The paradigm of current economic thought seems to disconnect it from the notions of sustainability that we will be required to embrace to construct a salient future for ourselves. As we face the wider environmental problems of global warming, peak oil, and food inflation; the assumptions inherent to neo-liberal economic theory leave us at a disadvantage in tackling these already potentially insurmountable issues. Further, many of these neo-liberal assumptions have resulted in a culture of economic gangsterism that has seen recession for the last two years. Indeed, it is the very dogmatism of neo-liberalism and the pathological pursuit of economy growth and maximized returns that has created many of the problems that we are facing now.
I remain unconvinced that the field of economics as it stands, and the tendency on the part of economists to think a certain way, and to agree on certain assumptions, even when they fly in the face of reality, will provide us with a vehicle to construct a salient and stable future. At the same time, economics as a field remains an incredibly important tool for analysis and prediction. What is needed then is a fundamental shift in the way we think about economic theory and in what we 'assume' about human interactions. As Thomas Kuhn noted, the paradigm we ascribe to dictates the way we frame and conceptualize issues. While paradigms can be useful, they are to a certain sense determinist in how we interact with the world and what we assume to be true. This poses an inherent danger, and the assumptions being made as the driving force behind our economic interactions, and what is rational behavior are at the moment driving us on a course that may in the end be disadvantageous.
The assumptions made in neo-liberal economic theory and in game theory about human nature seem to be highly fallacious. To economists, humans will behave barbarously to promote their self-interest whenever given the opportunity at the expense of the collective and of society as a whole. Free market economists such as Milton Friedman and Frederic Von Hayek then add the twist that this behavior is to be promoted as only a perfect equilibrium of avarice will somehow promote an ideal equilibrium in which everyone strives to meet their needs. The dogma behind this is not only terrifying, and as Adam Curtis does well to argue in the BBC documentary series The Trap, is a perversion of Isaiah Berlin's concept of negative liberty, but seems to fundamentally untrue do to another inherent human instinct towards cooperation.
The mere existence of society, and the fact that we have managed to make it this far without having raped, murdered and robbed each other at every turn does much to discredit these assumptions about human selfishness. It occurs to me that we have a fundamental biological imperative to cooperate, just as other "pack animals" have used this genetic advantage to prosper. It can even be argued that this ability of group cooperation is a form of natural selection, though this is highly debatable. The point stands however that the behavior that neo-liberal economic theory would lead us to believe is rational is in many ways pathological, and a strict adherence to these notions of rationality is very dangerous. It is also dehumanizing as it strives to ascribe to human beings inherent economic value.
Previously, Keynesian economics was an attempt to rationalize this cooperative sense, and to speak of human capital, many of the economic meltdowns that resulted from the implementation and over extension of Keynes theories saw serious economic problems across Western Europe, while the tyranny of Isaiah Berlin's positive liberty saw a particularly ruthless strand of social Darwinism take root in the form of the Soviet system. However, the sort of winner takes all free market system, with its assumption that growth at any cost is good, regardless of long-term environmental degradation and resource scarcity concerns has in and of itself resulted in a similar sort of social Darwinist mentality that would rob us of as a future as a species. In the end, a new way of thinking about economics is necessary for the sake of conservation or preservation. Social accounting and environmental accounting, while growing increasingly in importance in economics curricula rarely goes far enough into calling into questions these ideologies. Meanwhile, the field of Environmental Economics, while producing some important regulatory market mechanisms remains heavily indebted to game theory, which is in turn based on the models of John Nash and the potentially dangerous assumptions that underlie them.
The now largely ignored and recently deceased John Kenneth Galbraith rejected the technical analysis and mathematical models of neoclassical economics as being divorced from reality. Just as the economist Veblen did before him, Galbraith asserted that economic activity cannot be distilled into inviolable laws – it is rather was a complex product of the cultural and political. He believed that economists tended to ignore those crucial factors that are not amenable to axiomatic descriptions. Galbraith was a lifelong Keynsian and as Keynes ideas were gradually relegated in favor of neoclassical sensibilities, Galbraith was increasingly relegated to the fringes: only hauled out as an example of the deceptiveness of the "old ideas" whenever certain neoclassical models needed to be justified to the public. What is shocking about this, is that, with his refusal to implement mathematical models, which really prove nothing, Galbraith was one of the few in the economics field that was willing to call into question not just the limitations of the economic paradigm, but also to practice genuine Popperian falsification of his ideological bent.
Only a handful of pre-eminent economic thinkers: Paul Volcker, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman (to a point) and Amatrya Sen among them, are disciples of this school of economics - and Stiglitz came to these conclusions only after defecting away from the neoclassical approach after growing increasingly frustrated at his position in the World Bank. This is, however, the tradition that I argue needs to be reclaimed and built upon if the field of economics is to serve us well in the future.
While economic growth remains important, sustainable growth is far more important. Economists talk endlessly of "discounting" – the idea that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, however, if the rending of a dollar today means that there is no tomorrow, then the whole of the debate becomes null. Conservationism is incredibly important – however even the terminology conservationism reduces our natural environment to little more than resources to be consumed at some future date. More important I feel is the notion of 'preservationism' – or the concept that certain natural resources should be preserved and remain untouched as they have inherent value. Notably, forestry and other plant life hold an important roll in carbon sequestration – pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere – and staving off global warming.
I put it to you that we must define our values as a society, and for economists to reconsider and redefine the limits to what is rational behavior. Perhaps it is not so irrational for people to work together or to accept less than optimum return on their investments if doing so means that our planet, our way of life and our general well being are not negatively and harmfully impacted. The world of economics is one of perpetual cognitive dissonance in which one set of notions of what is rational action are put forward while we continually see people sacrifice their economic best interest in order to act humanely and intelligently towards a sustainable future. The environmental activist and journalist Bill McKibben calls this the "durable future" in his book Deep Economy and I think that this terminology is useful. Where we need to go with the field of economics is not necessarily a return to the Keynesian so much as it is a simple question of assumption and of what constitutes economic rationality for the individual and whether this flies in the face of the interest of the public interest.
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I originally wrote this piece several years ago but I think it has only gained in relevance from when I first wrote it as, if anything, the current economy has further underlined the points that I sought to make. Additionally, I think while the Obama seemed to initially convince many people that it would be in some way different, the repeated decision to marginalize Paul Volcker while empowering the likes of Timothy Geithner has meant that the Obama administration has retained the neo-liberal economic policies and mindsets that have have supported by both parties since the Clinton Administration. Indeed, I was fiercely critical of the way fear and intimidation were used in the fall of 2008 to rush through TARP with minimal oversight and in such a way that was highly beneficial to corporations while failing to serve the public interest.
