Every now and then a fad for donating online takes hold. This is especially so around the festive season when many feel an urge to assuage some imagined guilt with a little virtual charity.
There are three reasons for caution: the first is that it makes solving the world's most difficult development problems appear simple; second is that it creates a remote and emotionless void between the giver and recipient; and, third, that there is a massive assumption that the organisation you're giving to (mostly a third-party intermediary) knows who to give the money to and how to go about it.
Gifter.org, an online charity project, has launched the Million Dollar Blog Post as an initiative to raise funds for charity. Without in any way disparaging their intentions, the most important aspect of this is not creating the interest or drive. As Hugh Macleod says, in the inspirational gapingvoid.com, "The market for something to believe in is infinite." And nothing is more inspirational than the idea and belief that solving the world's most intractable problems is a mere mouse click away.
A few years ago I was at a dinner where, in a fit of vicarious generosity (after all, he wasn't giving away his own money) the host requested that we all put money in a hat so that he could give the proceeds to a good cause. I stuck up my hand and asked who he was giving the money to. The vague response was, "Oh, there were some street kids hanging about in the parking lot. I'll give it to them."
Money is never more than a quick fix to economic problems at the best of times. Giving money directly to people who have lost the capacity to know what is in their own best interest is simply wasteful and may leave the giver feeling all warm and fuzzy but does little for the recipient, who is unlikely to invest it. This may sound harsh but the experience of most professional development agencies is this: if the poor knew what to do to help themselves they'd be doing it.
The responsibility of people who wish to do good is to do far more than simply give themselves a short-term and spurious feeling of "doing good" and ensure that any intervention in another human being's life really does produce tangible benefit for that person.
Gifter.org may be wildly successful at raising money. Bob Geldof with his Live Aid concert in 1985 raised £ 150 million for food sent to NGOs in Ethiopia. Much of the food and money went to local warlords who traded it for influence. The vast bulk simply rotted in warehouses for lack of the infrastructure to deliver it (and the will of the government who care more about power than the good of their own people). Good intentions mean nothing without the will and capacity to see it through.
Charity Navigator has just introduced online giving on their website. The real power of their initiative is that they, similarly to Whythawk, are a charity rating service. By donating via their site the donor can at least verify that the organisation they are supporting has the capacity, ability and track-record to deliver on their promises.
Without that third-party verification any fundraising initiative is so much hot air which makes the donor look good while doing nothing to alleviate poverty.
Richard Branson’s image has appeared all over South Africa done up as Che Guevara.
Promising a mutiny in the way South Africans can purchase cell-phone airtime, Branson is taking on the monolithic incumbent operators using the language of a revolutionary. His intention is to make money for himself and his investors by undermining the fat profits that existing businesses are already making. The reason he is able to do so is because of free market capitalism which allows anyone to start a business in competition to anyone else and will protect them from anti-competitive behaviour while they do so.
Capitalism is certainly a brutal system; but that brutality is not aimed at consumers. It is aimed at the very businesses that revolutionaries hate so much. Any change in customer preferences (the choices of the proletariat) results in a massive concentration of effort by businesses to keep up with those preferences. Businesses that can’t do so (such as businesses caught using child labour when it is no longer politically acceptable to do so) get left behind and shut down.
Branson has claimed the very principles of subversion promoted by arch-Communist Guevara in the pursuit of globalisation and capitalism. It was Guevara who said, “We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism — and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labour, and to which they export new capital — instruments of domination — arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.”
The commercial sector appears to have an astonishing ability to reinvent itself and to claim the very criticism aimed at their destruction. For socialist revolutionaries the problem is that they have misidentified capitalism.
Capitalism is not a political system; it is simply a mechanism by which people value things they want and trade for these things from their possessions which they consider of lesser value. A person’s time and labour is sometimes all they possess. If they value it less than any amount of money then they will trade their effort for that cash. The economic thinking behind ending slavery was that slaves should enjoy the right to sell their own labour for a price of their choosing – just like everyone else.
Any act to change the political system of a society will result in an adaptation in the way the effected people value things. A government may decide that food is a strategic resource and a food staple will henceforth be sold at a fixed price no matter what it costs to produce. Farmers will look at that price and, if they realise it will cost them more to produce than they will earn from selling, they won’t farm. Communist governments frequently find themselves buying in vast amounts of expensive food that they used to grow themselves from the very capitalist governments they hate.
Any wild accusation can be levelled at businesses: they harm the environment; they exploit poor people; the steal from the masses. Business owners listen and observe. If they note that the accusations are affecting their business then they adapt. If the adaptation costs them then they simply pass those costs on to their customers. If they aren’t allowed to do so then they quietly close down operations, cut their losses and move elsewhere.
Give businesses a measurable problem and they will solve it. WalMart – a US-based retailer – has frequently been accused of causing environmental harm. A new WalMart in Aurora, Colorado has been built entirely to appease environmentalists: recycled asphalt parking lot, solar panels and a windmill for power, waterless urinals, efficient lighting.
Major retailers have come out with organic and locally sourced produce. Restaurants and coffee shops dutifully sign up for Fair Trade goods. Major manufacturers buy carbon credits. And brands, like Virgin Mobile, have adopted the discourse of anti-globalisation campaigners.
There is no hidden agenda in this. Business owners are quite up-front about their intentions. Firstly, no-one wants to be a target of insults and slurs. Secondly, they want to stay in business and keep providing for themselves and their families.
The customer is always right and, if you like the teachings of Che Guevara, then the teachings of Che Guevara you shall have.
People may fight for the cause of socialism, or freedom, or democracy but – while they’re out fighting – someone is going to have to stay home and make sure the revolutionaries are fed and clothed. And they’re going to charge you for it. Any attempts to stop this process results in a lot of people sitting around waiting for the government to provide.
If revolutionaries really want to put business under pressure then free market capitalism is the way to do it.
