Sean Gabb has written a particularly interesting Free Life Commentary called Is There a Right in Ireland? In this he recounts the substance of a radio interview he gave for an Irish radio station.
I explained why foreign aid is a bad idea. It is the negation of charity for a government to take money from people and to give this to other people, no matter how hungry they are. Charity is by definition an act of choice: interpose the tax gatherer between doner and recipient, and there is no charity. Regardless of its moral status, it is also an unwise transfer of funds. As Peter Bauer once said, foreign aid is the process by which money is taken from poor people in rich countries and given to rich people in poor countries. Very little of the aid ever reaches the advertised recipients. At best, most of it is stolen by those in charge of distributing it. At worst, it becomes a cushion for corrupt and oppressive ruling classes. They can insulate themselves from the effects of their policies. Directly or indirectly, they can get the money to pay the security services on which their power rests. Much better than aid, I said, was free trade with poor countries. That does raise incomes.
But the part of it that particularly fascinated me is the amazed fury his comments caused to both the radio presenter and a charity worker present. Not just shock at the points he made but at the very notion that someone would make them. It seems such ideas were completely alien, unknown, unheard of apparently. It was as if Sean had suggested the world was spherical to people which accepted as axiomatic that the world was flat. Yet this is not just a left/right matter. I have met a few dyed-in-the-wool Labour Party supporters in Britain who would nevertheless accept the truth of Sean Gabb’s remarks about the true results of Foreign Aid (even if they might not be so comfortable with his equally correct moral analysis of the role of the state), rightly abominating the grotesque trade barriers that strangle third world economies.
In fact it is Labour supporters like these people that has long moved me to refuse to see all of libertarianism’s breeding grounds and incubators as lying with disaffected elements on the right wing either in Britain or North America. What makes some nominal socialists (or American ‘liberals’) possible future libertarians is the combination of a correct moral basis for their views (e.g. they are not indifferent to people in the Third World, or anywhere else for that matter, living in abject poverty) plus a rational openness to both falsifying evidence and alternative theories explaining reality and of how best to achieve what are in fact laudable goals, for example, such as helping to make less people live in abject poverty.
Christopher Hitchens is a luminescent example of an eloquent former paladin of the left who, by sheer dint of his critically rational faculties, was able to see though the miasma of socialist theory when he realised that a socialist meta-context made otherwise intelligent people incapable of rational moral analysis of the events of September 11th 2001. He now calls himself a libertarian and unlike his former confrere Noam Chomsky, Hitchens actually understands what the word means.
Yet the reality is that a significant proportion of people who follow any -ism, and I do not exclude libertarianism, do so primarily to satisfy personal emotional requirements. They do so for reasons that have more to do with the need for moral certainty and self-esteem than for any deductive analytical process centred on clear understandings of reality. Thus a charity worker whose motives are essentially wonderful and whose direct goal, say, bringing clean water to the people of Tanzania, is hard to fault, may well be emotionally incapable of understanding that all his hard work and all his sense of moral superiority is in fact contributing to the perpetuation of a kleptocratic ruling oligarchy who are a leading cause of the people in that country’s continuing impoverishment. The reality that some of the aid money might make it to where it is intended is enough justification to support the aid process regardless of the fact the rest ends up funding the state’s security apparatus, adding to bank accounts in Switzerland and providing state employees with the ubiquitous diesel-engined Mercedes limousines seen plying the dusty streets of most of Africa’s hell holes.
That Sean Gabb’s remarks were not just disagreed with but were regarded as shockingly beyond the pale, is just a consequence of the psychological underpinning of so many well meaning but intensely destructive ideologies. People who disregard the demonstrable truth that aid to third world countries actually kills more people than it saves in the long run, do so not because they are evil and actually do not care about Third World poverty, far from it in fact. What they do not do is actually think about the problem: why people in some parts of the world live in economically stagnant or contracting hell holes whilst an even larger number elsewhere in the world grow more and more prosperous, not just top-hatted cigar smoking fat cat stereotypes, but the ever expanding middle classes across the developed and developing world. They care about it because that makes them feel good about themselves and the actually effects of when they do, which is to say the effects beyond what happens directly in from of their concerned faces, do not matter very much to how they feel about themselves.