I feel that events have only further justified that criticism. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur have have had the most succinct critique of TARP, arguing in favor of policies directed in avoiding foreclosures in cases in which borrowers could still afford to make payments rather in in direct support to the lenders themselves. While a subsequent bill was used for this purpose, it was insufficient and the Obama administration failed to regulate the process of foreclosure, costing many people - including a sizable number who had not defaulted on their mortgages, their homes. Meanwhile, the United States is no closer to signing a climate deal or implementing any form of market mechanisms to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, our firm belief in free-market orthodoxies are causing us to fail to address both the social and the environmental outcomes of economic activities.
The upshot thus far has been the advancement of alternative economic systems in Europe. The French have begun developing a new economic measure other than simply GNP and GDP encompassing not simply typical economic metrics but also costs of environmental mitigation, life cycle consideration, social costs and general societal happiness. Similarly, the British government has begun collecting data on happiness and general well being across the United Kingdom. This move was likely inspired by researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's book The Spirit Level, which makes the case through a series of studies that more equitable societies tend to fair better across almost every health, social and environmental indicator.
The book has caused a stir in many circles because speaks with numbers and repeatedly demonstrates strong correlations between equity and societal well being. Equally importantly, it articulates an alternative view to simply economic vitality as to what a society should look like and speaks to the long-standing success of the series of compromise agreements that constitute Social Democracies. Finally, The Spirit Level articulates a set of outcomes that speak to the roll of civil society and the wider social compact that appear to be at odds with neo-liberal economic orthodoxy. It is through an economic focus that includes environmental and social considerations that we might constitute a more healthy and more diversely and richly prosperous society altogether.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The State of Science in America
One of the more striking features of the modern American experience is the skepticism and ignorance of science and the scientific method throughout much of American society. This is especially startling when one considers the number of both scientific and technological innovators that are American in origin, American-based or both.
While it is a fallacy to equate technological advancement directly with science, the two are intrinsically linked, and we find ourselves in a position in which we are collectively worshipful of technology yet fundamentally non-scientific in much of our thinking. That most American adults lack even a cursory understanding of basic sciences and instead rely on a series of delusory tautologies is chilling. Further it belies the problems that we face in garnering support data-driven public policy.
When one in five Americans hold that the Sun revolves around the Earth, a belief abandoned by science in the 17th century, or that over half of the American population continues to believe in the almost fascicle misinformation that is ‘intelligent design’, what hope is there to enable people to grasp a science as multifaceted as anthropogenic climate change? The epistemological and metaphysical contortions necessary for those living in the science dependent modern world to hold these beliefs must be staggering, as are the misinformation campaigns spread by proponents of one non-scientific position or another for people to be able to persist in a science-driven society without understanding or caring to understand the implications.
Additionally, this tendency to believe in non-scientific is not limited merely to the political right and the fundamentalist religious. Those typically on the left and claiming a basic understanding of the scientific frequently reject basic sciences in order to advocate for non-empirically justifiable outcomes that belie a fundamental lack of understanding of basic sciences. A clear example of this is the popularity of ‘colon cleansing’ through juice fasting and other measures which proponents argue is about removing surplus ‘toxins’ that accumulate in the body. While this is a relatively benign misapprehension, it still represents something deeply problematic.
A basic understanding of biology and human anatomy makes clear just how fallacious this belief is. Internal organs have evolved to flush themselves naturally of anything noxious that may accumulate in them at, basically the same rate no matter what your diet, assuming you are not afflicted with some ailment preventing them from functioning. The belief that organs need to be cleansed is grounded in marketing hype, a uniquely American obsession with purity of essence and other assorted new-age mumbo-jumbo rather than in anything that resembles science. However, the belief is held and advanced even by people who are involved in scientifically relevant things for a living.
These sorts of erroneous beliefs call into question the abilities of those engaged in science or technology driven fields, including agricultural sciences and others. A further example that I was recently made aware of is bio-dynamic agriculture, which has been described as “an occult form of alternative agriculture” by researchers and involves the combination of sensible organic agricultural features with astrology. Again, while this tendency seems harmless and biodynamic is, at base, simply organic farming and yields nearly identical results, the belief in the demonstrably bogus advanced by, in the case of biodynamic farming, the largely discredited creationist Rudolf Steiner, does damage to the credibility of those advancing said positions. These types of distortions seek to undermine the primacy of the scientific method in both how we see the natural world, and in discourse about public policy. It effectively is the same impetus that feeds climate deniers or those that do not believe in evolution.
This is not to say that the Western conception and ideal of medicine or science has a moratorium on the truth. While many seem to lack a basic understanding of biology, the tendency is to dodge the issue by citing the wisdom of Eastern medicines detached from Western practice or understanding. Indeed, many so-called Naturopathic and Eastern cures have been studied and shown to be efficacious and present solutions that may indeed not be intuitive to Western medicine. However, this does make all of them useful, and the onus must be upon the individual to understand the basics of biology and anatomy to determine that these solutions genuinely do make scientific sense rather than appealing to some more primal or ephemeral belief system. Or worse, if these belief systems inadvertently point towards a puritanical ethic focused on the natural that rejects the modern, while still hypocritically reveling in the modern, the result is to perpetually re-enforce worship of naked technology while dismissing the science that underpins that technology. To wit, there is ignorance that is innocent because it can be addressed and remedied, and then there is ignorance that is pernicious because it is willful.
While it is a fallacy to equate technological advancement directly with science, the two are intrinsically linked, and we find ourselves in a position in which we are collectively worshipful of technology yet fundamentally non-scientific in much of our thinking. That most American adults lack even a cursory understanding of basic sciences and instead rely on a series of delusory tautologies is chilling. Further it belies the problems that we face in garnering support data-driven public policy.
When one in five Americans hold that the Sun revolves around the Earth, a belief abandoned by science in the 17th century, or that over half of the American population continues to believe in the almost fascicle misinformation that is ‘intelligent design’, what hope is there to enable people to grasp a science as multifaceted as anthropogenic climate change? The epistemological and metaphysical contortions necessary for those living in the science dependent modern world to hold these beliefs must be staggering, as are the misinformation campaigns spread by proponents of one non-scientific position or another for people to be able to persist in a science-driven society without understanding or caring to understand the implications.
