4 ms·

you don't think "political instability and so on" are related to chasing charity?

by lintiness 10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago
If you can find the link between the two in that article, please show me.
- lintiness 10y ago
  maybe it was so obvious it didn't need linking.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Then you should have no problem showing me that link, obvious as you claim it to be.
    - ars 10y ago
      Political instability encourages short term thinking/planning, since long term is too risky. The fastest way to make money from coffee is aid agencies. If there was more long term thinking then the actual coffee would be a better way to make money. If there was no aid then ??? I'm not sure - either they would abandon coffee entirely, or they would be forced to actually try to grow coffee.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        If your long term thinking indicates that you need to grow the food you need to eat, that year, then how does coffee or aid enter the equation at all?
        ars 10y ago
        Most food is grown on a single year basis - grow that year, eat that year. Coffee is a tree it takes many many years to grow and develop. It's quicker to "harvest" money from aid agencies. PS. Your reply is very strange, since the answer to your question is quite obvious. Are you actually trying to get info, or are you trying to push the message you desire via questions?
        M_Grey 10y ago
        I'm just hung up on the fairly large, and unsupported claim, "The fastest way to make money from coffee is aid agencies." Beyond that, to be blunt, I'm just not buying the fairly clumsy and shoehorned ideological narrative presented in the piece, especially when it explains the issues raised without actually needing to explain it in terms of abusing charity.
- MisterBastahrd 10y ago
  If you can find any links that make sense in that article, then you are probably a master detective who dresses up like a bat to put fear into the hearts of criminals. It's just a bunch of rambling nonsense gathered from National Geographic and Wikipedia with a nice clickbait title. I have to wonder if the writers at reason.com are being paid by word count given how vapid most of their articles are.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Yeah, there isn't really one in Haiti or necessarily one in general. But strongmen charging aid agencies for access to refugees has contributed to instability in some cases such as the Great Lakes refugee criss[1] which touched off the Congolese Civil War, one of the 20 deadliest human conflicts in history. If aid agencies are willing to walk away that isn't a problem, but not all of them are. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    To be honest, that seems to have been the product of a genocide which we did very little to prevent or palliate, far more than any actions by aid organizations. Quite a bit after the initial humanitarian crisis had eased, you did see the military takeover and there's little doubt that aid became problematic at that point. The primary lesson though is that aid organizations can't handle a military without another military backing them. The UN couldn't make that happen, so the result was to promote conflict in the end. Truly, that isn't even remotely analogues to the situation in Haiti.
- ctdonath 10y ago
  A large chunk of the article (middle of second page) covers this. The problem is that political instability makes it very hard for long-term planning & efforts. If you're unsure what the political winds will bring next year, or who might be in power and how it will affect you, why would you invest in a long-term cash crop that takes years to pay off? To make sure you can provide for your family, you'd be wiser to focus on the food-crop harvest that's just a few months away, which is exactly what Haitian farmers do. That makes "chasing charity" desirable: if you can't risk personal effort & cost for long term goals (see above), then by all means leverage what you can out of short-term donations. Practically all the infrastructure and equipment used by farmer cooperatives and associations were plopped down by an aid agency or nongovernmental organization. ... in turn, there are few incentives to make repairs when equipment fails, or to want to achieve long-term success generally. ...the [donated] gear is much too large for the low coffee yields and production levels in the country, and built in a style more suited for Central America. These aid-built facilities wind up operating at extremely low capacities and consequently with high labor, fuel, and water requirements. Most of them are so inefficient that they can't even break even—or at least they wouldn't be able to without support from outside aid groups. There's a great deal more explaining this. RT*A.

you don't think "political instability and so on" are related to chasing charity?

M_Grey 10y ago

If you can find the link between the two in that article, please show me.

lintiness 10y ago
maybe it was so obvious it didn't need linking.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Then you should have no problem showing me that link, obvious as you claim it to be.
  - ars 10y ago
    Political instability encourages short term thinking/planning, since long term is too risky. The fastest way to make money from coffee is aid agencies. If there was more long term thinking then the actual coffee would be a better way to make money. If there was no aid then ??? I'm not sure - either they would abandon coffee entirely, or they would be forced to actually try to grow coffee.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      If your long term thinking indicates that you need to grow the food you need to eat, that year, then how does coffee or aid enter the equation at all?
      - ars 10y ago
        Most food is grown on a single year basis - grow that year, eat that year. Coffee is a tree it takes many many years to grow and develop. It's quicker to "harvest" money from aid agencies. PS. Your reply is very strange, since the answer to your question is quite obvious. Are you actually trying to get info, or are you trying to push the message you desire via questions?
        M_Grey 10y ago
        I'm just hung up on the fairly large, and unsupported claim, "The fastest way to make money from coffee is aid agencies." Beyond that, to be blunt, I'm just not buying the fairly clumsy and shoehorned ideological narrative presented in the piece, especially when it explains the issues raised without actually needing to explain it in terms of abusing charity.
MisterBastahrd 10y ago
If you can find any links that make sense in that article, then you are probably a master detective who dresses up like a bat to put fear into the hearts of criminals. It's just a bunch of rambling nonsense gathered from National Geographic and Wikipedia with a nice clickbait title. I have to wonder if the writers at reason.com are being paid by word count given how vapid most of their articles are.
Symmetry 10y ago
Yeah, there isn't really one in Haiti or necessarily one in general. But strongmen charging aid agencies for access to refugees has contributed to instability in some cases such as the Great Lakes refugee criss[1] which touched off the Congolese Civil War, one of the 20 deadliest human conflicts in history. If aid agencies are willing to walk away that isn't a problem, but not all of them are. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_refugee_crisis
- M_Grey 10y ago
  To be honest, that seems to have been the product of a genocide which we did very little to prevent or palliate, far more than any actions by aid organizations. Quite a bit after the initial humanitarian crisis had eased, you did see the military takeover and there's little doubt that aid became problematic at that point. The primary lesson though is that aid organizations can't handle a military without another military backing them. The UN couldn't make that happen, so the result was to promote conflict in the end. Truly, that isn't even remotely analogues to the situation in Haiti.
ctdonath 10y ago
A large chunk of the article (middle of second page) covers this. The problem is that political instability makes it very hard for long-term planning & efforts. If you're unsure what the political winds will bring next year, or who might be in power and how it will affect you, why would you invest in a long-term cash crop that takes years to pay off? To make sure you can provide for your family, you'd be wiser to focus on the food-crop harvest that's just a few months away, which is exactly what Haitian farmers do. That makes "chasing charity" desirable: if you can't risk personal effort & cost for long term goals (see above), then by all means leverage what you can out of short-term donations. Practically all the infrastructure and equipment used by farmer cooperatives and associations were plopped down by an aid agency or nongovernmental organization. ... in turn, there are few incentives to make repairs when equipment fails, or to want to achieve long-term success generally. ...the [donated] gear is much too large for the low coffee yields and production levels in the country, and built in a style more suited for Central America. These aid-built facilities wind up operating at extremely low capacities and consequently with high labor, fuel, and water requirements. Most of them are so inefficient that they can't even break even—or at least they wouldn't be able to without support from outside aid groups. There's a great deal more explaining this. RT*A.