Sorry--for some reason it's not letting me comment underneath Kristy's post...
I agree with Jesse on dependency theory. Although it does a good job of trying to answer the difficult question of why these countries have such a difficult time developing...it doesn't really seem to work on a large scale considering the East Asian Tigers, just as Jesse said. Perhaps individual MNC's have personal motives for keeping certain areas down..but I think as a whole, the global community is trying to bring these countries up to speed.
I know we touched on the whole "strings attached" thing last week during the discussion. I meant to make a post about it after class--but I'll just put my thoughts here. The conversation started to sound a lot like sunday school class. Should they have the right to make their own decisions, even though they may make bad decisions? I agree with Carly in the sense that they should receive basic education. However, I think that past that, we need to give them the freedom to make good and bad decisions, and to experience the consequence, whether good or bad.
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Lia, I am glad you brought up the "strings attached" issue again. I hope I have not misunderstood your comment, but it made me think that we do need to allow free choice because this can empower people and many times others can make better decisions than we can. However, you mentioned that part of that freedom insists that they pay the consequences for their choices. So, if they are making bad decisions and abusing the opportunities given to them, do we not have the right and the responsibility to enforce a consequence and stipulations on the help we are giving?
ReplyDeleteObviously this is a tricky thing because this means we are the ones that decide what is good and bad. But to a certain point (and I'm not sure what point it should be) we do need to be able to ensure the help we give is not abused. If we are too hands off it will be just like giving a handout that does no good.
Interesting comment Bill. I've thought the same thing about the U.S. government trying to set salary caps for executives at banks that have received bail-out money. Normally I am extremely opposed to the gov trying to cap anything. However, if the bank has taken a loan from a creditor (in this case the government), the creditor should be able to dictate how that loan is used. If that means the executive can't get his/her bonus then so be it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult example because I don't think the gov had the right to make the loan in the first place, but that's a different story....
This ‘strings attached’ discussion got me thinking. I agree with giving people the freedom to make their own decisions and having them face the consequence whether good or bad. But I also am not so sure on us being the ones to determine and carry out the consequences. I feel that by allowing us to determine if their choices are good or bad and in turn carrying out the consequence we are ultimately taking away the freedom of choice that we gave them in the first place. Is it our place to decide which choices are good and which choices are bad?
ReplyDeleteThis brings in the topic of westernization. The rich western countries see the poor underdeveloped countries and feel like they are obligated to ‘fix’ them. This happens all over the world and not just in Africa. The west think that since they have the power and money they obviously know what is best for these struggling countries. When in reality, is our way really the best way for these countries? Who’s to say that our right way of doing things is necessarily the right way of doing things for them?
This is a really tough topic. I do think that we should have some say in what is done with the aid that we give these countries, but is there a way we can do this without taking away their freedom to make their own decisions? Is there a way we can do it without forcing our ways on them?