 "Hi, I'm from Mars and I want to help."
We have minerals and resources they need; they make shiny things with buttons that go "bloop" that we love. They have dramatically different forms of governance than us; philosophies that have enabled their astonishing level of sophistication and development. There is nothing in our Earthling history that allows us to relate.
Overnight we are exposed to their galactic culture and popular fears. They feel sorry for us. "Our exploitative culture and pursuit for interstellar novelty is awful. Hyperspace drives are ruining the galactic environment. Intergalactic warming is pushing the planets out of alignment. But you must talk to us - we want to hear your opinions," the environmentally-conscious Martians from GalaxyF1rst tell us.
We express the desire to learn their technology and follow them out to the stars. "Oh, no, the simplicity of your existence is far preferable to our own. You really don’t want this." And they go on to teach us how to be self-sufficient, propping up our unsustainable habits with donations and largesse. Young Martians come to Earth as volunteers and work in schools and factories, not teaching, just doing what we used to do far better than we can ourselves.
It sounds patronising and protectionist. Patronising because they are maintaining a relationship of superiority over us by not sharing their knowledge about how to develop to their level; and protectionist because, by their actions, they limit our development and keep us away from their world. They are allowed to visit us, but they don’t want us near them.
And this is the way that many international development organisations treat the world’s poor. Amongst the demands by ActionAid, in a report entitled "Power Hungry: six reasons to regulate global food corporations" are these: i) that massive aid go into supporting small-scale subsistence agriculture; ii) that the small-scale producers themselves set their product standards; iii)that aid should go to governments irrespective of their poor governance or state-led control of their economies; iv) and that prices be "stabilised" by price fixing.
In other words they are denying developing nations the very reforms that enabled economic growth and development in the most sophisticated countries; and they doom the poorest to perennial dependence on unpredictable subsistence farming. If development organisations are really serious about ending poverty then we recommend the following approach:
- Infrastructure development: ensure that local skills exist to build the necessary infrastructure so that they can move their manufactures to market - this would also include the telecommunications infrastructure necessary to move intangible products (such as stories, services and ideas).
- Education: set up universities and colleges and academic programs to develop local school syllabi - create bursary programs for the most desirable skills; bursary recipients will be required to work their fees off at two years for every one of study in an industry that develops their country
- Know-how and experience: share the stories of how wealthy nations developed and what was important for that development so that they may learn; don’t keep these stories just to the elite but work with media organisations to disseminate that information; asymmetrical control of information creates problems
- Governance: ensure total disclosure of everything that the state does; any donations and the recipients must be easily available to anyone; work hard to develop civil society movements that act to counterbalance the power of the state (from newspapers, to NGOs, to independent judiciary, corruption investigators, and police).
Everything else must be bought and sold otherwise the shear advancement, sophistication and financial might of the donor will mean that every gift - no matter how relatively small on their part - will act as a colossal dumping of goods and services, distorting the local economy and putting local organisations out of business.
Development is the responsibility of the beneficiary. The donor’s responsibility is in communicating a path to development and allowing the beneficiary to build that path on their own.
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By: lawrence on 05 February 2007
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