[Ark2]

Originally Posted by Pastiche

There's no doubt that straight up dollops of aid are proving to be relatively ineffective.

Glad we agree on this point.

Fortunately, most of the donor community is moving away from that model. To say that money for education, health and infrastructure wont help is just shockingly delusional.

Why is it delusional? Perhaps ill informed. When I first began reading your post, I was hoping that if my beliefs are in fact incorrect, you would offer something to invalidate them. Instead I see that you've opted to tell me that I am wrong because you say so and hurl insults.

The whole, "aid is stupid because it goes to corrupt dictators" is an assinine, facile, vapid and self-serving argument that exists in the bubble of right wing one liners and other arrogant self-centred catchechisms. You have proven that you have consumed very little of the research, on-the-ground realities or basic understanding of how the modern aid system is working.

Is this really necessary? I'm all for calling one's position assinine, but at least show me why. Give me an argument at least. If I struck an emotional cord, then I do apologize, but this sort of posting gets us no where. If I am wrong, then show me where and I will be happy to consider what you are saying. Who knows, you might even make a convert out of me...

To then say that industrialization is the cure is just funny because leave it alone and let the market sort it out systems have lead to the MOST money funnelling to corrupt and brutal dictatorships. I'm talking about the Chinese model of aid in the form hands off economic development funding to places like Sudan, Eritrea, Mali, Burma, etc.

Look at every single developed nation in the world. They all got to where they are now through the explotation of people. This idea that we can come into an undeveloped foreign nation, attempt to give them all the rights and freedoms that we have and then expect that things will get better does not work. Rights and freedoms have to be earned little by little. I look at the French Revolution, in where people sacrificed their lives so they could literally get an inch closer to freedom. I look at my grandparents who were forced to drop out of school at the age of 5 so that they could work and provide money for their families.

Teaching kids who live in grass huts how to read is great but that is us trying to impart the American dream on them long before they are ready for it. Closing down factories that rely on child labour is nice, but what happens to those children when they are no longer employed? It would be nice to think that they go to school and get a good education and become engineers one day, but often they are forced to turn to even worse means to make a living, such a child prostitution.

The bottom line is that yes, large transfers of funds to a government do not work and are increasing dependence HOWEVER, most governments of the impoverished do not have the capacity or the institutions to deal with the needs of people and depend on the donor community. I talk specifically about Bangladesh where large donors have vastly improved rural education systems in the most impoverished areas of that country and by proxy the Earth.

This sense of dependance and entitlement is the problem in my mind. Creating a system where the only way that people can move forward is by the charity of others is not moving forward at all.

But go along on your little ill-informed spiel from you cozy little office that has completely removed from the reality and destitution on the ground.

I have no problem conceding that there is a great deal about all this that I do not know. This is a discussion that I would be very interested in continuing. I'll be honest though, I'm not really interested in someone that knows nothing about me proposing to know where I come from while I trade insults with him.