>>We've tried fairness for the last fifty years and it didn't work...?
That one must have passed me by I guess. But now that we know it doesn't work, I suppose we must forge ahead.<<
A somewhat flippant remark I agree but one I will stand by in the context of aid policy, on exactly the same grounds that JKG first made this point. Even allowing for the politicisation of aid, overstating of amounts, promises not kept, etc etc, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that anyone can look at the policy of distributing aid on a purely needs-based basis over the last fifty years and say that it's working, even a little bit. Not all of those stories about villages refusing to build a tin shack to store grain because they heard that the next door village got one ready made for free are untrue. The research on private education versus public in Kenya can't be dismissed as hot air. I think that Galbraith's theory of the "non-adapted minority" has a lot of truth to it here, as well as some of the facts about the socially and psychologically destructive effects of the dole, summed up in a piece by Noel Pearson that Rob Schaap (yo Rob) sent to the list a long while ago:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-September/016135.html
Now it might in principle be the case that in an ideal world of justice where the Third World had never been a secondary theatre of the Cold War, or where reasonable reparations had been paid for the destruction of the colonial era, that needs-based aid would work just fine. But if we're waiting around for that then we might as well wait for world socialist revolution. Distributing (development, non-emergency) aid on the basis of willingness to make use of it is an inegalitarian policy, but it at least deserves a try as potentially a less horrifically wasteful way to go about things.
best dd
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