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There is a movie from a decade ago called "Life and Debt." It explores how international loans and aid have actually suppressed the local economies of the count
by yardie 11y ago
There is a movie from a decade ago called "Life and Debt." It explores how international loans and aid have actually suppressed the local economies of the countries they tried to help.
For example, chicken breast meat is very popular in the western world. Once they remove the white meat where does the rest of it go. What the producers can't sell domestically in the US or Canada they export to developing countries at cut rate prices. This drives the local farmers out of business.
Before donating fruits to countries in need (and can grow the same fruit) think long and hard about the impact that help might have on their local economy. In any other scenario this would be considered dumping and that country would be taken to WTO court.
- giancarlostoro 11y agoNever though about how it could affect the local economy, but what about those who cannot afford the local economy... This gets a little further than I can honestly handle thinking about... But thanks for your input (and everyone else's for that matter, there's plenty I haven't seen before shared).
- Houshalter 11y agoWell of course. Any attempt at helping one person hurts another person. If you give someone a free house, you put a builder out of work. If you give someone free food, you put a farmer out of work. But I don't think it's a zero-sum game. I think the total utility generated by free food is worse than the disutility of the farmer losing his business. Now those people have money to spend on other things that they would have spent on food. Protectionism benefits producers at the expense of consumers. Of course ideally you wouldn't send food directly, but just money, which they could use to buy food, or whatever they need.
- digi_owl 11y ago> Well of course. Any attempt at helping one person hurts another person. If you give someone a free house, you put a builder out of work. If you give someone free food, you put a farmer out of work. < I'm not sure i follow. Someone would have had to build something or farm something in the first place for it to be given away.
- Houshalter 11y agoIn this case, that someone is a big company from another country. In the case of donating food in general, instead of the money going to some local farmer, it goes to some farmer in Brazil. The economics of this are a bit more complicated than that though. If importing food from Brazil was cheaper, someone should already be doing it without any charitable intentions. And if if it's not, then it makes more sense for the charity to buy the food locally than pay more to import it.
- loco5niner 11y agoBut in the case of the farmer losing his 'farm', you would need to continue supplying free food for the lifetime of the farmer to truly replace him.