I once read about a program where at-risk youth got mentorship. A follow-up survey found that those who became successful in life -- finished their education, made it out of the slums, etc. -- credited their mentor with saving them.
In reality, the statistics for the mentored group were identical to statistics for at-risk youth generally. Some kids made it out. Some didn't.
The only difference was the mentored kids who succeeded didn't feel like they got out on their own. They felt someone else "saved" them.
I've been blogging for a bit about development in very distressed and underdeveloped areas, like Haiti. In Haiti, a primary cause of their problems is frequent storms, including but not limited to hurricanes.
My understanding is they get a lot of international aid and have for many years, yet it seems like no one has ever suggested Haiti needs to build storm-resistant infrastructure (homes, etc). So it's effectively a bottomless pit that foreigners pour money into without really fixing anything.
This is the opposite of how culture develops. Culture grows out of humans finding answers that work using the natural resources of the area plus knowledge, skills etc. of the people to overcome challenges in living in a given area.
See, for example, igloos. No wood or similar material to build with and even the ice beneath their feet may disappear come spring, but they managed to create shelter out of the very ice threatening their survival and it kept people warm enough to not die in extreme weather conditions.
That's actually pretty mind blowing. It's impressive as hell that people without the advantage of fancy college degrees and classes in engineering etc. came up with this.
And the more I write about this space and read about it, the angrier I get. Because at some point, it stops being possible to really believe that competent, intelligent, well-educated people from more developed countries are genuinely THAT stupid and incompetent that they are simply INCAPABLE of ACTUALLY fixing anything.
On some level, there has to be a fundamental hostility or lack of respect or something towards the people they are supposedly trying to help while often getting paid a lot more than locals make yet the problems never get resolved. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is they need a job and the people doing the job don't have real power to get shit done and don't want to rock the boat too much because they don't want to lose their cushy salary.
And then that leaves another question begging to be asked: The wealthy people who create charitable foundations and pay big salaries to Americans and others from more developed areas who were competent enough to get rich and are in charge, so they do have the power to say "This half-assed answer that doesn't REALLY fix shit isn't good enough," what are they really trying to do?
Because if they are competent enough to get rich and they have some foundation with minimal outside oversight because they funded it, why isn't it genuinely changing the world?
What comes to mind is The Nestle Infant Formula Scandal where Nestle aggressively marketed baby formula in very poor countries and babies died as a consequence. Then Nestle sued for libel and claimed that you can't hold them criminally responsible for the deaths of infants because "other factors" contributed.
So they sold formula to women they KNEW were illiterate and happily took advantage of their lack of education to manipulate them into trusting Nestle and gave just enough free samples to make it likely their breast milk would dry up, probably imagining it would "force" them to purchase infant formula when their breast milk was no longer available.
Reality: They often diluted the formula with water which was frequently unclean, thereby causing malnutrition and disease. But you can't hold Nestle responsible because the packaging given to these illiterate women said right on it in a language that was likely a foreign language for them to not do that.
Give me a fucking break that Nestle gets to take advantage of poor, illiterate people and then blame their illiteracy for infant deaths and not the shit Nestle chose to do.
That's a case that tells you "Colonization -- the practice of more advanced nations taking material advantage of less advanced nations and not giving a shit what it does to the people in the less advanced nations -- is alive and well." Only now we call it "marketing" and LA LA LA not listening about the obvious cause and effect connection between shitty marketing practices and infant deaths.
And I have to think the most charitable interpretation I can come up with for foundations that pour money into supposedly fixing these problems, only not really, is that they are merely polite performance art to enhance the reputations of wealthy people. "Look, I do good works! I'm a nice person! I pour millions into helping third world countries! (Pay no attention to how nothing actually ever gets any better.)"
The book Diet for a Small Planet was published in 1971. The Wikipedia article somewhat misrepresents the book, stating:
...was groundbreaking for arguing that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food but by ineffective food policy.
Diet for a Small Planet proposed vegetarianism as a good environmental policy for the world long before we had extremist nutters promoting veganism as a moral choice. The first half of the book is a political piece and, no, it doesn't really say that hunger is caused by ineffective food policy.
Wow, is that an amazingly PC white wash of her message.
It actually says:
1. Poor nations that borrow money from rich nations then need hard currency to pay it back and may end up growing beef to sell to rich nations to come up with hard currency to service their loans, directly leading to food scarcity for locals because beef production is very resource intensive.
2. Other political stuff causes hunger, such as internal strife causing one side to leave international food aid rotting on the docks to intentionally starve their opposition as a tactic of war. This is not and never will be fixed by sending more food aid.
3. At the time she did her research, not a single nation experiencing famine was incapable of growing enough food to feed their people IF they stuck to their traditional locally grown diet, which was usually mostly vegetarian.
4. Food aid contributes to a chronic state of poverty and hunger because foreign nations, like the US, send foods THEY eat, like hot dogs and hamburgers, locals get used to eating beef and stop eating the affordable-for-their-income, locally-grown traditional mostly vegetarian diet and now they go hungry because they can't afford to eat hot dogs and hamburgers everyday all month but could afford to eat if they had never been exposed to this foreign diet and become hooked on it.
She didn't really propose vegetarianism as a means to save our environment per se. What she really suggested is that people in rich nations are assholes impoverishing less developed nations by lending them "aid" money and holding a gun to their head to pay it back with interest, thereby forcing them to be slaves growing beef for rich people while their own people starved.
The Bible says don't lend money to poor people. If you want to help, give it to them.
A lot of our so-called aid programs are programs which benefit the wealthy nations running them, not only "more than" the poor nations supposedly being helped but often at the expense of the poor nations they are supposedly helping.
This blog is being written in the spirit of another site of mine called the San Diego Homeless Survival Guide. It's Mission Statement is:
If your so-called aid to an underdeveloped country provides you with job security rather than creating economic stability and security for them, you're a parasite.
This site and related works of mine aim to help locals create individual and societal economic stability and security that locals can sustain without ongoing foreign aid.
If you treat foreign nations like children who need a rich daddy to adopt them and it doesn't result in them growing up and moving on and no longer needing your aid, you aren't a good parent. You are treating people like pets, not future adults.
If you are in an underdeveloped area, please be skeptical of foreign aid. Beggars can and should be choosers.