A Controversial View Of Development Discourse

Promises not Kept: Poverty and the Betrayal of Third World Development by John Isbister is a balanced, penetrating, and exciting account of why most people on the planet are poor, who has betrayed the promise for social change, and what we can do about it. Isbister gives a superb overview of third world development. He challenges people in developed nations to accept their share of responsibility for Third World stagnation and examines and analyzing international development issues. Promises not Kept offers provocative answers to the question of increasing world poverty.

First, I will explain the role of empowered institutions and countries in limiting the economic activities of developing countries, impeding on their ability to survive. Afterwards I will explain the obligation people in privileged positions have to improve the lives of those in compromised positions, at a certain degree of self-sacrifices. Finally, I will critically analyze and disprove the counter argument, which attempts to relieve us of the aforementioned duties, by discrediting the roles of institutions and developed countries in the prolongation of impoverishment.

An innocent child begs her mother for food, a single tear running down her cheek. The fires of life that once filled the girl’s eyes slowly begin to fade. The mother embraces her child, tells her the pain will be gone within a few moments. As she holds her, she feels the warmth slip away; her little girl’s body becomes engulfed by empty coldness. So much could have been done to save that life, from local government support to foreign aid, yet not enough aid was given. And so, society is posed with the question of “How much aid should wealthy nations provide for developing countries?” This paper will look at the philosophy behind this question by analyzing two articles.

The variations in the living standards among the people from place to place, and from time to time have always been existent. Greed, injustice and inequality are the three sides of the triangle of poverty and wherever we see them, poverty is always there. Humans cannot overcome a serious problem such as poverty without addressing those three main causes. Even this problem is worldwide; it varies from one area to another. It is higher in areas which were colonized for a long time before such as Africa, Asia and Latin America than other areas which were not colonized for a long time such as Europe and America. We cannot imagine the swift change that happens in the last century in poverty. Surprisingly, it is only one percent of the population that controls most of the international financial assets, creating a massive change in the international landscape of poverty. It was mentioned in the introduction to the text that was taken from Jacob Riis’ book “How the Other Half Lives” this quotation: “Curiously, today, that economic divide has changed and we now speak of a much wider division: the one percent versus nighty nine percent”. It is interesting, but not surprising to see today with all modern thinking and technological progress, poverty is still growing to threaten our existence and it doesn’t seem to go away anytime soon. Most definitely, without addressing the three sides of the triangle of poverty which are greed, injustice and inequality, nothing really will work

One of my main arguments being how people do not believe that foreign aid helps, meaning they stop donating all together, creating immorality. This idea is supported in Banerjee and Duflo’s Poor Economics; they discuss the general reaction when faced with a major issue like poverty. Generally, our first instinct is to be generous and then our second thought is that there is no point to our generosity. Banerjee and Duflo are able to describe the general feeling that “our contribution would be a drop in the bucket, and the bucket probably leaks” (Banerjee and Duflo, 2). Regardless of the fact Banerjee and Duflo are trying to fight the assumption that we cannot do anything to help, it does not change the fact that this is the common belief when it comes to large issues like poverty. While I still believe that the frustration with inequality and poverty breeds immorality, I now believe that the bigger issue is on the global scale. In his book Encounter Development, Escobar makes the point that “development was – and continues to be for the most part – a top-down, ethnocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in charts of ‘progress’” summing up the immorality created by development thinkers who are there to “help” eradicate poverty (Escobar, 44). The inequality between the first world and the third world

Aid, as a concept of international development, has been at the centre of countless debates and has been studied through sizeable number of research over the past several decades; yet, there is no consensus among development sector experts on whether it works or not.

According to William Easterly, the consensus on global development is an axiomatically wrong and ostentatious position. This is not new to Easterly, who spent a number of disenchanted years as a senior advisor at the World Bank. These tumultuous years would certainly help formulate Easterly’s austere perception of technocratic solutions to global poverty. Easterly’s contentious view of technocrats becomes a focused thesis in his book, The Tyranny of Experts. In this book, Easterly argues that poverty is not a “technical problem amenable to technical solutions” (Easterly 6). Instead, poverty is a manifestation of brutish leaders quashing the rights of individuals. While Easterly presents a cogent argument against top down development, the lack

Every year sub-Saharan Africa receives around $134bn in loans, foreign investment and development aid, according to the UN. Nonetheless, sub-Saharan Africa is still the poorest region in the world. For many years the international community has debated over the reasons why every year billion and billions of dollars are not taking sub-Saharan Africans out of poverty. Three major groups have prevailed in the discussion. First, the people who totally blame Africa for not doing its job right, completely forgetting that most of the funds are not administrated by Africans. Second, the people who believe that even though aids are not working, the international community should keep investing funds in Africa even if is failing; one day they will work.