When confronted by the economic realities of largely capitalist and now democratic Taiwan, and nominally communist and but profoundly statist China, that people can still say that they support communist and socialist systems in order to alleviate poverty is almost beyond parody. Yet although our TV screens are about to be filled up with images of pitiable Ethiopians slowly starving to death yet again this year, and regardless of the fact untold rivers of appropriated and donated money have been diverted from the First World to the Third World for decades now, many will resolutely feel that people in the Western World must empty their pockets (or else have them emptied for them by the state) in order to fund the army of UN Agencies, NGOs and State Aid groups in order to ‘save Africa’ yet again. And again. And again. And again.
There is a well known expression that says “if you are digging a hole in the wrong place, you cannot solve that problem by just digging the same hole deeper”. Yet for many, the enveloping sense of self-worth that comes from the labour of digging holes in worthy causes matters more than the fact the hole is being dug in the wrong place. Yet many a worthy hole has turned out to be someone else’s grave.
To help the poor world (especially Africa) the best thing we could do is abolish all agricultural subsidies and create a completely free market worldwide in agricultural products. The benefits to the poor world would be almost immediate and would be enormous. (The benefits to us would be significant, too). However, we are too ignorant and too in hock to vested interests to actually do this. (Also, there is this weird hankering for a (largely mythical) prior agricultural existence that makes agricultural subsidies somehow acceptable and actively popular amongs many political groups). The rich world is actively culpable here. Our actions hurt the poor world enormously. Where is the outrage? In the developed world it is largely missing. (The good thing is that much of the poor world is getting the message and they are starting to demand the right things).
Indeed, many charities which claim to give food aid end up hurting food production in the long run. By giving aid, they reduce the incentive for farmers to produce, and hence create an environment where a country can become more and more dependent on food aid. This has happened all over the world, many times.
You’re quite right that the reason for this is that if you see someone who is near death, and you have food, you want to give it to him. That’s a fairly natural reaction, but it’s an unfortunately misguided one. If charities want to increase actual food production in a country, they should try programs which actually encourage capital investment in agriculture (a good example of this is Heffer International).
Some of the criticism of NAFTA was that it would hurt Mexican farmers, forcing them off of their land. The facts are that the trade barriers (tarifs) weren’t the real problem. The real problem was (and is) that the U.S. has huge agricultural subsidies which keep the price of food artificially low.
Excellent post but I must have a bit of a quibble.
I suppose I am somewhat spiked by having from the Conservative tradition myself, but I find this generalisation of leftists as intrinsically more moral and more persuadable than those on the right to be both unpersuasive and a little unsettling.
Why is it that those who were weaned on Marx and Gramschi should be regarded as potential comrades while those who were brought up on Burke or Hume should be seen as beyond the pale and cast into the outer darkness?
Christopher Hitchens has, indeed, been admirable since 9/11 but I have yet to see any evidence that he has changed his mind in relation to economic matters. To this extent he reminds me, thus far, of the old LM crowd who have campaigned impressively against moral panic and the nanny state whilst clinging ludicrously to the belief that the government should own and run all industries.
Conservatives are too often characterised as low-brow, golf-playing executive types with a weed up their arse about immigration; a view which is both unfair and untrue.
I did not become a liberatarian to buy into the student agitprop myth that those on the left possess the intellect and the humanity while those on the right are merely a bunch of racist neanderthals.
Alright it was a quite a lot of a quibble
A good post.
For me the most immediate opportunity to make the greatest impact on the material betterment of humanity is through the prosperity that follows open trading systems. For the developing world its better to be in business than to be a beggar, better reciprocal than a recipent, a partner not a pariah and prosperity not poverty – free trade feeds.
A good post.
For me the most immediate opportunity to make the greatest impact on the material betterment of humanity is through the prosperity that follows open trading systems. For the developing world its better to be in business than to be a beggar, better reciprocal than a recipent, a partner not a pariah and prosperity not poverty – free trade feeds.
“Alright it was a quite a lot of a quibble”
Damn. I’ve now had my faith in the (English-born) British gift of understatement decisevely smashed into tiny, albeit bright, shards.
I shall now proceed to gather the shards and (I hope) import them to the right side of the pond. Come and reclain them if you wish.
The irony of foreign aid is that it goes directly to the chief cause of Third World poverty – Third World governments.
