Poverty in Foreign Countries
What Has Been Tried
Paternalism has been the main way people and governments have tried to battle poverty. It doesn’t work everytime it is tried. One of the reasons is richer countries will stop competition for farming or making some other product from producing their product in their country. This causes the richer country to get a surplus which they dump into the poor country. This just destroys the poor countries local businesses. The local farmers who would normally produce the food now have to compete with super low prices from the other country. When a natural disaster hits an economy, then people want to go help and then they don’t leave. The NGO’s come in to help, but then they stay too long. They keep giving out free help and supplies which does not help the natives because it makes it harder for them to be independent. The documentary used the example of solar power. There was a local business that made solar powered lights and helped the local people out because it gave them a job and let them be independent. After the earthquake the NGO’s wanted to help so they got solar panels shipped there. Then the company can’t make money because solar panels are being given out for free. The NGO’s should just help out until the Haitians can support themselves after the disaster and then move on and let them stand on their own to let their economy grow. One of the reasons this got started was because of the Marshall Plan. After the war, America sent in programs and people to Europe to help rebuild the economy and the infrastructure and it worked pretty well, so that became the plan for developing countries as well. This would work if the help does not overstay its welcome and leaves once the country can do things for themselves and without help again. Organizations and governments should work with the country to help the country's agenda, not just give them stuff.
How It Is
All of the factors of governments, corporations, aid agencies, charities and how they all interact has created the “global poverty industry”. People can rise out of poverty given certain rights, but the current system does not encourage governments to help those people get those rights and get out of poverty. The current system just keeps giving money to the poor country and does not help them stand on their own, because if they did, then the industry would go away. All of the local businesses in certain markets have to compete with the things the other countries are donating, which they can’t do because the products that are donated are free. Donations can have unexpected consequences on the local economy, so while the aid organizations and charities are trying to help, after a while they do not help if they continue what they are doing. Another product of the poverty caused by this system is that many children in orphanages are not actually orphans. The parents drop them off at an orphanage because the parents can’t afford to take care of them and the orphanage will give them food, education, and the other things that they need. This can cause problems with adoption because the kids might still know their real parents so it is separating the kids from their parents. The solution to this problem is not to just have parents give their children to orphanages, but to give the parents jobs so they can afford to take care of their children on their own. This isn’t just good for those individual kids and parents, using this method lets many more kids be taken care of than they could be with orphanages. One reason that people or countries stay poor is because they are excluded from connections that could help them. They do not have the same access to things like education, internet, or technology. Because of the lack of access, it is very hard for local companies to grow, which is one of the ways that help economic growth. They have very many small companies and a few big companies, but pretty much no medium sized companies, which are important for growth. The reason business cannot grow is because there is no rule of law, which is needed for economies to grow. Celebrities that get involved trying to help just help cement all of these ideas into the minds of everyone else, making it harder to change the system.