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Global work distribution
At the beginning there was the endogenous development of Europe which grew through the industrial age, the colonial age and the in-tensive exploitation of the world and nowadays there is global work distri-bution,
à whose roots have all grown in wealthy countries following the historical pattern we alluded
to ;
à this pattern obliges the
economically dominated countries to remain :
- providers of raw material and products of little
profit,
- consumers of manufactured products with big profits for
the industry and of food,
without competing with affluent countries.
All of this - which is the most important - takes place in an e5vironment where the division between economic power and political power is growing.
Economic power means money. Money is invested where there's maximum opportunity for it to multiply (the word is "fructify") as fast as possible. Money is unaccountable except to itself : nobody is responsible. And it is transnational : countries compete with each other to get the best over the others.
The political powers are governments. They are responsible and answerable to citizens. They have to give accounts to citizens either through the polls or when a revolution happens. But the political power is kept within the nation. It is never endowed with an authority beyond its own borders. Beyond the national border only international agreements can exist and those are precarious in their very existence since States are competing against each other and the agreements are most often the expression of antagonistic ideological power blocs.
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4.- THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF TRADITIONAL "AID"
Besides transferring our technology - which is detrimental, as mentioned before, the aid programs to alleviate food scarcity (in fact, often just used to get rid of surpluses in rich countries) are prejudicial to poorer countries.
4.1. from the psychological point of view
To help somebody without his giving anything back is harmful to his dignity,
4.2. from the economic point of view
- help is not an incentive and lessens efforts to produce on one's own; it may even be counteractive through dumping (e.g.: Europe giving milk to India competes with Indian milk) ;
- public aid often gets lost in the hands of middlemen or stolen by the States themselves and very little, reaches the farmers ;
- relationship established with the wealthy countries hinders regional cooperation : for e.g., in Africa, countries which were owned by France have more ties with France than with their neighbors.
4.3. from the political point of view
- aid changes the consuming habits of the population (e.g. millet, the traditional food of Senegal has been re-placed by wheat which that country cannot grow) ;
- aid stimulates nationalism which is a factor of division in the Third World ;
- 114 Nation-States in the Third World, if they are divided, cannot compete with the giants of economy.
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5.- HOW TO ADDRESS THE PR0BLEM
5.1. Help populations to take things into their own hands
This means helping the populations to build their development, giving them means so they can reach self-sufficiency, which is counteracting.
5.1.1. Nature's deficiencies :irrigation, protection of soils and forests, stream regulation, water tanks and reservoirs, reafforestation, ...
5.1.2. the choice of methods of cultivation : instead of ex-tracting with the resulting desertification - renewing the ground,
5.1.3. with turning back to the previous endogenous systems (agriculture, crafts, small industry) that maintain the productive capacity of the area.
5.1.4. retrieving good food growing soils with types of cultivation adequate :
à to the soil conditions of the region,
à to the true way of life of the population.
5.1.5. organizing exchange networks between partners of similar level of development so as to avoid :
à the bad effects of insulating an area only consuming its own production ;
à the dependency of an area (suffering from scarcity through some accident) upon others.
5.1.6. with organizing group or cooperative systems for stocking and distributing
5.1.7. favoring balanced growth in the population without physical violence or cultural aggression.
5.2. with thinking the nature of the relationship between the peoples of the globe over so as to :
5.2.1. multiply the possibilities of exchange that do away with dependency,
5.2.2. guarantee each people a free choice in its own type of development and culture.