Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: The Global Aid System

The businesses apart of the global aid system pretend to be liberal but are now actually pretty realist. Charitable businesses use liberal ideals to justify giving aid to underdeveloped countries. Those businesses believe they are helping underdeveloped countries by providing clothing and food.

According to the liberal perspective, imperialism is a means of progress and human development. With that in mind, actors from the West (which are businesses from first-world countries) see an opportunity for trade and exchange with the underdeveloped countries. Those actors want to facilitate cooperation and interdependence by establishing a global aid system. In that system, the Western actors donate food, clothing, and resources to the underdeveloped countries who need them. Sounds rational, right? However, when you look at the relationship closely, it’s not interdependent—It’s one-sided and it’s harmful to local economies.

The relationship between the Western actors and underdeveloped country is one-sided. While Western actors are just exporting goods, the underdeveloped countries cannot give back much in terms of goods or services because their local economies are squashed. Local economies are negatively affected by donations because the free stuff from the West prevents people from buying and selling locally made products. The discouragement of local production leads people to depend on the Western actors. That kind of dependence is similar to the dependence between the colonizers and the colonized. Western actors patronize people from underdeveloped countries and underestimate their capacity. Actors keep the people subjugated by keeping them dependent on foreign goods.

After watching Poverty, Inc., I noticed that the charitable do-gooders from the West have a difficult time understanding what they are actually doing is participating in a modern form of Western imperialism and colonization. These businesses may not see it because they chose to think that are participating in a mutually beneficial exchange. They also look at the other optimistic aspect of their liberal ideals: Their interests to help others come from good intentions. They are working with others to solve problems. They see that they are helping people at times, and they don’t want to stop. That is where they lose their ability to recognize modern imperialism and unknowingly adopt realist practices.

After Western actors establish themselves in underdeveloped countries as the go-to institutions for aid, they gain power over people that they may not want to let go of. Western businesses have power and influence over people because they are the ones who provide the people with the goods and services they need. For example, TOMs Shoes give free shoes. Doctors Without Borders provide medical services. People who cannot afford shoes or don’t have access to medication don’t have the power to break their dependence on these businesses who benefits a lot from the power disparity. Businesses like TOMs Shoes depend on the buy-one-something-will-be-donated model to survive in the market. It also depends on that model to secure itself as an actor in the global aid system.

Western actors keep people dependent on their products as much as possible, which result in the creation of a market in underdeveloped countries. They want to maintain and protect those new markets by discouraging entrepreneurship and industrialization in underdeveloped countries. They are worried that if the global aid system was changed in a way that allowed local economies in underdeveloped countries to flourish, their security in and power over the market would diminish. That is why Western actors continue to seem charitable because they want to hold onto market security and power in the global aid system.

Inspired by the documentary Poverty, Inc.