Additionally, this tendency to believe in non-scientific is not limited merely to the political right and the fundamentalist religious. Those typically on the left and claiming a basic understanding of the scientific frequently reject basic sciences in order to advocate for non-empirically justifiable outcomes that belie a fundamental lack of understanding of basic sciences. A clear example of this is the popularity of ‘colon cleansing’ through juice fasting and other measures which proponents argue is about removing surplus ‘toxins’ that accumulate in the body. While this is a relatively benign misapprehension, it still represents something deeply problematic.
A basic understanding of biology and human anatomy makes clear just how fallacious this belief is. Internal organs have evolved to flush themselves naturally of anything noxious that may accumulate in them at, basically the same rate no matter what your diet, assuming you are not afflicted with some ailment preventing them from functioning. The belief that organs need to be cleansed is grounded in marketing hype, a uniquely American obsession with purity of essence and other assorted new-age mumbo-jumbo rather than in anything that resembles science. However, the belief is held and advanced even by people who are involved in scientifically relevant things for a living.
These sorts of erroneous beliefs call into question the abilities of those engaged in science or technology driven fields, including agricultural sciences and others. A further example that I was recently made aware of is bio-dynamic agriculture, which has been described as “an occult form of alternative agriculture” by researchers and involves the combination of sensible organic agricultural features with astrology. Again, while this tendency seems harmless and biodynamic is, at base, simply organic farming and yields nearly identical results, the belief in the demonstrably bogus advanced by, in the case of biodynamic farming, the largely discredited creationist Rudolf Steiner, does damage to the credibility of those advancing said positions. These types of distortions seek to undermine the primacy of the scientific method in both how we see the natural world, and in discourse about public policy. It effectively is the same impetus that feeds climate deniers or those that do not believe in evolution.
This is not to say that the Western conception and ideal of medicine or science has a moratorium on the truth. While many seem to lack a basic understanding of biology, the tendency is to dodge the issue by citing the wisdom of Eastern medicines detached from Western practice or understanding. Indeed, many so-called Naturopathic and Eastern cures have been studied and shown to be efficacious and present solutions that may indeed not be intuitive to Western medicine. However, this does make all of them useful, and the onus must be upon the individual to understand the basics of biology and anatomy to determine that these solutions genuinely do make scientific sense rather than appealing to some more primal or ephemeral belief system. Or worse, if these belief systems inadvertently point towards a puritanical ethic focused on the natural that rejects the modern, while still hypocritically reveling in the modern, the result is to perpetually re-enforce worship of naked technology while dismissing the science that underpins that technology. To wit, there is ignorance that is innocent because it can be addressed and remedied, and then there is ignorance that is pernicious because it is willful.
Perhaps the rejection of the scientific stems from an over saturation in science by previous generations. The tendency, in many parts of society in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century was to develop pseudo-sciences such as phrenology and to develop scientific sounding rationales to support them. This process gave way to what James Burke has argued is the most destructive ideology that humanity has thus far developed in the form of Social Darwinism. While Darwin had long held that evolution worked on such as a slow-scale it could never be applied to societal and human tendencies, the misapplication of Darwin’s ideas led to popular eugenics and other fallacious beliefs that provided justifications for incredible human death and suffering – indeed for the intellectual dismantling of the very shared humanity that evolutionary science demonstrates.
Despite this, increased scientific rigor, a shared scientific process, peer review and Popperian Falsification have all gone far to strengthen scientific methodologies and control the claims that can be made. This has only strengthened scientific efforts and further strengthened the claims of the scientific method to be our preeminent vehicle for understanding natural phenomena. While sciences have advanced in such a way that, as Thomas Kuhn noted in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in order to fully grasp or even carry meaningful dialogue on the minutiae of certain sciences, extensive training is required, basic scientific education remains highly accessible. The wonders of the natural world, as we continue to discover them, as so much more beautiful, compelling and moving than any alternative justification developed prior to our developing the means to measure these things. Yet, in many fields, we continue to just scrape the surface and as we continue to learn more the wonders of the natural world can only gain further focus.
As a society, we must strive to develop basic understandings of sciences across the board. The importance of this lies not only in developing better, more data-driven public policy, but also in aiding us in understanding natural phenomena, most pressingly global climate change which are likely to yield violent social upheavals or even make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves. Indeed, it is our exploitation of technology without fully grasping the science and thus outcomes of its use that is driving climate change. That the United States, as a result of the American lifestyle re-enforced by the anti-science slant of many Americans is responsible for such a large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions is telling. Addressing the state of scientific understanding in America may well prove to be the most important of features for humanity. The willingness to actively reject the vulgar, counter-scientific drivel advanced at every strata of American society remains pressing, for it is the first step towards furthering crucial scientific educations.
As a society, we must strive to develop basic understandings of sciences across the board. The importance of this lies not only in developing better, more data-driven public policy, but also in aiding us in understanding natural phenomena, most pressingly global climate change which are likely to yield violent social upheavals or even make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves. Indeed, it is our exploitation of technology without fully grasping the science and thus outcomes of its use that is driving climate change. That the United States, as a result of the American lifestyle re-enforced by the anti-science slant of many Americans is responsible for such a large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions is telling. Addressing the state of scientific understanding in America may well prove to be the most important of features for humanity. The willingness to actively reject the vulgar, counter-scientific drivel advanced at every strata of American society remains pressing, for it is the first step towards furthering crucial scientific educations.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Guns Over Arizona
The near fatal assault on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tuscon, Arizona (which killed six and placed another twelve people in hospital) yesterday points towards a wider trend towards violence and militancy within the US. This perspective, while not necessarily endorsed by the raging and imagery of the political right, is certainly advanced by the rhetoric used frequently by the far right. This rhetoric seemingly endorses violence, and in the face of rising anti-government militarism within the United States, this rhetoric clearly helps to re-enforce much of what we see in the United States. That right-wing political commentators such as Sarah Palin and Glen Beck seem to endorse these militant groups as patriots but then change their rhetorical tunes in the face of violent incidents like this one is deeply vulgar. Further, this rhetoric, placed in the hands of those already mentally unstable and compounded by the problem of far to easily accessible hand-guns in the United States seems to have further contributed to Congresswoman Giffords’ shooting. To whit, Sarah Palin's Political Action Committee website until today included a map of the US with "crosshairs" centered on various House Democrats throughout the country, including Giffords, introduced by the ‘tweeted’ tagline: "Don't retreat, instead - RELOAD!" This violent imagery was re-enforced by Giffords’ Tea-Party backed opponent, Jessey Kelly, who ran an ad which said: "Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jessey Kelly."
