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Haiti

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by downndirty, Jan 15, 2010.

  1. Dcc001

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    All I'm saying is that standard methods of aid have typically done more damage long-term than not. If you're damaging the country, who is benefiting? The warlords and the corrupt leaders, that's who. Why would you want to do ANYTHING that lines their pockets?

    The "We'll jump in now and think about the repercussions later" philosophy has been disastrous in the last decade or so, wouldn't you say? Can't we have a plan of action before we throw money at a problem and do nothing to fix it?

    And while we're on the subject, does anybody have any ideas about how to make Haiti (or any developing country) actually operate well? If a country has shown decade after decade that they are incapable of supporting themselves, growing their economy or protecting their people, how much money should the rest of the world throw at them in times of crisis, knowing that virtually none of it will be used properly?
     
  2. Beefy Phil

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    Can we see your research on this?

    And this, please.
     
  3. The Good Doctor

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    I love the retarded logic behind "Some of the donated money does not make it to the people in need, therefore you should not donate anything" or "We can't fix everything, therefore we should do nothing".

    Thanks for being so vigilant on my ten fucking dollars, watchdogs.

    If I can't wipe 100% of the shit off of my ass, then I shouldn't even bother to wipe my ass at all, right?

    Seriously, if you are really afraid that your $10 will fall into the hands of an evil warlord or a Fugee, then don't donate. But shut the fuck up. Some folks are willing to peel loose of what they may spend on lunch for one day in the chance that a couple bucks might go toward water or rice or beans.
     
  4. The Good Doctor

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    But it's the corporations, man.
     

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  5. Dcc001

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    I'm at work right now, so I'll have to just fire off some things off the top of my head.

    First book that comes to mind that I've read most recently is Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo. She was born in Africa and educated in the States and England (her undergraduate work was done at Harvard, and her PhD is from Oxford). She argues that what has held sub-Saharan Africa back from true economic growth and self-sustainability is the billions of dollars in aid and loans that have been invested by the world community over the years. I can't remember specific numbers sitting here right now, but I'll see if I can dig out the book tonight. PM me if you have specific questions. Her book is available here.

    With regards to using a crisis as an excuse to get wealthy and pass undesirable social reform, you can't go much more militant than Naomi Klein. She gained notoriety for No Logo, but her most recent book The Shock Doctrine goes into quite a bit of detailed research as to why governments - even those that are not on the surface corrupt - pray for disasters like this because of the opportunity it opens up for business and reform that passes without debate. Klein has extreme views; not all of her opinions (in my opinion) are valid, but her research is well done.

    As to my own personal research, it's limited to my experience in developing countries and a few grad paper/projects that had to be done. One, ironically, focused on Haiti. It's from this research, drawn from commonly available books and websites, that you can see how dysfunctional Haiti has always been. It was born out of a slave revolt, for Christ's sake. All of this reading and research has led me to arrive at my opinions - I just don't think it's wise to give money or goods to a country when it can't be guaranteed that it won't simply get seized by people who have no business having their hands on it.
     
  6. Beefy Phil

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    From what I understand, Moyo is arguing against long-term aid in habitually underdeveloped countries. Not immediate aid to habitually underdeveloped countries stricken by sudden disaster from which they are completely unable to rebound on their own. Again, I'm not talking about nation-building here. We're talking about a place that lacks the natural resources to sustain its people on a normal day. It's not there for them to find. It just plain isn't there. If it's not provided for them, how do they survive?

    I haven't read or read about the Klein book, so I won't comment yet.

    So the solution is to let them die off? If the international community does nothing, what else could happen? The ones that do survive will likely be the people who murdered, cheated and stole to live, and they'll be kings of a vast wasteland of rubble. How do we justify that?
     
  7. swagger

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    You've just described what I always thought of this whole aid-thing. Most people see this as a bad excuse, but they let their emotions blur all logic and common sense. The problem is what can be done instead that would be better? I can't think of nothing. How horrible wouldn't it be if no one did anything at all.
     
  8. Dcc001

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    This is the thing that breaks my heart: I don't know if they can be saved. Saved by an outside party, at least. This is my point. I believe that when you're donating money or goods or whatever, you are operating under the naive assumption that you are helping the people who need it the most. I don't think so. You're helping whoever has the most guns and control. Now, if that's the government military and they have a strong hold on things - fine. If it's the local mafia, well...not fine. I think we make a mistake in assuming that how we would like things to be distributed is actually how the rest of the world works.

