I happen to agree with your poorly phrased objection—I happen to think that “personal responsibility” is mostly bullshit, and often a dangerous cover word for collective indifference and the just-world fallacy, much like “equality of opportunity”, “self-reliance” and other applause lights—but please elaborate!
As far as I know, the conservative/right-libertarian argument against giving people in desperate need (e.g. Africans) “unearned” aid is that it doesn’t just offer perverse incentives and degrade their society’s mindset—it doesn’t even lead to improved material conditions either, as birth rates, structures of supply and demand, etc would make things as bad or worse down the road. However, I’m very unsure if that criticism true for many aid programs like basic education, healthcare, monitoring (or experiments like OLPC and the proposed wind/solar energy systems for Africa) - it sounds plausible for agricultural “aid” and other charities that replace the local economy—so it might be a case of taking true evidence in a few specific cases and applying it indiscriminately to all “interventionist” social projects for a fully general “libertarian” counterargument. It’s a commonly seen political dynamic, IMO: left-liberals follow some naive do-gooder sentiment to do something stupid/counter-productive (and often go in denial if it blows up, like decolonization); then their cynical/unscurplous opponents cite it as “evidence” why doing nice things for altruistic reasons is always Worse Than Hitler, and develop it into a general indictment of the altruistic/”socialist” mindset, a la Ayn Rand or… certain other writers.
Largely yes (I would also note efforts like GiveWell that try to document positive effects of charity).
But I quoted the second sentence for a reason—and that reason is because it could have strong negative impacts (outcompeting local businesses, leading to economic instability at least and prolonged poverty at worst), but that’s not considered at all. So we have charity in the first sentence, eyed with skepticism and doubt, and then we have business in the second sentence, jumped into uncritically.
Seems like a good heuristic could be: “don’t do for Africans what Africans can do for themselves; instead do the things they can’t do for themselves”. Though in reality it gets messy: what if they can do X, but can’t do enough X? By providing additional X you compete with those who already provided X.
Even better, every provided help should employ local people where possible. For example, you bring the food help to one place, and then pay local people to distribute it to other places. But pay them a market rate only. (You are already increasing local wages by increasing local demand for labor.)
Similarly you could improve healthcare by providing free education to local doctors, and then let them sell their services to their customers. (The more doctors you teach, the greater competition will be between them, and their services will be cheaper.) The same for teachers.
All these suggestions seem to me fully compatible with the “traditional capitalist values”. And if this happens to be sponsored by voluntary donors, even Ayn Rand wouldn’t object. -- So if someone objects against this, citing “libertarian” arguments, either they are mistaken, or that is not their true rejection.
I happen to agree with your poorly phrased objection—I happen to think that “personal responsibility” is mostly bullshit, and often a dangerous cover word for collective indifference and the just-world fallacy, much like “equality of opportunity”, “self-reliance” and other applause lights—but please elaborate!
As far as I know, the conservative/right-libertarian argument against giving people in desperate need (e.g. Africans) “unearned” aid is that it doesn’t just offer perverse incentives and degrade their society’s mindset—it doesn’t even lead to improved material conditions either, as birth rates, structures of supply and demand, etc would make things as bad or worse down the road.
However, I’m very unsure if that criticism true for many aid programs like basic education, healthcare, monitoring (or experiments like OLPC and the proposed wind/solar energy systems for Africa) - it sounds plausible for agricultural “aid” and other charities that replace the local economy—so it might be a case of taking true evidence in a few specific cases and applying it indiscriminately to all “interventionist” social projects for a fully general “libertarian” counterargument.
It’s a commonly seen political dynamic, IMO: left-liberals follow some naive do-gooder sentiment to do something stupid/counter-productive (and often go in denial if it blows up, like decolonization); then their cynical/unscurplous opponents cite it as “evidence” why doing nice things for altruistic reasons is always Worse Than Hitler, and develop it into a general indictment of the altruistic/”socialist” mindset, a la Ayn Rand or… certain other writers.
Is that your take as well?
Largely yes (I would also note efforts like GiveWell that try to document positive effects of charity).
But I quoted the second sentence for a reason—and that reason is because it could have strong negative impacts (outcompeting local businesses, leading to economic instability at least and prolonged poverty at worst), but that’s not considered at all. So we have charity in the first sentence, eyed with skepticism and doubt, and then we have business in the second sentence, jumped into uncritically.
Seems like a good heuristic could be: “don’t do for Africans what Africans can do for themselves; instead do the things they can’t do for themselves”. Though in reality it gets messy: what if they can do X, but can’t do enough X? By providing additional X you compete with those who already provided X.
Even better, every provided help should employ local people where possible. For example, you bring the food help to one place, and then pay local people to distribute it to other places. But pay them a market rate only. (You are already increasing local wages by increasing local demand for labor.)
Similarly you could improve healthcare by providing free education to local doctors, and then let them sell their services to their customers. (The more doctors you teach, the greater competition will be between them, and their services will be cheaper.) The same for teachers.
All these suggestions seem to me fully compatible with the “traditional capitalist values”. And if this happens to be sponsored by voluntary donors, even Ayn Rand wouldn’t object. -- So if someone objects against this, citing “libertarian” arguments, either they are mistaken, or that is not their true rejection.