Michael Tomasky in the Guardian draws the very obvious linkage between this type of rhetoric and what happened in Arizona. Giffords had previously received death threats for her decision to vote the Health Care Bill earlier this year, and further had previously had her campaign office shot at. All in all, the celebration of heavily armed radicals as Patriots by the right further re-enforces the long tradition of violence directed towards elected leaders and may serve as a means of re-affirming, if not emboldening, those who are mentally unstable and willing to inflict violence on others to make political points. Again, the tendency remains chilling.
What fails to be adequately dealt with however is the ease of handgun availability as a further contributing factor. In most other developed countries, even given the destitute ideology of the shooters, strict gun control laws would have made it far more difficult, if not impossible for the shooter to bring his plans to fruition.
There are mounds of data indicating that guns pose a net societal harm, that gun ownership rates correlate with crime rates - particularly with homicide rates where a gun is involved, that countries with stricter gun laws tend to see less overall violence, that the presence of a gun in the home is likely to increase the occurrence of homicide, as well as numerous cases that document easy gun access and insurrection seemingly going hand-in-hand. In Arizona, where gun ownership is high and Tea Party members were said to frequently carry and brandish handguns at rallies, this vicious incident has retrospectively taken on something of an air of inevitability.
What should come out of this is, not only a greater willingness to address to address the underlying issues that allow fringe radicals to commit violence, but also much stricter psychological screenings that would seek to prevent those with violent tendencies or paranoid fantasies about the government from purchasing ordinance.
While the 2nd amendment holds that gun ownership is a clear civil right, it prefaces this with a clause justifying said right by noting the need for a ‘well regulated Militia’ being ‘necessary for the security of a free state’. The constitution had previously defined said Militia as being what we would today recognize as the National Guard. This makes sense in the face of the constitutional requirement that the army be disbanded following each major conflict – thus, gun-ownership seems to have been included by the constitutional framers on the grounds that re-invasion by the British, without a standing Army, was a very real consideration. However, this argument has been rendered null by omnipresence of the military today.
The argument that handguns are a necessary component for self-defense likewise does not hold water, as the majority of guns purchased for self-defense are not used that way. Supply and demand appear to be what affect guns and violent crime and rational gun control, with limitations on the number of guns allowed in circulation, could go far to preventing further incidents like this and making societal as a whole safer. Our current policies towards guns and our inability to effectively enforce what regulation does exist is something akin to arming the mad house. No individual right to arms and ‘perceived’ safety should compromise the greater right of society to genuine safety. This cowboy mentality within the United States, both towards guns, and to the political rhetoric used needs to be addressed before our streets are again stained crimson.
Michael Tomasky in the Guardian draws the very obvious linkage between this type of rhetoric and what happened in Arizona. Giffords had previously received death threats for her decision to vote the Health Care Bill earlier this year, and further had previously had her campaign office shot at. All in all, the celebration of heavily armed radicals as Patriots by the right further re-enforces the long tradition of violence directed towards elected leaders and may serve as a means of re-affirming, if not emboldening, those who are mentally unstable and willing to inflict violence on others to make political points. Again, the tendency remains chilling.
What fails to be adequately dealt with however is the ease of handgun availability as a further contributing factor. In most other developed countries, even given the destitute ideology of the shooters, strict gun control laws would have made it far more difficult, if not impossible for the shooter to bring his plans to fruition.
There are mounds of data indicating that guns pose a net societal harm, that gun ownership rates correlate with crime rates - particularly with homicide rates where a gun is involved, that countries with stricter gun laws tend to see less overall violence, that the presence of a gun in the home is likely to increase the occurrence of homicide, as well as numerous cases that document easy gun access and insurrection seemingly going hand-in-hand. In Arizona, where gun ownership is high and Tea Party members were said to frequently carry and brandish handguns at rallies, this vicious incident has retrospectively taken on something of an air of inevitability.
What should come out of this is, not only a greater willingness to address to address the underlying issues that allow fringe radicals to commit violence, but also much stricter psychological screenings that would seek to prevent those with violent tendencies or paranoid fantasies about the government from purchasing ordinance.
While the 2nd amendment holds that gun ownership is a clear civil right, it prefaces this with a clause justifying said right by noting the need for a ‘well regulated Militia’ being ‘necessary for the security of a free state’. The constitution had previously defined said Militia as being what we would today recognize as the National Guard. This makes sense in the face of the constitutional requirement that the army be disbanded following each major conflict – thus, gun-ownership seems to have been included by the constitutional framers on the grounds that re-invasion by the British, without a standing Army, was a very real consideration. However, this argument has been rendered null by omnipresence of the military today.
The argument that handguns are a necessary component for self-defense likewise does not hold water, as the majority of guns purchased for self-defense are not used that way. Supply and demand appear to be what affect guns and violent crime and rational gun control, with limitations on the number of guns allowed in circulation, could go far to preventing further incidents like this and making societal as a whole safer. Our current policies towards guns and our inability to effectively enforce what regulation does exist is something akin to arming the mad house. No individual right to arms and ‘perceived’ safety should compromise the greater right of society to genuine safety. This cowboy mentality within the United States, both towards guns, and to the political rhetoric used needs to be addressed before our streets are again stained crimson.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Land-Use Conflict in Africa
A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor about conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa has pointed to seemingly petty land-use conflicts - the type that are unfortunately the bread and butter of planning - as the culprit for many larger-scale frequently violent conflicts. (CSM has also provide a guide to existing land-use based wholesale conflicts currently in Africa while including potential future flash points.) Land-use conflicts however rarely take on the same mundane tone as land-use fights we see in the US, frequently waged over minutiae such as leaves from neighboring trees falling into gutters or fence colour choices affecting 'neigbborhood aesthetics' but are frequently matters of life or death.
Of course, many of these land-use issues are tied to resources, development control and questions of tenure; however it may be overly simplistic to reduce a conflict as long-standing and multifaceted as that in the DR Congo to merely one over herding rights, as the article seems to. Despite this, the land-use argument certainly carries a great deal of credibility.
From an urban development perspective (and by 2035 the United Nations predicts much of Africa will have become urban), land-use and tenure issues seem to be the most common causes of triggers of ethnic or religious conflict within Africa's burgeoning urban slums. Again, the nuance here is that while many of these conflicts take the form inter-ethnic, tribal or religious violence, the underlying root cause is usually one access to resources, most frequently potable water or development rights within a squatter community - with the underlying irony being that as these are squatter communities, no one has de facto legal rights to develop.
