How an NGO works.

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

For those who are not familiar with how an NGO works, the following may be somewhat surprising; however, you will understand where your charitable contributions go.

The other evening I had a conversation with a young, Australian man who heads an NGO that operates in the Philippines. This young man holds a Masters in Economics and is formerly an HSBC banker.

This particular NGO uses Muhammad Yunus’s Nobel Prize winning idea of micro-loans. Here is how micro-loans work; in this example, the WTO creates an NGO. The NGO has plans for a cook stove. This cook stove is designed in the West and is fifty percent more efficient than the local cook stove the Philippines islanders are using: benefit for the locals: use less charcoal; global benefit: deplete less rainforest. Great idea?!

But the stoves are not free. They cost three dollars. But the locals have no cash; they live almost perfectly money free lives. In a country with a population like the Philippines, this could produce as much as a quarter billion dollars of debt. Looked at this way, the eco-friendly NGO is no longer a charity at all, but a tool of the WTO, with three (real) purposes:

-to lay down a ground work for a future cash economy were there previously was little to none;

-to create a quarter billion dollars of debt for rural Filipinos --which can then be sold on the Futures Market;

-create 200 million tons of Carbon Credit to be sold on the Carbon Credit Market. (Recall the claim of 50% greater efficiency).

Now you know how this sort of thing works; and why Muhammad Yunus’s idea of micro-loans is so important. National debt in the Philippines is raising 11% per year, foreign debt is now over P4,000,000,000,000 and internal debt is at 68 billion dollars. More debt is certainly not something the Filipinos need more of. In its first year of operations, this NGO has distributed 20,000 cook stoves.

2

Any person, on this planet, who owes in liabilities more than they own in solid & liquid assets, is an indentured servant.

Currency implies “obligation to globalized society”. America and the WTO wants every living soul on board…

3

These days I’m most fond of the term “living currency.”

Taking a loan is a sin. Let’s be existential about this, let’s not blame the banker; the sin lies with the debtor.

4

Money-free does not mean debt-free or cost-free. The phillipines imports more than they export, indicating they are running at a deficit of resources (other than human capital). If that debt is in the form of, say, food, then people will starve, even though they might have a surplus of other goods. Transitioning the debt into dollars allows them to place the debt where it is least obstructive to their continued existence.
Loans, though they put the debt into dollar terms, also allow people to achieve beyond what they could otherwise afford, and thus to bootstrap themselves from poverty. For instance, a new stove that uses half the charcoal will have real savings. The cost of the extra charcoal might not have been measured in dollars previously, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.

A market economy has a lot of advantages over a barter economy. Money allows means to be distributed efficiently. There are certainly drawbacks, but to imply that the simple transition from a money-free to a monied economy is a bad thing or some form of evil is missing the point. Evil is not inherent in efforts that enable to people to participate in the global market place.

5

That depends on what’s “evil” about the global market.

So what you’re saying is that, instead of individuals being indentured servants, you also have whole countries as slaves to other nations (capable of annihilating them with nuclear power if they don’t pay their dues)…?

6

Um, no, I don’t want any sort of indentured servitude. I want all people equally empowered. I think present inequality makes that hard, but empowering people to participate is a vital first step.

7

But there’s no way around it! …that’s the problem!

The Philippines must import, because of the power imbalance. You cannot equalize a third world country to the status of a first world country without accepting the flawed mentality of doing so. History teaches us a lesson: if you do not take from others, then you will starve to death (or just live in poverty). People are then made to believe that this starvation is “sacred”, “holy”, or “moral”, as the overriding form of the master-slave relationship. God is an American; the rest of the world can suck on our American penis (that is if they want to be included into our family as a whore). America already has plenty of wives: Europe, East Asia, Mexico & South America, etc. The American leviathan is a polygamist; we just pay lip service to monogamy, because really, men can’t keep their hands off the hoards of sexy women beasts that bend over for us.

The Philippines, and other weak nations, are destined, “determined” if you will, to be America’s little whores. Now, if you want to turn the masses into power-houses, then prepare to give up what you own. Kiss your Ipod, rims, and HDTVs goodbye! Hypocrites only pay lip service to morality and equality, lying humanists … how many of them send their Ipod to Ethiopia or Sudan??? Personally, I enjoy my computer where it is, on my desk. I’m not going to send it to a school of children who “need it more than I do”. I need it more, because I say so. I am not a hypocrite, which is why I have faith in inequality. The price that I pay for this, is no price at all. I’m simply not a hypocrite…

I’ve said too much (or not enough at all)… #-o

8

There is a power imbalance, no doubt, but there’s no flaw, no hypocrisy in thinking that it can be lessened, or at least that some actions decrease and some increase the disparity of power. Ceteris paribus, we should do what minimizes the imbalance. We don’t send every computer to every poor person because that would set civilization as a whole back by a hundred years. Still, we an organization that sends computers to third world does make a difference.

