Last night after cooking up a community meal for my housemates, I found myself enjoying a lively wine-stoked discussion on something I never would have thought I'd be interested in a year ago: international finance. Several of my housemates have a very sophisticated understanding of the details of debt relief because their volunteer organization, Jubilee, strives to promote it as a way to help countries with troubled economies to free themselves of the legacies of colonialism and corruption. Yes, that points to Africa. But recently, another housemate took on a project on sub-prime housing loans where she had to build her own understanding of how financing works in the US from the ground up because she doesn't have any background knowledge on the topic. Among a diverse set of obliquely related ideas that included Swiss citizenship required for Red Cross disaster relief abroad and the vacuum filled by drug lords in South America, I'm left with the following impressions. I'm not sure how to reconcile these ideas, so any comments would be quite welcome.
Loan vultures who buy up the debts of struggling countries and then use their deep pockets to sue those countries - thereby decimating the ability of the government to provide for basic needs like health care and agriculture (seed programs good - but sterile corn bad) - are, to me, pure evil. I can't imagine anyone who does that by day being able to go home and sleep at night.
The idea that countries with able, well-functioning economies should expect any kind of interest on loans they give to countries with corrupt leaders and crude infrastructure -- indeed, that they should expect to be paid back at all -- seems ludicrous. It also pairs perfectly with the way sub-prime borrowers are treated in the US. The process seems to go like this: I'll lend you money, knowing that you need it because you live paycheck to paycheck, but I also know absolutely that you will not be able to pay me back later because you'll still need money then too. And I'll call my charity act a payday loan, charging up to 400% interest. Yes, 400 - that's not a typo. And I'll do this because otherwise, who would provide money to these people in need? And why should I help if I don't get something for it? Another example of pure evil.
If I do go with this idea that "loans are bad" what are the options for helping someone? Paul Theroux's "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown" is riddled with charity program failures. According to him, struggling people -- Africans, in the book -- didn't need money, because they'd burned through buckets of it. What they needed was for Africans to make a change, because only then would it stick. So what can a person with a good conscience do in a situation where the "other" is destitute and pathetic? The one resource many of us (casual donors included), are always tight-fisted with is time - is there a way to give it that will not be just another arrogant charade, like that of the colonial missionaries who wanted to civilize the "sauvages" and make them repent?
One tenet of Design for the Other 90% is that priveleged engineers should provide their tools and designs to those in need, be it food storage, an irrigation system, or simple preventative health care, only at cost so that the users will more fully value it. This idea seems similar to the operation of a nonprofit, with the same problem too: charges for service should cover costs to product the product (materials and construction in the case of tools, transportation and office costs in the case of, say, a campaign organizer), but how much extra is built into the charge to cover salaries? Where is the line between a martyr and a vulture, and how do you walk it?
My conclusion at present: they are all lines in the sand, but they fall in an absolute range. I can't subscribe to a relative system of morals, if only because of instinct. I have to wonder how the lens of various faiths might alter any of these conclusions - and the line one can draw.
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