Despite this, possession is frequently 9/10ths of the law, and slum land-lords have been happy to illegally erect tin-sheds and then rent them out at usurious rates in places like Lagos, and to play one ethnic or religious group off against the other in cases where squatters begin to agitate for increased tenure security. Further complications stem from inconsistencies within competing legal systems - from colonial era (though still standing) laws and conflict with new laws passed post de-colonization to conflict with existing indigenous, though informal, tribal laws and norms holding precedence within many areas.
Security of land tenure is of greatest import for many African squatters. While many development projects, including housing and infrastructure improvements have been targeted towards slum denizens within Sub-Saharan Africa, often issues of tenure security have affected the ability of governments and development agencies to improve these communities. In planning better communities for slum denizens it is crucial that legal issues of land tenure be improved such that infrastructure and housing improvements can be made. However, the laws detailing land tenure security remain obsequious in many cases.
Thus many countries, for example one I have experience working in: Ghana, are seeking to mitigate conflict through the reform of land tenure laws and the normalization of traditional tenure conventions with the legal code. What this means is that increasingly traditional tribal chiefs who are making land-use decisions in practice will be further empowered to do so by the state, thus making their decisions formal land-use policy. This strengthens the legal legitimacy of 'traditional' semi-legal conventions while also allowing tribal chiefs to serve as conflict resolutions bodies.
While this on paper may appear to open the system-up to further graft, chiefs tend to have smaller areas of authority that many of the post-independence bureaucratic positions and have well-known customs for conducting business or concluding disputes, thus making their system in many ways more transparent - or at least, the rules and inherent biases built into such a system would be at least known to the involved parties. Tribal chiefs also have greater legitimacy in the eyes of many recent rural to urban migrants than formal written (easily and frequently forged) legal documents.
While the empowerment of traditional tribal chiefs to serve as 'customary land managers' may be in imperfect solution, it is one that has great deal of salience with many living in African cities and villages and the further empowerment of chiefs as land-managers could, in many ways mitigate land-use conflicts and thus prevent bloodshed.
Of course, many of these land-use issues are tied to resources, development control and questions of tenure; however it may be overly simplistic to reduce a conflict as long-standing and multifaceted as that in the DR Congo to merely one over herding rights, as the article seems to. Despite this, the land-use argument certainly carries a great deal of credibility.
From an urban development perspective (and by 2035 the United Nations predicts much of Africa will have become urban), land-use and tenure issues seem to be the most common causes of triggers of ethnic or religious conflict within Africa's burgeoning urban slums. Again, the nuance here is that while many of these conflicts take the form inter-ethnic, tribal or religious violence, the underlying root cause is usually one access to resources, most frequently potable water or development rights within a squatter community - with the underlying irony being that as these are squatter communities, no one has de facto legal rights to develop.
Despite this, possession is frequently 9/10ths of the law, and slum land-lords have been happy to illegally erect tin-sheds and then rent them out at usurious rates in places like Lagos, and to play one ethnic or religious group off against the other in cases where squatters begin to agitate for increased tenure security. Further complications stem from inconsistencies within competing legal systems - from colonial era (though still standing) laws and conflict with new laws passed post de-colonization to conflict with existing indigenous, though informal, tribal laws and norms holding precedence within many areas.
Thus many countries, for example one I have experience working in: Ghana, are seeking to mitigate conflict through the reform of land tenure laws and the normalization of traditional tenure conventions with the legal code. What this means is that increasingly traditional tribal chiefs who are making land-use decisions in practice will be further empowered to do so by the state, thus making their decisions formal land-use policy. This strengthens the legal legitimacy of 'traditional' semi-legal conventions while also allowing tribal chiefs to serve as conflict resolutions bodies.
While the empowerment of traditional tribal chiefs to serve as 'customary land managers' may be in imperfect solution, it is one that has great deal of salience with many living in African cities and villages and the further empowerment of chiefs as land-managers could, in many ways mitigate land-use conflicts and thus prevent bloodshed.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
On the Troubles with Foreign Aid Part 3: The Cult of the Individual
If there is anything that galls it is the absolute smug sense of personal superiority that seemingly idealistic people of my generation view the developing world with, and their sense of self in ‘saving’ it. It is the mentality of the post baby-boomer generation – a generation that has had it so good, that feels entitled to college degrees from small and expensive liberal arts colleges, to travel, and gadgets and their own cars from the age of 16 onwards. It is the view of a generation in which the notion of ‘self’ and self-advancement that was novel for the boomer generation has, as Evelyn Waugh might have had it, become habituated settled-opinion rather merely world weary exclamation. It is a jaundiced view that inflates self worth, forgoes the ideas and inherent value of those being ‘served’ and assaults betterment of the collective in favor of the glorification of the individual while simultaneously inveigling the notion of service to the collective.
In the end, the motivation has nothing to do with the experience, the culture or the problems being addressed and everything to do with advancing a grotesque sense of self-edification. As Theroux noted there is something unfinished about Africa that attracts the Messianic above all else. With this approach comes the extension of Western ideals, ideologies and specifically self-edification. The notion of going to ‘save’ Africa has little to do with Africa the continent and more with Africa, the imaginary place of Western imagination. A land completely lacking capacity, choked by mysticism and in need of a savior. And it is not hard to become a savior – all that is required in this view of the world is to give up material comfort for a couple of years in order to garner the praise and adoration craved for the foreseeable future.
This mentality is not much different from the Mission Civilisatrice of the colonial era – that once popular notion advanced by former colonial powers that Western colonial abuse of Africa was somehow justified because Africa was little more than a continent of reckless savages in need of civilization being brought to them. Thus, people could go to Africa to ‘come good’ - to prove their worth by teaching the native peoples how to be proper Westerners. This has been updated within the current Messianic mentality which continues to infantilize African peoples. Thus, white kids with undergraduate degrees can join the Peace Corps and feel that they are off to save the Dark Continent. That the very limited survival ‘skills’ offered by a group of largely privileged white kids boasting liberal arts degrees might improve Africa simply by them deigning to be there may be what is most shocking.
