Popsicle Stick Limitations

One of the things I have been emphasizing in my responses to N.T. Wright on the Third World is the importance of recognizing the complexity of the problem — calls for jubilee mercy in struggling nations are all very well, but suppose it is not like helping a guy with some bruises to the nearest inn to recuperate. Suppose it is more like having to do complex brain surgery on someone, and all you have for surgical tools are a couple of popsicle sticks. And suppose further that someone off to the side was trying to reassure you in a winsome British accent by saying how straightforward and simple it would be. “After all,” he cheerfully says, “the Bible says to love your neighbor!”

With that as the background, a friend emailed me a link to this. Turns out that food aid to Africa isn’t doing what liberal guilt motives insist that it must be doing. Many of the things we do over there just make things worse. Let’s go over that again, so that the point is not missed or lost in the confusion. Many of the things we do just make things worse.

Just a couple of quotes from this article by Thompson Ayodele:

“One risk is that the little that is left of domestic food markets is ruined by the inflow of cheap or free food aid. In the long run, regular deliveries of food aid to food-insecure populations have meant that autocractic governments have been [enabled] to stay in power and avoid much-needed reforms.”

No kidding? How is this possible? Why weren’t we warned?

“Over the years, the handouts have not helped Africa in the long term; instead, they have crippled its production base.”

Who would have thought? Well, perhaps someone should have thought, should have read a little Hayek, easy chair optional, and worked through the dislocating problems of long term aid for chronic problems. But as this article acknowledges, the situation is different when you are dealing with aid in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event like the tsunami in the Indian Ocean a few years ago, or the recent cyclone in Burma. There you are not institutionalizing a “solution” in such a way as to make the problems everlasting. But of course it is possible for some mammon-meisters with pointy faces to insist that any disaster relief is also a dislocating element in the economy. Walter Russell Mead (in his striking book God and Gold) remarks on a notable instance of this: “It was by social science that the best minds in England concluded that the correct response to the Irish potato famine was to avoid disturbing the Irish food market by excessive distributions of cheap or free foodstuffs” (p. 26). Yeah, well.

So “economics” or “complexity” must not be used as an all-purpose excuse to be hard hearted. But, that said and cheerfully acknowledged, the fact remains that when we go out into a world bristling with dangers, we will soon encounter a sharp sensations caused by bewildering complexities. And if we go out unprepared, we will experience these pointy realities in the fleshy part of the upper thigh, where the pit bull of economic law saw his main chance to teach us something.