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Have we got enough data on whether Aid works, though? Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they

Have we got enough data on whether Aid works, though? Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Do our welfare systems lift people out of poverty? For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different!

Udo 11y ago
> For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. Some of them might need this on a temporary basis, some might never be able to provide for themselves, and some are right in the middle where a separate kind of support (for example sponsored re-training) would enable them to transition into independence eventually. It's a complex spectrum. There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. > But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different It depends a lot on what is being done with that money. Traditionally, large-scale aid is actually flowing back to first world contractors tasked with construction projects that are of little use to the people they're supposedly for. Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. It's difficult to find the correct modality that alleviates these issues across the board. Addressing just one of these at a time is essentially futile, because problems in the other areas will prevent help projects from yielding sustainable results.
- HiYaBarbie 11y ago
  > The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. We've been meeting their "immediate" needs for decades now. When do they stop being immediate? > There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. Well, how exactly do I have an obligation to support some African person I don't know and will never even meet? Not that I have a choice in the matter now, but would it be unethical of me not to send my money to Africa to support whoever ends up with it? Would that work the other way round? Suppose I developed some "immediate needs". Would Africans have a moral obligation to send money my way? Obviously for there to be a moral obligation on my part, it would have to apply to all other people too. Otherwise some people would be more equal than others. > Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. Yeah, I know. But.. maybe our governments don't, judging by how they just keep throwing billions of dollars of our money at the local warlords etc? :D There are at least two different ways Aid could be "working". > The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. Yes, and again, while that's certainly unfortunate, why and how is it my problem, let alone to the extent that money should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? The worse off a country is, the more egregiously it's been looted by its rulers.
  - infosample 11y ago
    > should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? You don't see irony in that statement? America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. In general, you should clean up the mess you made. But when your meddling makes things worse, I agree, leave Africa alone finally.
    - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
      > America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. You don't see the fallacy in yours? I have never "hurt Africa", nor have I ever "made a mess" there, so I have no reparations to make. Please don't tell me I'm complicit in hurting Africa because of some piece of paper I may have dropped into a voting box. First, I don't vote because it's pointless, and second, I'm not even from the US (or any other Imperial country).
      - Frondo 11y ago
        "I don't vote because it's pointless .." Do you do any other kind of civic or political engagement? (Voting is already the least possible effort you could make to change the world, so I may be able to guess that no, you don't do any of the harder stuff, either.)
        HiYaBarbie 11y ago
        In every single election throughout the past decades, there have been some people working hard to enact a change for the better. How's that working out so far? Will it be different next time? Vote the bums out.. so that other bums will take their place? Voting is fundamentally pointless because: you dropping a piece of paper into a box does not magically constrain what the politician you voted for can do in office. It's just a piece of paper. It has no magical powers. In other words, politicians are free to do whatever the fuck they want, and strangely enough, they pretty much always break their promises and make things worse for us. So no, voting really doesn't matter. Elections are a distraction meant to make us believe that we have a say in how we're governed (through magic paper!), and "governance" itself boils down to coercion. There's a tiny elite passing laws that we must obey. Any law is just a command to behave in a certain way and we get punished for disobeying them, regardless of whether the laws make sense, or correspond to morals, or even benefit us in any way. > I may be able to guess that no, you don't do any of the harder stuff, either In fact, I'm doing the harder stuff right now. Encouraging independent thinking and trying to get people to wake up, and enduring the resulting cognitive-dissonance-induced hostility.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
onion2k 11y ago
Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Much of the aid given to African nations over the past 30 years has been to keep them alive rather than resolve any problems in the long term. You can't raise people out of chronic poverty if they're dead. And, as it is, that aid has had a massive impact. In the 1980s Ethopia was ravished by droughts, famine, and a terrible civil war. Aid kept the people from dying, and 25 years on the country is now a democratic republic with one of the largest economies in East Africa that's still growing at around 7%. The country is far from 'perfect' but it's in a hell of a lot better shape today than it ever has been.
- mgalka 11y ago
  There has actually been a lot of money wasted because people rushed in without making sure they were helping. Some people argue we have actually made things worse by imposing our solutions. http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-experts-by-william-easterly.html?referrer= http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-ex...
Gravityloss 11y ago
Hans Rosling always presents data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo
venomsnake 11y ago
The best we can do to help africa is remove food tarrifs in the west and remove agricultural subsidies. Feel free to implement it.