    A story from my travels, that illustrates how things can be 'different' in developing countries. Spoiler tags if you don't feel like reading something slightly off topic:
    Trying to provide aid – even emergency relief – in an impoverished developing country is not the same as trying to provide aid in the developed world.

    I’ll try not to fall into the “a friend of a friend” or third-hand stories. Instead, I’ll use one from my own life. In March of 2008 I lived in Uganda. We were supposed to meet at a friends house and stay the weekend for dinner and some visiting. I get a hysterical call to come back to [the town] right away (I was in the capital city) because something happened.

    I met up with my fellow volunteers and found out the story. The house we were supposed to be staying at that night was off limits: the villagers had caught someone stealing chickens and had beaten him unconscious. They had then drug him with ropes through the village and beat him to death in my fellow volunteer’s front yard. The two volunteers literally had to step over the body to get on a bus and leave.

    I bring this up to illustrate that the stakes are much higher in countries like this. Imagine what the warlords and militia are capable of, and now imagine giving them free goods and lots of cash. No thanks.

    This will probably stir up a hornet's nest, but in situations like this I use the following example. Not for shock value, but because it drives the point closer to home. It's difficult to conceptualize "those people" who live "over there." It's much easier to imaging a close relative and then try to 'fix' the problem.

    . Imagine you are a parent – that you have a son. You raise your child, and like any parent you make some mistakes here and there. Your son starts hanging around with a bad crowd at a younger age, and you try to discourage him. He starts experimenting with drugs, and you initially try to go with the flow (kids will be kids, right?), but it starts to get worse. As his habit grows more serious, so do your tactics. You try punishing him. You try cajoling him into not doing it. You ignore him. You withhold money and affection. Nothing works. His disease, like all addictions, is progressive. It gets worse and worse over time.

    Eventually, you admit to yourself that your son has become an archetype: needle in the arm, diseased, steal-his-mother’s-wedding-ring-for-his-next-high junkie. You admit that whatever your failings were as a parent, you are not wholly responsible for his disease. You also admit that your best efforts are incapable of curing him; whatever you do gets worse and worse.

    The $60,000 question: what do you do? What do you do to fix someone who has proven over years and decades that they cannot take care of or save themselves?
     
  9. Beefy Phil

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    You treat it like an inevitability. Install a U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti for the forseeable future. And not the useless, limp-wristed 8,800-man force they had there pre-quake. A legitimate military presence on Haitian soil to weaken gang control and empower the non-corrupt. This is no longer a country that maintains the farcical semblance of a stable government. We're not toppling anyone. There's no one left to topple. It can be done. Your primary reason for wanting to deny aid is the imbalance of power. Correct the imbalance of power, and you've corrected the issue, no?

    I don't really see what this has to do with anything we're discussing. A man was killed for stealing in a region where food is scarce? And? What's your point?

    The stakes are higher in third-world countries because the competition for resources is that much more fierce. Your solution is provide the Haitian people with FEWER resources so they can, what, kill each other faster? You sound like someone who equates these people to old dogs who can't learn new tricks. To you, their failure is a foregone conclusion. How am I supposed to argue with that mindset?
     
  10. Dcc001

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    I agree, 110%. Yes. This is by far the most workable answer, the one with the fewest questions of safety, and - theoretically - the one with the best outcome.

    It will never happen. You're talking big bucks for this kind of thing; you're asking the UN to forgo all their standard red tape and get on with it; and you're asking to essentially invade a sovereign nation. Haiti has no resources that would make this plan economically viable. The time frame to execute what you've just suggested would be measured in years. The world cares right now - it won't care in six months or three years. Sorry to be cynical, but that's pretty much how it'll play out.

    Sorry if I didn't make the point clearly enough. I brought it up to show that because we dream up a solution here does not mean it will work well there. And also to show how cheap life is in developing countries, and how dangerous they can be. I can only infer that the situation on the ground in Haiti right now is very, very bad. If the average villager in the average town in an average developing country is capable of doing what I described, imagine what people are capable of right now. Now imagine the armed militias and mobs, and try to police them. How do you do it?

    I think we might just have to agree to disagree - you seem to see the solution as "provide aid, and if a little bit of it actually gets to where it should go, while the bulk of it buys guns and drugs and further cripples the population, well...so be it." My view is, "I don't have a fucking clue what should be done, but making it worse doesn't seem like the sensible solution.
     
  11. Beefy Phil

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    Fixed this for you.


    Men are not potatoes.
     
  12. AsTheWorldBurns

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    Armchair philanthropists activate!

    You people suck.