Access to loans is another useful step in lifting people from poverty. There’s a reason the Fed lowers interest rates during a slowdown: market fluidity improves efficiency, and maximizes productivity. Quantifying debt and making it a shiftable asset makes the market fluid, and providing loans improve people’s ability to apply their human capital to improve their station.

RU, if you’re position is that you like inequality because you’re on top, that’s a different argument. My point is that loans and currency are good if you don’t like inequality.

EDIT: I wrote ‘equality’ when I meant ‘inequality’. It changed what I was saying a little bit. #-o

9

edit

I posted in the wrong thread. 8-[

10

Money is the root of all evil?

Often, NGOs are criticized for gross corruption, rolling Isuzu Troopers full of hookers, salaries fifty times the local average, or meddling in local politics; but I wanted above to address something a little different. The cook stove NGO described in the OP does have vehicles, and the foreigners are making salaries of about 1000 Pounds per month --but I mean to show how even the normal operation of many NGOs is “bad” as they are almost always “feed-back” development schemes; this is only too obvious, and if you are not a Luddite this may not seem sinister to you. Be that as it may, I just mean to report that this particular NGO, which is very sophisticated (the usual format is just to feed doations back into the pockets of the administrators) is all about profit (1/4 bilion dollars in micro-loan debt Futures and 200 million tons of Carbon Credit); one needs to ask a few questions however to see through the front.

11

At least their honest. Still, the profit motive inspires great things. Innovations abound that have improved the lives of millions, all generated by the profit motive. If someone’s found a way to make a profit while giving people the means to lift themselves out of poverty, good for them. It stands to reason that enabling people to contribute to global progress should be profitable, because human capital is by far our most valuable asset.

12

There’s a narrow margin for error when it comes to people’s lives, and that of whole countries, when “making a profit”.

And come on, how often has capitalistic consumerism proven the likelihood of corruption when large sums of money are involved, Iraq War II for example?

13

This, realunorigional, is why I suggest not worrying too much about the “elite.” I think it is a fair guess that Carleas is not the VP of GM, and also that he is not an agent of the military-industrial complex (I may be wrong!); but as you see, “we” of the middle-class to a terrific job already policing ourselves. No elites (I speculate) have Carleas on their pay-role, nor is he (I’m thinking) sitting with a gun to his head --and yet, he is defending the establishment, capitalism, development… The propaganda is imbedded deep into our consciousnesses, it takes a real effort to identify it, never mind to deconstruct it.

14

You’re mostly right, Jean. I’m no high-roller, but I come from an American upper-middle class background. I had a lot of opportunities because I live in a wealthy country, and I was relatively privileged within that context. I’m self-sufficient, and I started out of college flat broke and living on my own, but I know that a college degree with no strings attached is incredibly valuable and I readily accept that I have had it easy.

Let me assure you, though, that my position isn’t class propaganda. I’m a socialist, for fuck’s sake! I’m in favor of heavy taxes on the wealthy, and on heavy spending in the third world. I fully favor the redistribution of global wealth. BUT, I support all these things while acknowledging that capitalist and market forces improve the productivity of society. I support taxes on the wealthy because people like me have an unfair advantage in life. Most people in the US have an unfair advantage over most people in the third world. To maximize productivity, maximize competition, we need to level the playing field. I favor the redistribution of wealth in order to enable more people to participate in the global market place, to bring more innovation to the fore. When people don’t have to worry about their basic needs, they are freed to innovate, and profit motivates them to do so. Not always or only, but by and large.
Loans have a similar function. An example: I had a cousin who had a bunch of legal trouble, lost his license, and had to pay a couple thousand dollars to get it back. To get that money, he needed to get a job. But where he lived, there weren’t any jobs available to him within walking/biking distance, he needed to be able to drive. You see the dilemma. Anyway, he took out a loan, payed off his fines, got his license, got a job, and paid of the loan, and now he’s in the black. The availability of a loan, though in some sense it placed him in debt, actually enabled him to get out of debt. It allowed him to transfer his debt to a different place.
This is just one example, but it is illustrative of the point: fluidity is a good thing, especially with the very poor. And that fluidity is not available unless you have a money economy, which enables the transfer of value between dissimilar assets, and loans, which enable the transfer of debt to be less obstructive.

