In reviewing William Easterly's book on the failures of development aid, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Effort to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wrote in Foreign Affairs,
"The challenge is to respond to the plight of the hopelessly
impoverished without neglecting to insist that help come in useful and
productive forms."
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If only it were that easy. What if our prospective fisherman is starving? Surely it wouldn't be a problem to give him free fish, at least until he's ready to learn his new trade. What if he doesn't have a fishing pole? Should you give him one? (Maybe you should sell it to him. That way he'd truly value it.) But what if the fish in the pond have already been overfished? What if they are contaminated with toxins? What if fishing requires a prohibitively expensive permit? The potential problems are endless. It isn't surprising that one of the best development blogs out there is titled Good Intentions are Not Enough. Helping distressed people is tough. We've been failing for millennia.
The U.S. government's good intentions--we are the largest source of international food aid in the world by far, spending about $2 billion in taxpayer money each year--are directed not toward the suffering masses but to American farmers and shippers whose voices are heard most clearly in Washington. Under U.S. law, nearly all of our food aid is produced in the United States--predominantly by large agribusinesses like Archer Daniel Midland--and nearly all is delivered to stricken countries by American shippers. The system is shamefully rife with inefficiencies and misplaced priorities. For one, only 35 percent of the U.S. food aid budget is actually spent on food, according to a Government Accountability Office study from 2007 (PDF).
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Source: The Atlantic | Peter Duffy
Peter Duffy has been a freelance journalist since 1999, writing for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, The New Republic, Slate, and many other outlets. His most recent book is The Killing of Major Denis Mahon: A Mystery of Old Ireland.