    8% of your donations, if you're lucky, will actually make it to an affected Hatian. That is beyond pathetic.

    If you really want to help, fly your quasi-humanitarian asses down there and sift through rubble looking for dead bodies.
     
  13. Nettdata

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    Worst. Idea. Ever.

    The airports are clogged, there isn't enough food/water/etc for the people that are there, and you're completely untrained in how to do what you are suggesting.

    Best thing people can do is support the large organizations that are already set up for this and have the experience and personnel to deal with it.

    And things are just getting worse.

    There's a reason why there's a huge contingent of soldiers, specializing in "crowd control", that are being flown in daily.

    If you were to show up you put a strain on the limited resources that are there, and become an easy mark for the desperate people that are doing the looting/mugging. On top of that, where will you sleep? Eat? Shit? Shower?

    Just sit at home and watch it on the news. Manpower is NOT what's in short supply.
     
  14. Beefy Phil

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    Pff. He's an attention-seeking douchebag who's too stupid to think up a properly inflammatory post. This is the best he could come up with. Addressing him directly only encourages him.
     
  15. Nettdata

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    I normally don't feed the trolls, but in this case, thought there might be some others who actually thought that going down there would be a viable option.
     
  16. Durbanite

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    Please, please can Haiti take back Jean-Bertrand Aristide? We have enough leeches in government here and don't need anymore*.

    Thanks!


    *Yes, a former deposed foreign leader is getting PAID a fucking salary by my useless government and gets FREE accommodation. I guess he's right at home with the other crooks that inhabit S.A.'s borders.
     
  17. RustyShackleford

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    Just to echo what Nettdata said about manpower not being in short supply.
    I've been a volunteer and part of Disaster Relief Services with the Redcross for quite some time now. I know for a fact that they are NOT looking for any more trained volunteers to be sent for the Haiti relief effort, at least not from my chapter or state. If you want to help,your best bet would be to donate what you can at the Redcross link Beefy Phil provided. Or donate money/supplies to other relief organizations.
     
  18. shegirl

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    You're a fucking idiot and I'm in a bad mood, bad combo. Do not post to this thread again you moron.

    People if you want to donate do so for your own reasons, the same goes for if you choose not to. Trying to deter those that will or do is just shitty. Shut up.
     
  19. downndirty

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    I agree with what DC is saying about the long-term effect aid has in Haiti and in a lot of other underdeveloped countries. Long-term aid is damaging. Point made.
    Damaged is better than dead. People who realize the damage long-term aid does, simply assume that by removing it, the native population will just jump up and fix whatever was wrong. That never happens. I can attest to that, personally (PM for details). There is this word, anarchy...that's what Haiti would be looking at without the world's aid right now, and it's a lot more bloodshed, rape, and theft than what's being seen there now.

    Corruption is not going to be erased by a UN force, nor any other force. It doesn't work that way, as we have seen in Iraq or Mexico, for instance. What foreign military power can determine the honesty of an official or whose side he/she is on? Corruption is combated by education and transparency, things that even the US isn't all that great at. A UN force will maintain the semblance of order, but has no place in the power structure of Haiti's government, nor any interest there.

    Haiti will probably still be fucked for many years down the line. At some level, it's the Haitian people's responsibility to form their country the way they wish it to be, and to accomplish that, they need access to things like education, resources and funding. Thus, the modern system of aid. The cool thing about the US foreign aid policy is that it's under constant scrutiny, so it is forced to analyze itself and determine what works and what doesn't. None of this takes place quickly, but the overall development doctrine has changed drastically from its origins and promotes things like independence, sustainability and ownership of local resources (in other words, not the "if we build it, they will come" strategy that left hydroelectric dams without engineers to maintain them, etc.). So what has been done in the past wasn't perfect, the people who dedicate their lives to this type of work are constantly looking for better solutions.

    The bottom line is your donation dollar will not go to a group of angels, and it will not be spent on perfect solutions. There are no perfect resolutions and when it comes to this sort of country, the problems are deeply set in the culture, prohibitively complex and do not offer easily-spotted solutions. You want to help people recover from a disaster that could have happened in Miami, California or Hawaii (OR NEW ORLEANS) wonderful. You want to rebuild the nation of Haiti with arrogance, pragmatism and the lack of the proper perspective, take your $10 and your .02 and shove them up your ass.
     
  20. dubyu tee eff

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    Tyler Cowen lists some other ways Haiti can be helped:

    I realize a lot of these are things a government must do but once again don't forget that you can always write a letter to the white house, your local congressman, or local senator. Encourage others to do the same.