Udo 11y ago

> For how many decades have we been handing out money to 'the needy'? Has the percentage of poor people in our welfare states decreased as a result? The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. Some of them might need this on a temporary basis, some might never be able to provide for themselves, and some are right in the middle where a separate kind of support (for example sponsored re-training) would enable them to transition into independence eventually. It's a complex spectrum. There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. > But let's send a few trillion more to Africa! This time it will be different It depends a lot on what is being done with that money. Traditionally, large-scale aid is actually flowing back to first world contractors tasked with construction projects that are of little use to the people they're supposedly for. Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. It's difficult to find the correct modality that alleviates these issues across the board. Addressing just one of these at a time is essentially futile, because problems in the other areas will prevent help projects from yielding sustainable results.

HiYaBarbie 11y ago
> The primary consideration of helping people in need is not necessarily to reduce the number of welfare recipients, but to meet their immediate needs on ethical grounds. We've been meeting their "immediate" needs for decades now. When do they stop being immediate? > There is a simplistic "fuck them" attitude coming into vogue again right now which I think is fundamentally unethical and, if implemented, threatens to deepen existing problems. Well, how exactly do I have an obligation to support some African person I don't know and will never even meet? Not that I have a choice in the matter now, but would it be unethical of me not to send my money to Africa to support whoever ends up with it? Would that work the other way round? Suppose I developed some "immediate needs". Would Africans have a moral obligation to send money my way? Obviously for there to be a moral obligation on my part, it would have to apply to all other people too. Otherwise some people would be more equal than others. > Big sums are also lost to corruption on all levels. The average citizen of a poor nation will never see a single dollar of that aid money, and it's not going into the local economy either. Yeah, I know. But.. maybe our governments don't, judging by how they just keep throwing billions of dollars of our money at the local warlords etc? :D There are at least two different ways Aid could be "working". > The typical poor African nation has problems on all levels: cultural, educational, infrastructure-related - everything is broken. Yes, and again, while that's certainly unfortunate, why and how is it my problem, let alone to the extent that money should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? The worse off a country is, the more egregiously it's been looted by its rulers.
- infosample 11y ago
  > should be forcefully taken from me, and sent to Africa? You don't see irony in that statement? America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. In general, you should clean up the mess you made. But when your meddling makes things worse, I agree, leave Africa alone finally.
  - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
    > America/Europe doesn't have to help Africa now just like they didn't have to hurt Africa for centuries before. You don't see the fallacy in yours? I have never "hurt Africa", nor have I ever "made a mess" there, so I have no reparations to make. Please don't tell me I'm complicit in hurting Africa because of some piece of paper I may have dropped into a voting box. First, I don't vote because it's pointless, and second, I'm not even from the US (or any other Imperial country).
    - Frondo 11y ago
      "I don't vote because it's pointless .." Do you do any other kind of civic or political engagement? (Voting is already the least possible effort you could make to change the world, so I may be able to guess that no, you don't do any of the harder stuff, either.)
      - HiYaBarbie 11y ago
        In every single election throughout the past decades, there have been some people working hard to enact a change for the better. How's that working out so far? Will it be different next time? Vote the bums out.. so that other bums will take their place? Voting is fundamentally pointless because: you dropping a piece of paper into a box does not magically constrain what the politician you voted for can do in office. It's just a piece of paper. It has no magical powers. In other words, politicians are free to do whatever the fuck they want, and strangely enough, they pretty much always break their promises and make things worse for us. So no, voting really doesn't matter. Elections are a distraction meant to make us believe that we have a say in how we're governed (through magic paper!), and "governance" itself boils down to coercion. There's a tiny elite passing laws that we must obey. Any law is just a command to behave in a certain way and we get punished for disobeying them, regardless of whether the laws make sense, or correspond to morals, or even benefit us in any way. > I may be able to guess that no, you don't do any of the harder stuff, either In fact, I'm doing the harder stuff right now. Encouraging independent thinking and trying to get people to wake up, and enduring the resulting cognitive-dissonance-induced hostility.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

onion2k 11y ago

Untold billions of dollars have been poured into the general direction of poor people in Africa, but they're still very much poor over there. Much of the aid given to African nations over the past 30 years has been to keep them alive rather than resolve any problems in the long term. You can't raise people out of chronic poverty if they're dead. And, as it is, that aid has had a massive impact. In the 1980s Ethopia was ravished by droughts, famine, and a terrible civil war. Aid kept the people from dying, and 25 years on the country is now a democratic republic with one of the largest economies in East Africa that's still growing at around 7%. The country is far from 'perfect' but it's in a hell of a lot better shape today than it ever has been.

mgalka 11y ago
There has actually been a lot of money wasted because people rushed in without making sure they were helping. Some people argue we have actually made things worse by imposing our solutions. http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-experts-by-william-easterly.html?referrer= http://nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/the-tyranny-of-ex...

Gravityloss 11y ago

Hans Rosling always presents data. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYnpJGaMiXo

venomsnake 11y ago

The best we can do to help africa is remove food tarrifs in the west and remove agricultural subsidies. Feel free to implement it.