Last week I made a couple entries regarding the conditions of Haiti and the influence of our government on the western hemisphere. This would seem to be leading up to a big plea for giving generously to Haiti. Well, yes and no.
Despite some entrenched misconceptions to the contrary, the United States is not all that generous with our foreign aid. Oh, sure enough, we give more in foreign aid in an absolute sense than other countries, since we control so much of the world’s wealth. Yet we have tended to be second or third to last in proportional giving out of developed countries. Our biggest competitors for last place are Greece and Italy. This does not necessarily mean we should be giving more, however.
The first thing to keep in mind is that foreign aid is more of a symptom of centralized global economics than a solution to that centralization. Referring to a metaphor I use often, if the United States and other developed countries can be thought of as corporate “managers” of the global economy, we are much more comfortable giving the developing “secretaries” of the world a generous Christmas bonus for sticking to their lower status role than a training program that genuinely levels the playing field for becoming a “manager.”
There are two practical solutions that would benefit the “secretaries” of the world. One of them is to give them the training to compete effectively in a global economy. This would mean establishing their own corporations where capital gains end up in the producing country, rather than open the door for multinational corporations where the capital gains become a capital drain away from the producing country. Or another effective solution would be to simply leave developing countries alone to develop at their own pace and rate. The widespread famines affecting developing countries do not result from their own initiatives; they result from being tied to our apron strings and having to develop under the conditions and timetable we dictate.
There is a book called The Road to Hell by Michael Maren that gives a more detailed, sobering account of the problems of foreign aid than you will find here. Globalization + foreign aid = catastrophe. The equation we should be shooting for is decentralized autonomy – foreign aid dependence = sustainability.
That’s easy to say sitting here with my affluent lifestyle. I will concede that Haiti desperately needs aid; we just need to be mindful which global equation we are shooting for. Government and corporate aid have been generally bad for countries; there are too many strings attached that steers them towards globalization under conditions best for us. Private and nonprofit aid do not have this problem, yet some of these charities are more interested in making a living for themselves, diluting the value of giving.
In general, I would look towards charitable organizations that have their overhead covered independently of the service they provide. I can make two concrete recommendations: Church World Services and Habitat for Humanity. There are other worthy organizations as well. The bottom line is that the aid should be of the nature that leads to decentralization and greater sustainability, rather than globalization and greater dependency on developed countries.
Tags: Decentralized Harmony
