Support the ONE Campaign!
JMR on Scriptorium Daily the other day posted an open letter to his daughter, Jane, responding to her first blog. While I often enjoy his posts on homeschooling his children, this post was rather dismaying to me. JMR uses the ONE campaign in comparison to a church collection for the poor as an example of how one should not confuse like-sounding ideas (‘let’s feed the poor as a church’ and ‘let’s feed the poor as a nation’). Apparently there is some rumbling going on at Biola about supporting the campaign, which it appears by his comments on the post that JMR is not keen to do.
After listening to Jeffrey Sachs' BBC Reith Lectures on development (and reading the Jubilee Manifesto, and going to the Acton Institute several years ago...) I wanted to pick him up on a few things about the ONE Campaign that he mentioned, but I ended up writing a 6-page open letter! It was a bit out of proportion to his original post, but I got excited...and, well...it just happened. If you're interested in reading my arguments in favor of lending vocal support to the campaign, click through and have a read - they cover (briefly) such things as certainty and moral action, subsidiarity, corruption, international promises, Christian thought on international development, the different claims of the local and the global, etc., with loads of links to follow up on. I'll post my rousing conclusion as a teaser:
Yes, more and better aid, and let’s be optimistic about alleviating some forms of suffering, but let’s not fool ourselves that better material conditions alone can somehow create human flourishing.At the end of the day, the ONE Campaign is not a cure-all for extreme poverty nor should it be an encouragement to ‘leave it to the government/UN’. We can support the campaign in a way that emphasizes that public sector solutions on their own are also inadequate and that the only way to reach goals such as the Millennium Development Goals is with a combination of and a conversation between public and private, local and global. The Acton Institute’s blog offers a riposte to Sachs and shouts out, “don’t wait for the government!”—a sentiment I whole-heartedly affirm. The ONE Campaign isn’t the only way to act, and it is not an excuse to do nothing else as individuals, as churches, as universities, as members of World Vision, Tearfund, Compassion International, and so forth. Let’s not wait for the government to uphold its promises and its responsibilities as a government, let’s do more starting now!
But at the same time, we can support the ONE Campaign as a way to keep extreme poverty not just on the political agenda, but on the agenda of public discourse as a whole, providing impetus not just for concerted political action, but for inspired personal action by ourselves, our businessmen, our students, our retirees, our empty-nesters, anyone with time and resources to give in love. This is the vision that I urge you to consider and to write in response to.
Any comments or rebuttals, go ahead and post to here :) As you may have noticed, I'd definitely be interested in them...
3 comments:
Having grown up in a family where so many publicly funded, popular movements, regardless of how virtuous they really were, were debunked as worldly and masquerading Satanic ploys. The people who wanted to save the dolphins were actually wrong because they didn't care to save all the aborted babies. The same sentiment led me to believe torn jeans were rebellions signs of anti-Christian behavior, as were burkinstocks (go figure) and Doc Martins. I remember hearing how the "Tree-huggers" for we never dignified them as environmentalists, cared more for plants than saving souls. As I've grown I'm hugely relieved to see that many popular movements are popular because they resonate with a deep-seated need all find in the world. It's broken, it needs work.
And yes, ladybug (for I assume this is what I must call you here) is right, all sectors can be part of Christ's hands in the mending.
I haven't read the six-page tome. (I'm supposed to be writing a tome myself.) But FWIW, one possible criticism of your conclusion is this. I take it that what you're suggesting is that we can support both government and private initiatives to root out poverty. But although this seems like it would double the efforts to do good, I think that in practice doing what you suggest is not feasible because supporting the government's initiative in this matter will detract from private initiative. And that in two ways.
(1) JMR alluded to the fact that if the government adopts the plan of the ONE campaign, it will immediately create a huge bureaucracy. This tends to increase taxes, which takes money away from the private sector. So increasing government support will decrease the ability of the private sector to help. I'm not suggesting that the government's adoption of the ONE campaign would bankrupt the relevant portions of the private sector, but at least the broken-window principle comes into play.
(2) An important cause of poverty is often corruption at the government level, especially in, say, poverty-stricken African nations. This will not be corrected easily by either public- or private-sector initiatives. But I think the private sector has a better shot since (i) it is more flexible and (ii) it relies on a basic level of trust and honesty, which can best be developed when governments see it's in their best interest economically to be trustworthy and honest.
Of course, these are both armchair speculations, and you will rightly ask for some evidence that (1) and (2) are true. I can give no specific numbers, though it seems to me that in support of (1) is the consideration that in the last fifty years (at least) the US government has not had a good track record of efficiently running itself. And in support of (2) it seems clear that unless corruption is dealt with, contributions from the ONE campaign will be like throwing good money after bad. As I suggested above, I think the private sector has a better shot at taking the lead in defeating that.
Thanks as always Burglar, and good luck with your tome. The question you raise is important: will supporting public initiative detract from private?
Of course in responding, I too am comfy in my armchair, but here's my two cents (and do see my tome):
(1) That bureaucracy would not be created because it already exists, as we already have a budget allocation for foreign aid. What the ONE Campaign proposes is to increase the share of that allocation of the whole; in other words, not to raise taxes per se, but to shift financial priorities within the existing system. It seems that would certainly increase the staff required to disburse the funds, but I'm not sure it would be 'huge'. In general, I don't see the economy as a zero-sum game, and as a result, I don't think that it's necessarily the case that gov't support subtracts from private sector support, especially if one is smart about what the gov't chooses to support, e.g. instead of taking over private initiative, supplying what private and local initiative struggles to provide. In other words, gov't initiative ought NOT to co-opt the private (because it will do it badly), but to supplement it.
(2) For this, please see my tome, where I question the heft of the 'corruption' objection. But I will say here that I agree that local solutions to corruption involving local accountability and trust seem likely to be more successful. At the same time, locals can only talk to locals, whereas governments exert influence on governments. I don't see why the one should preclude the other when they seem to be quite different things. Even ancient Israel didn't rely only on local initiative to address national and international problems with poverty (e.g. the Jubilee laws as a national initiative to guard against entrenched poverty - click through the "Divine Economy" link on the original post).
Finally, a note on efficiency. Why should 'efficiency' be the most important measure in what we do with our money to aid the poor? Why not relational measures, moral measures, theological measures? This is not to say efficiency is bad or unimportant, only that it is not the most important thing to consider (and, moreover, it is a concept often held captive to the dehumanizing, mechanistic rhetoric of the industrial revolution, as opposed to stewardship, which has a more creaturely outlook). I am ok with a lot of 'waste' if (1) it gets the job done (2)in the proper way(humanly, relationally, not materialisticly, etc.).
In other news, here is an interesting article reflecting on Pope Benedict's recent trip to Brazil and a media flurry about his 'condemning capitalism'. Father Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute shows how the flurry gets Benedict wrong and provides a salutary reminder that neither the materialist ethos of socialism, nor social justice, can save the poor. http://www.acton.org/press/pdf/2007-05-18_Sirico_1.pdf)
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