"Mr. Deaton is a strong critic of foreign aid. He believes that the approximately $5 trillion given by governments of rich countries to poor countries over the past 50 years has undercut good governance by making poor countries’ leaders less accountable to their own citizens." --excerpt from piece by David Henderson, The Wall Street Journal
Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Sciences,
gets it. How about you gentle aid agents? With all due respect, please be
sensible and awaken to the reality of the stifling effects of aid despite decades of good intentions.
Unfortunately, aid tends to endow (knowingly and most often
unknowingly) dysfunctional elements of the status quo including ruling gangs
with unearned status and leverage. That perpetuates and prolongs the very
problems that aid is endeavoring to solve and dis-empowers people. Despite the best of intentions
(which are not in doubt), the people endure chronic poverty and its lethal
effects.
For once, will the aid industry at least consider that they
might be doing some harm? This question is not unreasonable, especially when hundreds of millions of people are suffering every day and have been suffering
for decades upon decades for want of progress, health and opportunity. Might intervention be causing harm? Should not that be the
first question of all before an aid entrepreneur packs his/her bags to effect
change in a distant foreign land?
Until then, until we see clear, transparent, and objective
proof worthy of trillions of dollars and years and years of critical time gone--lost
time and lost opportunity borne by an impoverished people--people without a defender,
without an advocate, without a champion, without representation--then, I will
continue to believe the aid machine is generally misguided and tends to
abet the very people keeping the poor undeveloped and paralyzed in failed governance and failed aid folly.
If foreigners truly want to assist and cannot resist trying; if they believe that
they can effect change in a far-flung land (typically, enjoying high salaries
that put them in the 1% of the very people that they aim to ‘aid’), then the
best thing imaginable for development and progress would be to free the people
from oppressive and corrupt governance including unethical bureaucrats from top to bottom and entitled gangs with unearned privileges. Without state and foreign interference, then the people could pursue their own dreams and ambitions with their own
talents and capabilities.
Wall Street Journal - VIDEO (most interesting from 2:30)
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| Structural representation of the folly of aid? photo © Alonzo Lyons, all rights reserved |
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