CMV: Sending food and medicine to starving people in Africa is a bad thing

You list a lot of requirements to help people in Africa. Much of this is unnecessary.

A better way to help people in Africa would be to give only to charities that are highly rated by Givewell.org. This group rates charities according to how effective they are at doing their mission. They found that, sadly, that even most honest charities are largely ineffective at what they are trying to do. This is largely because of a mismatch between the kinds of projects that bring in the most donations versus the kind of projects that actually help people the most.

Now to address your specific points:

> -Teach the local people how to survive on their own. Give them the tools and the means. This will be a large investment of resources at first (like drilling equipment for wells and filtration for fresh water,

The last thing these people need is for outsiders to come in and think they know how to live and farm there. There are many failed projects trying to do just what you propose. Clean water projects (see the Playpump project for example) in particular are rife with failure, as outsiders do not understand local conditions. Furthermore, poor peoples correctly see clean water projects as bad for them. The poor of Bolivia waged an entire war to prevent clean water projects from being imposed on them (see the movie Even the Rain).

> To enforce property rights, they need honest courts, politicians, and cops. Getting rid of the entrenched corruption is the biggest obstacle, in my opinion.

It is possible to help poor peoples without reforming their government. Getting rid of corruption would be of course a good thing, but is by no means necessary in order to help poor fourth world peoples.

> They should be told as follows "Either you learn to farm and make food for yourselves, or you will die when this aid is cut off. It will be cut off soon.

That is incredibly paternalistic. Poor peoples of course know farming is necessary, and they know how to farm in their particular climate, something outsiders often do not know. There is no need to tell peoples what they already know better than outsiders.

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