In his book, "The White Man's Burden", William Easterly expounds on why he believes all of the efforts to fight poverty have failed and in some cases done more harm than good. How does it hurt? He says by empowering the systems that funnel the aid and find it in their best interest to maintain the status quo.
He believes there are "planners", which is the Jeffrey Sach's approach and "searchers" which is the approach that he advocates. He believes that in our effort to help and over plan, we try to force others to become what we want them to be. He even goes so far as to say that this is really just another form of western imperialism. He believes that instead of focusing on eradicating poverty, we should focus on what foreign aid can do for poor people. He does not believe in doing nothing but has a radically different approach.
Searchers look for any opportunity to relieve suffering and don't get stuck on what he calls "infeasible objectives". He believes in operating without goals and more accountability for those that are trying to help.
There is yet another perspective in the book "A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty". You can read more on the website Poor Economics which includes a link of ways you can help by funding microfinance projects which do seem to make a lot of sense.
I have thought about this many times myself. I like your brief description of what I imagine is a powerful book. Give a man a fish .... or better yet a hook and a line. In Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth he says every time we start a project with negative words like war on drugs or in this example fight poverty we have lost the cause before we even start. I shall write these titles down and look into them.
ReplyDeleteGreat point. It is definitely the wrong mindset to use warfare terminology.
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