The Peace Corps is a wonderful experience, granted, however one must realize that the PCV is gaining far more from the experience than the community that the PCV is placed in. The limitations placed on Peace Corps Volunteers mean that, basically no matter how strongly one believes in ones work, and no matter the extent to which one can do ‘good’ that will always be limited. The exchange is a completely otherworldly experience within a radically different culture that can provide long term benefit if one, in the Aristotelian sense, one acknowledges that self-examination provides the sinews for a life worth living. This is not to say that the Peace Corps is easy – it isn’t. It is difficult to be the ‘other’ within another culture especially when one grows up accustomed to creature comforts and inter-connectivity. However, it is more to say that the limitations placed on the average PCV mean that Peace Corps is pre-eminently a chance to grow and learn as an individual rather than to ‘save the world’.
The tendency however seems to be towards an almost gloating sense of self worth. A deep rooted solipsism that is reinforced by numerous external inputs at home, where people will treat you as though you are somehow sainted for having worked in Africa, and by a series of Orientalist inputs that make up a constantly re-affirming mechanism for self-affirmation. As the profile of Peace Corps Volunteers has been changed in order to be ‘more representative of mainstream Americans’ this tendency has been further advanced. We have seen increasingly would be Messiahs or those that would, as one member of cohort I trained with did, smuggle suitcases of bibles into Muslim countries in the hope of bringing ‘salvation’ to the locals.
The picture linked here is what set me off on this meditation. The identity of the individual will remain anonymous to protect the guilty, hence the reposting rather than a link to the original. I feel the photo in every way represents the critique I am advancing. Every element of the photo screams of a form of brinksmanship, open to only the privileged and white: a sort of sneering, smug self-indulgence demonstrating both Messianic delusions while simultaneously trying to leverage those into a point of gamesmanship over other well-meaning white people convinced that they too are ‘saving the world’. Even if it meant in jest, the joke fails to meet even the minimum standards or mirth because it is so nakedly and un-ironically indicative of how vulgar the Western view of Africa is.
In the end, the motivation has nothing to do with the experience, the culture or the problems being addressed and everything to do with advancing a grotesque sense of self-edification. As Theroux noted there is something unfinished about Africa that attracts the Messianic above all else. With this approach comes the extension of Western ideals, ideologies and specifically self-edification. The notion of going to ‘save’ Africa has little to do with Africa the continent and more with Africa, the imaginary place of Western imagination. A land completely lacking capacity, choked by mysticism and in need of a savior. And it is not hard to become a savior – all that is required in this view of the world is to give up material comfort for a couple of years in order to garner the praise and adoration craved for the foreseeable future.
This mentality is not much different from the Mission Civilisatrice of the colonial era – that once popular notion advanced by former colonial powers that Western colonial abuse of Africa was somehow justified because Africa was little more than a continent of reckless savages in need of civilization being brought to them. Thus, people could go to Africa to ‘come good’ - to prove their worth by teaching the native peoples how to be proper Westerners. This has been updated within the current Messianic mentality which continues to infantilize African peoples. Thus, white kids with undergraduate degrees can join the Peace Corps and feel that they are off to save the Dark Continent. That the very limited survival ‘skills’ offered by a group of largely privileged white kids boasting liberal arts degrees might improve Africa simply by them deigning to be there may be what is most shocking.
The Peace Corps is a wonderful experience, granted, however one must realize that the PCV is gaining far more from the experience than the community that the PCV is placed in. The limitations placed on Peace Corps Volunteers mean that, basically no matter how strongly one believes in ones work, and no matter the extent to which one can do ‘good’ that will always be limited. The exchange is a completely otherworldly experience within a radically different culture that can provide long term benefit if one, in the Aristotelian sense, one acknowledges that self-examination provides the sinews for a life worth living. This is not to say that the Peace Corps is easy – it isn’t. It is difficult to be the ‘other’ within another culture especially when one grows up accustomed to creature comforts and inter-connectivity. However, it is more to say that the limitations placed on the average PCV mean that Peace Corps is pre-eminently a chance to grow and learn as an individual rather than to ‘save the world’.
The tendency however seems to be towards an almost gloating sense of self worth. A deep rooted solipsism that is reinforced by numerous external inputs at home, where people will treat you as though you are somehow sainted for having worked in Africa, and by a series of Orientalist inputs that make up a constantly re-affirming mechanism for self-affirmation. As the profile of Peace Corps Volunteers has been changed in order to be ‘more representative of mainstream Americans’ this tendency has been further advanced. We have seen increasingly would be Messiahs or those that would, as one member of cohort I trained with did, smuggle suitcases of bibles into Muslim countries in the hope of bringing ‘salvation’ to the locals.
The picture linked here is what set me off on this meditation. The identity of the individual will remain anonymous to protect the guilty, hence the reposting rather than a link to the original. I feel the photo in every way represents the critique I am advancing. Every element of the photo screams of a form of brinksmanship, open to only the privileged and white: a sort of sneering, smug self-indulgence demonstrating both Messianic delusions while simultaneously trying to leverage those into a point of gamesmanship over other well-meaning white people convinced that they too are ‘saving the world’. Even if it meant in jest, the joke fails to meet even the minimum standards or mirth because it is so nakedly and un-ironically indicative of how vulgar the Western view of Africa is.
On the Troubles with Foreign Aid Part 2: Throwing Money at the Problem and Celebrity Messiah
Having discussed agency and policy level problems in the previous post, one must move on to the problems that stem from the tendency to try to solve problems in Africa and elsewhere by simply throwing money at them and in hoping for the best. This approach has traditionally dominated traditional development strategies instituted by large global development agencies. Macro-scale projects have traditionally been attempted everywhere from West African locales like Lagos, Nigeria to East African ones like Kigali, Kenya and throughout Southern Africa. Of the many large infrastructure and other projects attempted, very few saw completion.
In many places, weak civil societies and corrupt governments simply enabled funds to disappear into Swiss bank accounts while incomplete projects often rotted or were scavenged for scrap materials by the urban poor. This is not to say that large-scale infrastructure projects are not necessary or desirable within Africa – and indeed in countries like Senegal and Burkina Faso, good- governance models and appropriate oversight has helped to see important infrastructure built. What development agencies have increasingly learned it that smaller-scale, incremental projects with tightly controlled budgets and external oversight, frequently implemented in partnership with more transparent governments or local NGOs has frequently resulted in good project completion. Powerhouse development capital organizations like the Gates foundation have frequently also learned from early mistakes and found ways to target funds such that they achieve more desired results.
Despite this, many charities, and especially celebrity driven ones have failed to learn from this process and have simply relied on the old model of throwing money at problems and hoping everyone will do the right thing. These phenomena have been best described by novelist, travel writer and former PCV Paul Theroux in a blistering New York Times editorial a few years ago.