I’ve read more than one op-ed piece appealing to Christian charity to argue in favor of welfare statism. I’ve always wanted to ask those people: just where in the Bible does it say, “Give generously, and force your brother to do likewise?”
Frankly, welfare statism makes people feel less charitable. “Why should I give anything? They’re already getting my tax money.”
The irony of foreign aid is that it goes directly to the chief cause of Third World poverty – Third World governments.
I’ve read more than one op-ed piece appealing to Christian charity to argue in favor of welfare statism. I’ve always wanted to ask those people: just where in the Bible does it say, “Give generously, and force your brother to do likewise?”
Frankly, welfare statism makes people feel less charitable. “Why should I give anything? They’re already getting my tax money.”
Back to the main point… I’d say left and right here had more to do with how much you supported the Church than anything else. That has changed drastically, but I’d still say the Irish “Right” is more the religious side.
And as to those of us outside the left-right axis… well there don’t seem to be a lot… yet.
Give the whole tech thing another decade and that will change as the youngsters grow up “on the net”.
Ain’t no hope for the old farts.
Maybe Sean Gabb has no one from the Irish Republic subscribing to his mailing list because he all but recommended bank bombings in Dublin as a way to end IRA support from the people of Eire. 🙂
He asked some excellent questions, though, and I hope someone Irish turns up to give their view.
I stopped giving money to charity when I found out that the people running the charities are paid more than me (expenses, freebies or whatever you like to call them). I just give things I would otherwise throw away (clothes etc).
While there are many valid criticisms to be leveled at “foreign aid”, to suggest that ALL, or even most, assistance from the rich world goes into the pockets of corrupt authority in the poor is overstating that particular problem. Foreign aid has often been used to further foreign policy, and in that case the disbursement of “aid” funds has been used as simply another line-item to support friendly tyrants.
But even when actively supporting development, governments have a natural tendency to work with governments, feeling perhaps that working with sub-governmental groups in another country reflects badly on all government legitimacy. The problems inherent in this, for example you might in fact have to line the pockets of an illegitimate thug before doing anything else, have led in recent years to rich world governments trying to get out of the direct distribution of aid, preferring to use contractors of various sorts.
Some of those contractors are charitable organizations and some of them are for profit businesses. Both types have been and can be subject to waste, misappropriation, corruption, and pure bad faith. For the most part, however, the fact of government oversight–they want their taxpayers (and voters) to get bang for their buck–ensures a fair amount of transparency. (Procurement in the defense industry thanks god every day that the same oversight is only intermittently applied to their corner of the budget.)
Most aid actually gets all the way through to the beneficiaries in one form or another. This leaves open the question, and here is where my criticism of foreign aid is leveled, of whether or not good programmes are being supported.
Sean Gabb is, I think, asking an important question about whether or not rich governments should have a budget for foreign aid. Though he appears to conflate the issues, this is separate from the question of whether assistance to the poor world is a good thing, which is separate still from the question of whether assistance has been or could be beneficial.
Thank you for a thoughtful post encouraging continuing thought–and I hope action–on the issue of building a richer and freer world.
An instructive analogy can be found in the United States’ awakening to the damage caused by our “Great Society” welfare programs. In my family, mom and dad taught and demonstrated that hard work and self-reliance were the keys to material and spiritual success. Since my hometown, South Providence, RI, was chosen as a “Model City” and entitled to special federal programs, it was also apparent that dependence and blaming led to poverty of body and soul.
Despite my own “emotional attachment” to the conservative perspective, however, I would be willing to accept the most philosophically offensive welfare programs – IF THEY WORKED. Eventually, the reality of overwhelming damage to the intended beneficiaries of the welfare state penetrated even the meanest intellect (I refer to Bill Clinton) and the GOP, the party of the grown-ups, finally achieved welfare reform.
The same situation obtains in the wider world: feel-good programs that do real damage. Yet where in the West is there any government that can tell it own people the truth about their OWN SYSTEM? Europe is choking on dependence and blame and it is so addicted to its emotional props that it is literally dying and unwilling to do anything about it. The foreign policy angle merely reflects the domestic situation, through a glass darkly.
It is sad. It is tragic because your doom is of your own making and is so avoidable and yet you will not avoid it, will not even recognize it, even in such a nonthreatening context as foreign aid.
You are lotus-eaters and you are dying.