What’s propagandic about that?

15

I’m thinking about anarchism these days. It is really not so easy to deconstruct social reality. I really have no answers now. Everyday I understand that what I’ve just said yesterday was assumption.

Here we diverge.

“Taxes,” “wealthy,” “spending,” and “redistribution” are all sub-sets of the money game. Who invented the cruel game of money? It would be a fair guess (I hope) that ages and ages hence we will not use money. Land redistribution is played within the game of ownership or property; we want to disassemble both of these, money and property.

As for the “third world,” I suggest, LEAVE AFRICA ALONE. Africa, South Asia, Central Asia, leave them all alone. I want to be clear about what I think this means (I say ‘what I think’ because I don’t fully see where the Anarchist rabbit hole goes); humans lived for say 100,000 years in very simple hunter and gatherer or village societies; this was not fully sustainable (see Uruk today! nothing but desert; it is a fair guess that poor agricultural practices are the reason), but it was much more so than “our” ways, we have now perhaps one century left during which the Earth will be liveable. If we can believe the Blitzkrieg Hypothesis of Megafauna Extinction, human nature is corrupt, we will will our own end. But we must choose not to believe this; otherwise humanity is certainly doomed. Foreign intervention is nearly always the wrong decision, even if we believe it is done with the best intentions. Africans got along well without soap and Christianity for thousands of years; mega dams, highways, highrises, row apartments, factories etcetera too.

16

Unfortunately, if a third world country has a resource, then it simply will not be left alone. It will be raped until the resource is depleted. It seems that socialism will at least try to minimize the harms of this (human rights activists come to mind).

Afterwards, the people are left with the scraps and left-overs and the first world doesn’t care at all. In fact, without those resources, they will be left alone, but their societies & cultures will most likely change a great deal (gun violence & arms wars in Africa for example … an after-effects of colonialism along with many other things).

I honestly believe that socialism is going to eventually take over money (going electronic as debt / credit) as well as land ownership (future city-states will own city land). However, this doesn’t mean that new systems will be anti-social. As I see it, all trends point away from anarchism, which I pity, but realism creeps up on me as I age. I empathize with the anarchist’s plight, but their dreary idealism is going to become more far-fetched as time passes into the future. I believe that the most likely throes of first world country anarchy are going to be coinciding with 1) social nihilism, 2) foreign & domestic terrorism, and 3) a die-off (or “evolution”) of human alpha males in said countries. The puppets don’t like the master playing with the strings, but the puppet leads a pretty good life nowadays, the “American Dream”, spread all over the damn world – capitalistic, consumeristic, hedonism.

I simply cannot envision a success in the anarchism movement, although I have seriously considered joining an anarchist group where I live. The problem would be, as soon as it starts getting serious, the social establishment would shut it down rather quickly. Especially here in America, there are many, many, many checks for anti-socialism. Is it worth the price side-stepping them all? I don’t see how it’d even be done without spiritual movement already in the undertaking (think MLK for example, except more heavily armed with updated ideologies of every kind).

Anyway, my point is, after futuristic city-states arrive to the world, globally, then currency and ownership will revolutionize themselves. Currency and private property will still exist in rural America as well as rurally located in other countries. They’ll just be “relics of the past”, like most South American native people. They stay in a stasis or state of perpetual “animalistic” existence, rather ignorant and blissful from the standards of Westerners (“ooh, look at the indigenous Mayan people mommy!”).

17

Right. Right. How absurd that there should be certificates showing that some diamond is not a “conflict/blood diamond” when this is only the tip of the iceburg. Copper, cobalt, zinc, coltan, cadmium, cassiterite, gold, silver, wolframite, uranium and so on and so on were much more important in fuelling the Second Congo War than Blood Diamonds. How about certificates on cell phones, MP3 Players and Notebook Computers testifying that the minerals did not come from a central African war zone? Wouldn’t be many products left in the shops then would there?

It starts at home, a personal commitment to do what is right --AND to shame those who do wrong; I don’t mean in op-eds, I mean in the check-out line at the grocery shop:

Excuse me. Why are you buying the frozen green beens flowen in from Uganda when there are seasonal local vegetables available at just a little higher cost? And is that Coca-Cola…?

Yes, I agree with you that the future will look very much like we have imagined it in Star Wars of some such sci-fi. The Borg is our future. Did you see Equilibrium? But this is why I have this far-fetched hope; if the Borg is our future, then humanity is dead; there is nothing human in humanity’s future.

