Profuse Assistance

Prior to reading the interview between Spiegel and Shikwati, I did not think that sending aid to underdeveloped countries could have disadvantageous consequences. However, considering the fact that aid cripples the market for product and diminishes the need for workers, global aid may not be the best answer to eradicating poverty from Africa and other underdeveloped nations. The problem here is not assistance, however, but the quantity of it; this follows the maxim “Too much of a good thing is bad for you.”

    Giving too much help is akin to a parent bird giving food to the young and never encouraging the young bird to leave the nest and find its way. If aid is consistently sent to underdeveloped nations, those nations will learn to look to their caregivers whenever a problem arises, rather than trying to work it out themselves. If you always receive assistance for every problem you come across, you will never adequately learn how to take care of yourself. This can be explained through Aristotelian thought.

    First, there is the balance between dependence, which would be asking for assistance, and independence, which would be taking matters into your own hands and solving your own problems. The healthy balance between these two vices would be to receive minimal aid (if you ask for any at all) – just enough assistance that you have the tools you need to manage your problem. This may be, for instance, seeds and animals for farming. Using these tools, a nation may be better suited to work for itself, to develop a functional and independent market, and to work its way out of the poverty cycle. Too little help and you are left up a creek without a paddle – that is to say without any means to help yourself out. Too much help and you are unable to learn to take care of yourself, or you are too smothered by the aid that you cannot even begin to fix yourself.

    Second, too much assistance prevents the rational, social animal from flourishing, as it cripples rationality, such as problem-solving and critical thinking, through the deliverance of a solution. For instance, a math tutor who “assists” the tutee by giving him/her all the answers or by doing the tutee’s work for him/her prevents the tutee (the underdeveloped nation) from learning how to do math (keep the nation afloat economically). If underdeveloped nations were given only aid in the form of managerial insight or help in growing business, both of which go a longer way than either money or food or clothes, then they would be able to stand up for themselves and flourish as they are meant to.