Doing aid by the numbers


Procedure outweighs results
Tim Worstall at Tech Central Station gives a good run down on some of the problems with government international aid programs.

Now I quite clearly think this change in the way the budget is spent is a good idea. Twice as much food reaching the starving faster (and locally sourced so as not to destroy future production) without increasing the burden on the hard pressed taxpayer. I mean, who could be against it?
 
Which is, alas and alack, where the grubby reality of politics comes in. Just about everyone in the process seems to be against it and I think this is the lesson that Porkbusters and the other such groups working on cutting the fat to pay for Katrina reconstruction need to realize. (Of course, some do and the outcry that is being raised may well be the only way to get to a solution.)
 
So let's just go over the proposal again shall we, after we've recovered from the shock of such a decent and sensible idea being present anywhere in the system at all? We will stop increasing future food problems by feeding the starving with locally bought produce. Good, this is what the Nobel winning economist on the subject, Amartya Sen would say is better than the current system. We will get the food there faster, saving more people. Good. We will get twice as much food for the same money. This is also good. So why isn't it simply passed through on the nod? Why haven't all the actors slapped their foreheads, shouted "Of course! I should have thought of that!" and simply got on with it?
 
Because, unfortunately, the system doesn't work that way. No system of shoveling out tax money does. For once there is the flow there are the supplicants and the interested community, what we normally call special interests.

He's writing in response to an article on famine in Niger, but it can be applied equally to any government aid program.

The aid has to be supplied by approved vendors. It can only travel through approved channels. It can only be dispersed by approved personnel. And there is no accountability to make sure that the aid ends up where it needs to go.

If this sounds like FEMA and Hurricane Katrina, you're very perceptive.

Government's job isn't to do things, but to prevent things from being done. If you are unlucky, government's other job is to shower special benefits to a minority.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - October 12, 2005 at 04:59 AM  Tag


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