Haiti (Catch all)

[marct]

Hi Tom,

Do we have any reason to believe that the people reporting progress weren't cherry picking? Or that their information gatherers weren't "finding" the information their superiors most wanted to be found? Perhaps even massaging it a bit, here and there? Or that they didn't, humanly and understandably, turn away from indicators that they were failing?

As far as conditions in haiti were concerned, I was relying not only on "official" reports, which are frequently subject to judicious "editing" but, rather, on reports from a number friends and ex-students who are Haitian and let me know what's happening with their family and friends back there.

I mean, can you imagine the following TV ad, replete with pictures of starving children: "Hi, I represent Save the Children. We want your money and we want it even though the majority of what you give us will be siphoned off by kleptocrats and the little that remains will do no good whatsoever except to ensure that there will be a few more children starving in ten years than there are today. Trust us; you'll feel better after you write that check."

Truth in advertising never plays well with moral entrepreneurs . How about the following ad

[pan shot off students lined up in front of the unemployment office; voice of narrator]
One of the greatest problems our society has today is the shortage of work for deserving graduates with MA's in Social Work. Won't you help these poor, disadvantaged children to achieve the jobs they deserve? Just $5 a day will help support a poor, starving MA graduate in the lifestyle which they deserve by helping them find employment helping the deserving poor in the Third World!
[pan to shot of "bright young Gen X'ers building homes for adoring children in refugee camps]
Your donation goes beyond helping your children - it allows them to help everyone, so send generously!

I suspect I already know your answer

Nah.

To go back to Haiti, for example, is there any evidence that the average age for beginning sexual activity has gone up from 12 to, oh, I dunno, maybe 12 and a half? That would be real, grassroots progress, and on a truly key matter affecting the long term prospects of the place. Don't think it happened. Have the police and bureaucrats become more honest? Can't imagine how they'd measure that one. "Ah, oui, monsieur; I have reduced my schedule of bribes by 43% under the influence of your wonderful NGO/MTT/the bribes your organization paid me." We've had evidence here (the police taking off at 16:30 while the looters did not) that the police are fundamentally indifferent to meeting their core function. What's that say about them? And what does what it says about them say about the rest of the society? How, indeed, do we measure that they became more self-reliant? Why would we expect it when they're under the influence of organizations for whom it would be corporate death if they ever actually became self-reliant?

Which, BTW, is one of the reasons why I said that it was too bad we got out of the governance business. Seriously, these are all serious problems with doing anything in the area, especially when you have organizations whose business requires that they have a plentiful supply of "raw material".

It is, however, absolutely critical, at least in my opinion, to distinguish between the "support an 90% overhead" crowd and the groups that actually try to do something and have a much, MUCH lower overhead. I've done some work (yes, as a volunteer) with several aid / development agencies, but I wouldn't touch them if they didn't have wide open books (I've also turned down contracts with the other type). Some of them do some great work with some serious follow-up; they also tend to be fairly small and tend to work very locally on the long term, unlike the crisis de jour variety.

By comparison, human societies are much more complex than mere jungles, and much harder to change. Moreover, while the jungle is non-sentient - the trees will not actively and cleverly thwart you - the people who make up societies, and are doing fairly well in their own, are sentient and will thwart you.

It's a good analogy, Tom - I've used similar ones when I've taught social theory; it's one of the reasons why I tend to be exceedingly cautious with anything related to cultural or social engineering. The best form of both that I've ever come across is to rely on basic human motivations like enlightened self interest and reinforce them. One of my big problems with most of the attempts at social and cultural engineering is that it tries to be top down and based on ideologies rather than working with people's actual desires.