18

Hahaha, it gets even worse than that too when you realize that guilt trips are harder to create in people. Since Christianity has been desensitizing itself from its own effects, you have to prod more & more to stop them from buying blood diamonds, for example. Human rights groups along with whoever, have to take the prodding to higher and higher levels (which sometimes they’re willing to do and sometimes not). The effort it then takes to persuade the masses not to do something becomes proportionally higher. Imagine trying to take away Ipods while they’re popular – just not gonna happen…

I have not seen “Equilibrium” that I can recall. I imagine that you’re right; the masses will look Borg-ish, but the human animal is changing too. I believe that humanity is going to evolve quite rapidly into different species as our population explodes. The human that’s going to stay “human” is going to appear differently than now, because whoever has authority over the word category is going to take it with them. The ideal of humanity in accordance with its Western Judeo-Christian history is one of transcendence. Thus, people are trying to “grow out” of humanity. I think it’s going to happen, but into radically different outlets.

The ones that are left behind are simply that, left behind. Third and second world countries that aren’t involved simply get left behind and ignored if they can’t contribute. There becomes no more reason to study indigenous tribes of the world except for scientific study. The attitude may be, “let them have their land so we can have grants to study them for reasons X, Y, and Z”.

That’s how I see it anyway…

19

Aren’t all these moral positions predicated on global knowledge? Because we have computers, we’ve been able to digest the huge amounts of data that point to human-initiated global changes. Because we have the internet, we’re able to disseminate that knowledge, and try to convince others to change their ways. Ruralism is often romanticized as hunting and gathering in peaceful bliss. What about the higher levels of infant mortality? What about higher preventable mortality across the board, from simple things like infected cuts and appendicitis? Clearly, Jean, you get a lot out of access to the internet, and to a computer. Should you not want African’s to have that same privilege? And if so, why should the reinvent the wheel? We have the technology already, we should give them access to it.
The ‘Money Game’ is a proxy of the ‘Resources Game’, and eliminating currency won’t solve that. Anarchism isn’t a sustainable position. Lest we forget, modern societies grew out of primitive anarchism. We used to be anarchists, and this is where it got us. There’s good reason to believe that, if we somehow reverse the course of social development and re-anrchize ourselves, we would re-capitalize ourselves after not very long. Why go through all that? The transitions would have to be catastrophic, and we would destroy many institutions that we’ve build, only to build them again piece-by-piece. To what end?

That’s why I say “tax”, “redistribute”, etc. We’ve got a system that is really good at progress, really good at allocating resources to solve development problems in the first world. Redistribution slows that trend as little as possible, while bringing the third world into the picture and eventually enabling more minds to bear on problems that face us. Solar power is a realizable dream (see Scientific American from January 2008), and it will be achieved through global communication and technological development, not by reverting to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Anarchism is a dream. It’s not a practical solution, and even if it is an ideal, as an ideal it gives us little direction as to how to achieve it (since both extreme socialism and extreme libertarianism seem to lead there).

20

I’m not going to play expert on this subject; I just have a gut feeling, an intuition, that that this is something important. Anarchism does not say “no” to every system; it says “yes” and “maybe” to every system; this is what I gather from reading on the Ukrainian anarchist period.

Everything old new again! And there is a delightful discussion of this subject in Open Society and Its Enemies, but Amazon has Google Bombed the hell out of the title so I can’t now find the text in full online except to buy now! But this is from Orwell in the 30s, our same discussion --word for word,

[size=150]Burmese Days[/size], Orwell, George. 1934

Dr. Veraswami (you)
“Could the Burmese trade for themselves? Can they make machinery, ships, railways, roads? They are helpless without you.
…
Look merely out this veranda–look at that hospital, and over to the right at that school and that police station. Look at the whole uprush of modern progress!'”

Flory (me)
“It is so simple. The offical holds the Burman down while the businessman goes through his pockets. Do you suppose my firm, for instance, could get the timber contracts if the country weren’t in the hands of the British?
…
In fact, before we’ve finshed we’ll have wrecked the whole Burmese national culture. … Where’s it going to lead, this uprush of modern progress, as you call it? Just to our own dear swinery of gramophones and billy-cock hats. Sometimes I think that in two hundred years all this–’ he waved a foot towards the horizon–'all this will be gone–forests villages, monasteries, pagodas all vanished. And instead, pink villas fifty yards apart; all over these hills, as far as you can see, villa after villa, with all the gramaphones playing the same tune. And all the forests shaved flat – chewed into wood-pulp for the News of the World, or sawn up into gramaphone cases.
…
'Well, doctor, we shall never agree. The fact is that you like all this modern business, wereas I’d rather see things a little bit septic. Burma in the days of Thibaw would have suited me better, I think.”