The differences between standards of living in developed and developing nations have been made more evident by the rapid pace of technological innovation. Many world leaders consider the poor circumstances of developing nations to be tragedies that should be solved. Some altruistic organizations such as the World Bank have attempted to improve the conditions in developing nations through deliberate development, in which they would enable an all-encompassing plan aimed at efficiently reducing material suffering. However, in The Tyranny of Experts, Easterly argues that development approaches are flawed because they often emphasize material goods at the detriment of individual rights. Instead, he argues for giving developing nations the freedom to improve themselves by supporting democracy and personal rights. In explaining this idea, he comments on four aspects of the two differing methodologies: blank slate versus learning from history, nations versus individuals, conscious direction versus spontaneous solutions, and authoritarian rule versus free development.

The economy in a country can be affected by another country, due to the fluctuation in that country’s economy. Although there are downfalls to economic development, new developments are necessary to keep the economy stable and to provide positive impacts to the society. New developments such as providing aid to developing countries and increasing foreign trade will help that country by building a closer relationship allowing them to gain more resources to their own country. Countries all around the world face a certain amount of poverty where some countries experience a higher number of poverty rate compared to the “richer” ones. In The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, written by Jeffrey Sachs, he informs readers by providing

It is widely held that the United States should give money to aid third world countries living in poverty because helping the less fortunate is a strong value in American culture. The U.S. has an interest in helping third world countries escape poverty and elevating them so they may contribute to the growing world-state. Therefore, America believes that sending a big fat check to the governments of these impoverished nations is the best way to help. However, all this gifted money does is create increased third world poverty by feeding corrupt governments and diminishing economic growth. This argument has been in the back of a lot of American’s mind for a while now, and people normally want one of three things. They want to decrease foreign aid, or they want to keep foreign aid the exact same, or they want to spend the same amount of money but distribute it different ways. The last viewpoint is what I want to focus on. Foreign aid needs to be changed into a more productive way for these developing countries to get out of poverty without corrupting their government or hurting their economic growth.

Finally, I will critically analyze and disprove the counter argument, which attempts to relieve us of the aforementioned duties, by discrediting the roles of institutions and the developed in prolongation of impoverishment. Elements of Pogge’s philosophical argument will also be addressed, though the overall arguments of this paper take a differentiated approach in justifying the acceptance of Western Society’s obligation to the global poor.

Harvard Business School’s Case Study “Aid, Debt Relief, and Trade: An agenda for fighting World Poverty” outlines the steps, and missteps, that the world community has taken since World War II to address the efficacy of international assistance. The study focuses on international financial institutions (IFIs) and their ability to help poor nations break out of poverty and the possible obligations of rich, developed countries to assist the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs). Additionally, the study seeks to see if this assistance has been and can be parlayed into growth and investment for the HIPCs.

Lack of development in countries in the so-called `Third World' has many political and economical reasons. Historians explain the inadequacy of developing countries with the early imperialism and the resulting colonization of the South. Exploitation of mineral resources, deforestation, slavery, and the adaptation of foreign policies shaped the picture of today's suffering and struggling civilizations and natural rich continents. The omission of concessions and equal negotiations between dependency and supremacy give rise to the contrast of enormous resources and immense poverty in developing countries is. In the last years the outcry of justice and the emancipation of the Third World became louder throughout developing and industrialized

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice. Like slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.”-Nelson Mandela. Poverty at its worst involves hunger leading to starvation, inadequate shelter or housing and lack of clothing. Justice is the idea that all people, everywhere in the world, have the right to a life of dignity. This means a life free from poverty, violence, discrimination or human rights violations. A world where justice exists in a world where all people are included in a society and all people can claim their rights to education, shelter, and health care regardless of how poor or rich they are. Whenever we speak of poverty we must speak of injustice. But more than that, we must speak of HOPE. To give hope we must have it and if we are to build hope in others it will require something of humanity. It is found in our actions. Poverty is a state of deprivation, or a lock of the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.