In the appropriately titled, 'The Rock Star’s Burden', Theroux notes that dependence on foreign aid payments (drawing the distinction between those and funds for education, disaster relief, etc) and a glut of foreign aid volunteers have failed to generate meaningful results. Theroux states, using Malawi as an example:
I would offer pencils and paper, mops and brooms: the schools I have seen in Malawi need them badly. I would not send more teachers. I would expect Malawians themselves to stay and teach. There ought to be an insistence in the form of a bond, or a solemn promise, for Africans trained in medicine and education at the state's expense to work in their own countries.
He goes on to state that:
Africa is a lovely place - much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth.
And Theroux is right. Celebrity charities further epitomize that, while also taking on a whole new level of ridiculous waste and egomaniacal banality. Marina Hyde, writing incisively and cogently in The Guardian also targets Bono as the ultimate figure of celebrity Messianic excess. Hyde's piece is worth reading in full, however, her pointing to the paucity of good actually done by organizations like Bono's versus the money that has passed through them, the use of luxury consumerism as a vehicle to advance charity (as Bono's Product RED and most recent African aid tie-ins with Louis Vuitton
Similarly, economist Jeffrey Sachs has been positively bellicose in his claims that poverty can be ended in our lifetimes if not for want of a few million dollars for mosquito nets in Africa. While mosquito nets are important as a vector for helping to prevent malaria, which kills millions every year across the continent, this it and of itself fails to address problems of urban slum development as a result rapid urbanization, ongoing poor governance and corruption, increased desertification in the Sahel and Sub-Sahara, global climate change, poor agricultural management and ongoing declining agricultural returns as population grows, and increased dependency on the West (and increasingly China).
However, the underlying problem remains that all of these projects create the illusion of helping Africa while also failing to effectively help improve government, services or combat poverty. Theroux would likely agree that specific skills trainings and empowerment of local organizations to more effectively address these problems should be the goal of external aid organizations. These external organizations and agencies should not be leading the charge because doing so prevents them from effectively listening to what local needs really are.
Rather than implementing smaller scale projects, through effective locally based NGOs, (preferably run by Africans who actually speak the local languages and understand local needs and power relationships), the celebrity approach to aid and development is increasingly about giving the appearance that things are being done because money is moving around. This tendency, as we shall see in part three, also is problematic when discussing young people who go to Africa and elsewhere to 'make a difference'.
On the Troubles with Foreign Aid Part 1
There is often something immediately crass and altogether guileless in how the United States conducts international development activities. This is true of both the way agencies and branches of government attempt to give aid or engage in so-called ‘nation building’, how private organizations give aid moneys and in the candor of idealistic young people involved in development. Most importantly, the penultimate failing of aid and aid workers today is that they largely fail to meet the needs of the communities that they purport to serve.
The underlying problems seem to be that policy seem to fall into the following categories: (1) developed to meet some form of macro-derived foreign policy aim based on an a priori set of criteria and as a result is non-responsive to human outcomes, (2) agencies and/or individuals simply hurling money at problem regions, frequently driven by (3) celebrities or other individuals trying to experience messianic self-edification via international development.
In each of these cases, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s sufficiently silly comic quasi-roman a clef, The Ugly American appears to be the most appropriate comment upon US practice. Indeed, it is this tendency, a combination of willful cultural ignorance, a specifically American sense of wanting to be part of the “save the world” set and the notion that simply throwing money at a problem will solve it that exemplify the content of The Ugly American and render development patterns meaningless. In this essay I will deal with all 3 of these tendencies as a separate post.
(1) From a policy perspective, a couple of examples from my own experience spring immediately to mind. The first involved a State Department briefing being put on by a DC Think Tank regarding a new policy being jointly advanced by the State Department and Department of Defense at the height of the Iraq War. In those heady days of 2006, the government had finally realized that something wasn’t working and were finally willing to take a gamble on something else. As a result the Provincial Reconstruction Teams or PRTs seemed to be one way.
PRTs had been in use for the last couple of years in Afghanistan and would factor heavily upon Bush's ‘new way foreword’ for Iraq, which later became ‘the surge’. The idea behind the PRTs is that they would be small, well-equipped teams designed to deal on a province-by-province basis with various reconstruction problems. The panel I attended was made up of the State Department official heading up the PRT program in Iraq (and who, like every state department official I met in Washington was a very blonde lady with a Virginia accent), an NCO who ran a PRT in Afghanistan (also a blonde lady with a southern accent) and filling in for a the scheduled DOD panelist, a think tanker who had studied PRTs (a blonde man with a Virginia Accent). So this quasi-Aryan super-panel was going to solve Iraq’s problems once and for all with a new, more culturally sensitive approach. I was skeptical, but nothing could have prepared me for what followed.
The PRT lecture itself was ludicrous in that, despite receiving very detailed information on the inter-agency nature of the PRTs, exact, to the penny, cost-accounting as to how the PRTs were to be funded by percentages by the different agencies, and what sort of state department employee made good PRT material; no one actually said what the PRTs specifically would do. The State Department lady seemingly joked about how they certainly hope to equip at least half the teams with an Arabic speaker in each of these 60 person or so teams, but noted that this goal wasn’t really ‘realistic’. She also stated that actually including Arabic speakers should not necessarily be a priority - which seemed a somewhat counter-intuitive to put it lightly, as the PRTs would be dealing one-on-one with Iraqi civilians in helping them rebuild the country. Actual communication or dialogue with Iraqis however seemed less important than the lofty goal of ‘fixing’ Iraq. Actually asking people what they wanted or needed is apparently not part of the State Department’s standard operating procedure.
What should have been the nadir of the presentation came when someone got up and asked something to the effect of:
"Well, we know these PRTs are going to be flexible, but can you give us some examples of what it is they do exactly in Afghanistan?"
Fair question one would think, however all of the panelists were hard pressed to say. Eventually, the state department lady decided she would give the question a go, noting: "We are teaching them proper professionalism. This means teaching Afghans that it’s unacceptable to wear sandals to work and things like that." At this point my already dropped jaw came unhinged. One would think that perhaps the Afghan sense of ‘business casual’ was not the pre-eminent problem facing that troubled state. Things went on to get slightly worse when, while discussing the possibility of political assassination of foreign leaders, which would "have drastic and harmful geopolitical consequences for the United States"; the state department lady had trouble controlling her very visible giggling.
