As you may have gleaned from previous posts, I am a big Peter Sellers fan. This began, unsurprisingly, with an appreciation for the Pink Panther films (which wilipedia tells us are named after the MacGuffin of the first film; cool term btw), especially A Shot in the Dark. I have previously referenced Being There (incidentally, the first DVD I ever purchased) as the origin of my broad use of garden metaphors. Others more famous and well written than I have frequently talked about Dr. Strangelove, especially in reference to the game theory of MAD (a hidden or unstated threat has no utility in strategic bargaining). Today, I'm most interested in The Mouse that Roared, a story about a small country dependant on a single export (Pinot Grand Fenwick) that gets displaced by a cheaper alternative (Pinot Grand Enwick, made in California) and facing the collapse of its markets, declares war on the United States in the hope of being defeated and gaining Marshal Plan style economic assistance. It ends up winning the war by capturing the Q bomb, a WMD, in its invasion of the US. Does any of this sound familiar? It's certainly not like there are any little countries whose economies get overpowered by the big powers or that turn to threatening the US or acquiring WMD to get international attention. The end of the movie results in a coalition of the "small countries of the world" continuing control of the Q Bomb to assure world peace. This sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
But I'm particularly interested in the way the collapse of a traditional industry causes panic in the small country. The specific hilarity of The Mouse that Roared aside, it is surprisingly accurate in its depiction of the responses to economic collapse. Most countries (or regions, or individuals) hurt by the market tend to turn either to government support or to extermism as solutions to their situations. Grand Fenwick effectively turns to both, choosing to attack the US and ultimately steal a WMD in order to get attention and economic assistance. There are clear problems with both of these tactics, extremism destabalizes and causes further economic, social and political problems. Economic assistance often leads to dependence and further collapse of local industry. Welfare, for example, was created as a temporary support for people going through difficult times and unable to find work. For many people, it has turned into a lifestyle, incidentally a lifestyle frequently associated with violence and crime. Idealy, there should be some way to rectify economic collapse without creating the conditions of dependence or further destabalization.
I feel somewhat conflicted about philanthropy, much as I do about welfare and perhaps more so. Welfare is founded on the belief that there should be a social safety net that provides for people who are unable to provide for themselves. I firmly believe in this type of safety net and the it is the government's job to provide one, even if I am somewhat conflicted about the conditions that welfare generates (would these conditions be better off without welfare, almost certainly not, could they be better if welfare worked differently, maybe). But philanthropy bothers me on another level as well. I don't like the idea that it is the job of the rich to provide directly for the less fortunate in large part because it justfies the wealth of the very rich. The standard type of gala-fundraising nonsense feels awfully patronizing; philanthropy tends to target sexy issues rather than particularly needy ones; so much effort is put into fundraising and so comparatively little into action; these are all issues that further concern me. I would prefer to live in a world, or at least a country, where the government provided for nessecities (and niceities, like music and art), and where the class of super-wealthy did not exist. I am increasingly realizing that this is not the case and that the private sector must provide. I am far from the only one who doesn't like the traditional means of giving, however.
As detailed in an extensive section in the New York Times recently, new types of philanthropy are arising to fill the needs of a failing system. Cheif among these are philanthropic entrepreneurship, whereby development ideas are treated like business startups. Groups of the new superwealthy, including the leaders of Virgin, Google, Ebay and other new-market types have been funding ideas that can return profits or at least provide for their own operating expenses. While this at first seems somewhat ethically questionable (especially the potential to make a type of investment tax-break), it makes a great deal of sense. Microfinance has proven itself capable of giving returns on investment that can then be put back into further microloans. These big players have also invested in things like drip irrigation systems that should provide a return but also make a substantial difference in some localities. Other investments, like in renuable energy, have the potential to create newly profitable market segments, but do so in a progressive areas. Still other of these measures have ways to generate revenue for their operating costs to break the fundraising cycle.
For those of us who are not rich enough to privately fund major investments in these types of projects, there are other smaller ways that people are getting involved. I am kinda scheptical about charity-oriented products, but everyone else seems to be really into that. While I like the idea of spending concienciously, this type of effort is still just a new means of fundraising for traditional campaigns. Paying for a new hospital wing is one thing, a kind of one-time major expense; certain other types of giving qualify in similar ways, especially natural disasters like Katrina or the Asian Tsunami of a few years back. But the majority of charitable needs are ongoing, whether they involve food kitchens, job training, famine relief, AIDS research or what have you, locking you into a cycle of fundraising. I am quite doubtful about claims that these types of product sales will do much to relieve this; most of these products are going to be seasonal or faddish type of promotions that will simply be replaced by the next hot charity when the next major retail season rolls around. Their bigger contribution seems to be to rehabilitating the tarnished images of major corporations.
That's not to say that shopping can't be a political experiance, that it can't help build community and social networks and such. I have recently been getting into the idea of buying local products, or at least supporting local businesses to the greatest extent possible. This would seem to create a real trickle-down effect, with local businesspeople more likely to spend their profits locally and support other local businesses. In fact, I'm increasingly convinced that the flaw in supply-side economics is primarily in terms of scale. Increasing savings is a good way of increasing investment. The problem is that national (and international) banks mean that your savings is more likely to be used for investment outside of your locality (maybe outside of your country), when what is really desirable is that your savings become loans for local businesses. This book makes the argument that local currency is a good way of keeping local gains local and spurring local investment (local local). That strikes me as a bit hokey, hard to set up and to keep running. However, the idea of putting money in local banks seems like a cool one.
There are also mutual funds set up for ethical investing (by avoiding war-profiteering companies, oil companies, companies that test on animals or whatever your pet issue might be; also ones that focus on investing in alternative energy, green agriculture, healthy food and in the community). The problem is that these funds don't always do as well as most traditional ones; perhaps the way to look at it is that you are forgoing some level of profits in liu of making profits and giving some of them to charity. It certainly seems more productive than investing in companies that create negative effects and then spending charity money to help reduce those effects.
Basically, I'm becoming more open to some of these different ideas for investing in social development as ways to improve things independant of government. Some ideas, like drip irrigation and microfinance, seem capable of taking off on their own. In other cases, government regulation or lack of regulation stands in the way. France has recently decided to tax imports from countries not in keeping with the Kyoto Pact to help level the playing field, and honestly, protectionism may be benificial for many local industries. And, as I've talked about before, in many cases, standards that make sense for international distribution are prohibitive for local producers in local markets.
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