sell them cheap food from highly productive European and North American farms. “Dumping,” it’s rightly called.) Sometimes in an emergency, it is necessary to provide free food, but that is not an ideal solution to hunger. Instead, money should be spent whenever possible — to use Ted’s metaphor — on “fishing rods and nets” and other elements of infrastructure.
The economist Jeffrey Sachs, who leads the UN’s project on the Millennium Development Goals, points out that in many situations, people cannot get out of poverty by their own efforts. Nor is it fair to blame the African governments for the poverty. Yes, there is always room for improved governance. However, as Sachs notes, some “slow-growing African countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Benin, and Malawi have less corruption than the fast-growing Asian countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.”
The Millennium Development Goals can be met, says Sachs, by increasing “investment in people (health, education, nutrition, and family planning), the environment (water and sanitation, soils, forests, and biodiversity), and infrastructure (roads, power, and ports). Poor countries cannot afford these investments on their own, so rich countries must help.“
Amen! Yet I wonder whether my political debate makes any difference. I really want Ted to join in eagerly in the work of saving Planet_Earth. My personal goal is to discover how to touch people’s hearts in ways that make that happen. There has to be a way. But debate may be less convincing than sensitive stories depicting generous, wise people. I’m not sure.
Ted?
posted by Metta Spencer at 1:33 AM
4 Comments:
Do you figure that military supplies should count as humanitarian aid? I certainly don't. And I believe corporate donations are actually included, Ted. Check your facts.
I can't comment about the Los Angeles water situation. Don't know anything about it.
Re your piece on aid: I can agree with some, but not all, of the proposals. I think it would be a shame to withdraw from IMF and World Bank -- but certainly their policies should be changed and they should be made more accountable. There should be board members representing various concerns such as environmentalists, consumers, workers, and conflict resolving organizations. (See David Held’s suggestions for democratic reforms.) All transactions and plans should be publicly transparent -- not only for the IMF and World Bank but also for all corporations.
I favor proposal three and -- surprise, surprise! -- am not flatly opposed to proposal four. Globalization can be good or bad, depending. That should be the topic for many additional blogs. And proposal five is bang-on correct. I certainly favor that. (There could be some qualifications when I look at the fine print, but I do believe in eliminating tariffs and other factors that give trade advantags to the rich countries.
There are times when military equipment must be used to deliver humanitarian supplires, etc. However, that's far from the prevailing use of helicopters! Moreover, genuinely humanitarian NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders insist that the military should be kept absolutely distinct from their own human itarian roles. What happens is that the army, wanting to be seen as good guys, delivers groceries to poor families or accompanies doctors on their missions — against their wishes — and confuses the local inhabitants, who see these groups as related. The next day an MSF team arrives in the neighborhood and gets shot. Fifteen years ago humanitarian organizations were recognized as impartial and fair and therefore were never targeted by militants. Now they are seriously at risk and often have to leave. It's bad policy to try to give the military a fuzzy role and let them appropriate the halo of a genuine benefactor. Ask humanitarian groups themselves.
I see that there will have to be a lot more entries here on developmental aid. Not all of your proposals -- or those of Tupy -- are bad ideas. I think, for example, that democracy and accountable governance are indeed important criteria to impose on any recipient country. But it is a mistake to assume that aid is never necessary -- that everyone can pull himself up by his own bootstraps. We'll have to pursue this further in the future, but I won't try to do so here.
I think Ted has some very sound ideas. I agree that foreign or domestic aid is of little use, and often does more harm than actual good by way of promoting dependence and corruption.
Most people in the world would function a lot better on their own, without interference or "help" from government, whether their own or one from a different nation. On a local level, people are more aware of and rational about their problems and needs.
The first world has created many of the problems the third world now faces with debt and environmental degradation, among other things. However, we cannot turn back the clock, so that leaves three options: continue to foster an atmosphere that allows for more struggle and crisis, change the way we provide help to minimize crisis over the long term (which would involve actual studies to understand the problems that face these nations, looking hard at how our support helps or hurts, and eliminating the idea that our aid should somehow benefit us, our corporations, etc), or pull out completely. Since the 1st option is the definition of insanity, and the 2nd option is unrealistic in our world, that only leaves #3: pull out and don't look back.
This is not a miserly, selfish view of the world. This is a realistic, possibly workable solution to a problem that our government and society continues to make worse.
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