A second anecdote that springs to mind involves the activities of USAID in Niger. USAID is a government run food aid organization that delivers surplus agricultural product to places in the world with food shortages. While this is an important and useful practice, the protocols under which USAID operates have severely hindered its ability to successfully combat starvation. Specifically, USAID will only issue food aid in cases that a child can be diagnosed with the medical condition starvation. This means the full distended stomach and everything else.
The problem with this procedure is that, once someone can be diagnosed with starvation, because the body has gone so long since having food, it stops to manufacture the enzymes needed to break down foods. What this means is that, if a person begins to eat again, they will likely die of stomach infection from being unable to handle the micro-organisms that live in everything we eat. Starvation requires hospitalization, careful monitoring and medications to jump start the system once again. As a result, rather than simply triggering kids who were just very hungry and could have benefited from the food aid, USAID instituted a policy that simply put lives at risk.
Additionally, the food aid itself was a corn meal mixed with sugar – something not part of the typical Nigerien diet. As a result, people did not know how to prepare this corn meal and found it distasteful. I remember being fed a large plate of it while serving as a PCV in my village in Southern Niger by my neighbors when they had me to dinner. They believed, as a westerner, I would like the stuff. Remember again, this was food aid issued to them by USAID in order to help prevent starving children from dying. It was a combination of poor policy, an unwillingness to tie food aid to education or culturally appropriate protocols and realities that saw it being fed to me.
The underlying problems seem to be that policy seem to fall into the following categories: (1) developed to meet some form of macro-derived foreign policy aim based on an a priori set of criteria and as a result is non-responsive to human outcomes, (2) agencies and/or individuals simply hurling money at problem regions, frequently driven by (3) celebrities or other individuals trying to experience messianic self-edification via international development.
In each of these cases, Eugene Burdick and William Lederer’s sufficiently silly comic quasi-roman a clef, The Ugly American appears to be the most appropriate comment upon US practice. Indeed, it is this tendency, a combination of willful cultural ignorance, a specifically American sense of wanting to be part of the “save the world” set and the notion that simply throwing money at a problem will solve it that exemplify the content of The Ugly American and render development patterns meaningless. In this essay I will deal with all 3 of these tendencies as a separate post.
(1) From a policy perspective, a couple of examples from my own experience spring immediately to mind. The first involved a State Department briefing being put on by a DC Think Tank regarding a new policy being jointly advanced by the State Department and Department of Defense at the height of the Iraq War. In those heady days of 2006, the government had finally realized that something wasn’t working and were finally willing to take a gamble on something else. As a result the Provincial Reconstruction Teams or PRTs seemed to be one way.
PRTs had been in use for the last couple of years in Afghanistan and would factor heavily upon Bush's ‘new way foreword’ for Iraq, which later became ‘the surge’. The idea behind the PRTs is that they would be small, well-equipped teams designed to deal on a province-by-province basis with various reconstruction problems. The panel I attended was made up of the State Department official heading up the PRT program in Iraq (and who, like every state department official I met in Washington was a very blonde lady with a Virginia accent), an NCO who ran a PRT in Afghanistan (also a blonde lady with a southern accent) and filling in for a the scheduled DOD panelist, a think tanker who had studied PRTs (a blonde man with a Virginia Accent). So this quasi-Aryan super-panel was going to solve Iraq’s problems once and for all with a new, more culturally sensitive approach. I was skeptical, but nothing could have prepared me for what followed.
The PRT lecture itself was ludicrous in that, despite receiving very detailed information on the inter-agency nature of the PRTs, exact, to the penny, cost-accounting as to how the PRTs were to be funded by percentages by the different agencies, and what sort of state department employee made good PRT material; no one actually said what the PRTs specifically would do. The State Department lady seemingly joked about how they certainly hope to equip at least half the teams with an Arabic speaker in each of these 60 person or so teams, but noted that this goal wasn’t really ‘realistic’. She also stated that actually including Arabic speakers should not necessarily be a priority - which seemed a somewhat counter-intuitive to put it lightly, as the PRTs would be dealing one-on-one with Iraqi civilians in helping them rebuild the country. Actual communication or dialogue with Iraqis however seemed less important than the lofty goal of ‘fixing’ Iraq. Actually asking people what they wanted or needed is apparently not part of the State Department’s standard operating procedure.
What should have been the nadir of the presentation came when someone got up and asked something to the effect of:
"Well, we know these PRTs are going to be flexible, but can you give us some examples of what it is they do exactly in Afghanistan?"
Fair question one would think, however all of the panelists were hard pressed to say. Eventually, the state department lady decided she would give the question a go, noting: "We are teaching them proper professionalism. This means teaching Afghans that it’s unacceptable to wear sandals to work and things like that." At this point my already dropped jaw came unhinged. One would think that perhaps the Afghan sense of ‘business casual’ was not the pre-eminent problem facing that troubled state. Things went on to get slightly worse when, while discussing the possibility of political assassination of foreign leaders, which would "have drastic and harmful geopolitical consequences for the United States"; the state department lady had trouble controlling her very visible giggling.
A second anecdote that springs to mind involves the activities of USAID in Niger. USAID is a government run food aid organization that delivers surplus agricultural product to places in the world with food shortages. While this is an important and useful practice, the protocols under which USAID operates have severely hindered its ability to successfully combat starvation. Specifically, USAID will only issue food aid in cases that a child can be diagnosed with the medical condition starvation. This means the full distended stomach and everything else.
The problem with this procedure is that, once someone can be diagnosed with starvation, because the body has gone so long since having food, it stops to manufacture the enzymes needed to break down foods. What this means is that, if a person begins to eat again, they will likely die of stomach infection from being unable to handle the micro-organisms that live in everything we eat. Starvation requires hospitalization, careful monitoring and medications to jump start the system once again. As a result, rather than simply triggering kids who were just very hungry and could have benefited from the food aid, USAID instituted a policy that simply put lives at risk.
Additionally, the food aid itself was a corn meal mixed with sugar – something not part of the typical Nigerien diet. As a result, people did not know how to prepare this corn meal and found it distasteful. I remember being fed a large plate of it while serving as a PCV in my village in Southern Niger by my neighbors when they had me to dinner. They believed, as a westerner, I would like the stuff. Remember again, this was food aid issued to them by USAID in order to help prevent starving children from dying. It was a combination of poor policy, an unwillingness to tie food aid to education or culturally appropriate protocols and realities that saw it being fed to me.
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