A foreign aid discussion, perhaps?

[Insectoid]

First off, a little backstory. I don't know if every school has this or just mine, so I'll explain. I live in my school's residence. Lakehead's rez is split into 'houses' (just like in Harry Potter) of 20-60 students each (your house = the floor/wing you live in). Part of the residence fee goes to 'house funds', which is spent by the house, on what the house wants. The students are supposed to vote on what they want to spend the money on (for example, bowling, movies, a router for the lounge, etc) and this money is not supposed to be spent on anything that isn't approved by the house.

I heard through the grapevine that this year, the RAs (residence assistants, for you high school folk) are supposed to go around the house asking students for a $2 donation for something, and for every student that does NOT donate, $20 is taken out of house funds for the donation. I highly, highly doubt this is true (I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who has motives for making the RA/rez look bad, AND $20/student is what goes into house funds in the first place so it'd be impossible to enforce this because there simply isn't enough money). However, it got me thinking about the idea of 'forced donations' which somehow lead to thinking about federal foreign aid policy.

I'm no expert, but as I understand it, Canada's foreign aid program is funded by tax dollars. The way I see it, tax dollars should NOT be used in foreign aid 'donations' because it's no donation at all. The Canadian citizens had no choice; they had to pay taxes. It's an easy decision for politicians though; "I want to help starving nigerians by sending them the money I took from you". They aren't actually doing a good deed because they aren't sacrificing anything. They're just doing it to look good in they eyes of people who don't realize he isn't actually doing anything. So, if we as citizens had no choice, and the politicians are doing nothing except looking good doing it, who's doing the good deed here? This isn't a donation! It's political leverage! Tax money should, in my opinion, ONLY be spent on improving Canadian quality of life.

This is not to say I'm completely against charitable donations. The current system is just a mockery of it. I propose a donation-based foreign aid policy, where people can opt to automatically have part of their paycheck donated to a national foreign aid fund which the government then spends on , you guessed it, foreign aid. In this way, Canada's contributions are a true reflection of the Canadian mindset. Aid spending would likely reduce dramatically, but then at least every dollar has some meaning.

I guess I want the freedom to say "I do not care about those people. Do not spend my money on them", but at the same time I want the structure to be there for the people that DO care about those people and DO want to spend money on them. Independent charitable organizations are well and good but a government-run fund has more access to equipment essential to successful foreign aid as well as providing a centralized spot for the whole country to send their money to.

This might be a controversial topic, which usually leads to excellent discussion, so...let the discussion begin I guess.

[SmokeMonster]

This post is based on the faulty assumption that the public somehow has a right to micromanage every dollar spent by the government. That is not the case, we elect a set of people who ideally represent the views of the people who elected them to a large extent. That means giving these people the key to the bank and hope that the decisions they make are reasonable. If some of the financial decisions made by these people are particularly egregious, the public always has the right to not vote for them in future. The fact is that the government spends almost a negligible amount of money on foreign aid. In the grand scheme of things it is barely even a drop in the bucket. If the people were allowed to have the veto power over every single place their tax dollars went the entire system would grind to a halt. Bob is a religious fanatic, Bob thinks organ transplants are immoral, against god's will and he believes that when people are about to die they should just go ahead and die instead of getting medical attention and violating god's plan. Bob does not wish to endorse the heresy that's happening in hospitals and does not want his tax dollars to go to people who want transplants. When living in Canada, on a macro level you are automatically part of the greater unit that is Canada, you can't just take your ball and go away. And as always if the policy is particularly egrigious with a large swath of population disagreeing with it, they can vote and the offending policy will be automatically be phased out by the system.

[Insectoid]

Yes, you're a part of the greater unit that is Canada. Africa isn't. When I pay taxes, I expect those taxes to be spent on making Canada better. That's why taxes exist. We build Canadian roads with Canadian taxes. If you want to send food across the pond, it should be voluntary.

Taxes spent on organ transplants are taxes spent on Canadian people. Maybe Bob doesn't agree, but when Bob needs a leg amputated, he'll be glad organ donation patients paid their taxes too.

Now, if we were doing organ transplants for non-citizens, Bob has an argument. It is not our government's job to worry about another country's people. Sure, we look like jackasses if we don't help a guest (it's the polite thing to do), but otherwise it's not our problem.

Sure, foreign aid probably costs me no more than a few dollars a year. But 'tis the principle of the matter.

[DemonWasp]

Your argument (and the contrary argument) present slippery slopes. When should we stop, then -- do we want people to be able to choose whether or not they fund the police, or firefighters, or the school system? Perhaps we want people to be able to decide whether their income taxes support subsidies on oil -- I certainly wouldn't pay for it.

The only difference presented by "foreign aid" is the "foreign" part. The only distinction is between your Federal taxes funding education in Alberta or funding education in Sudan.

As citizens, you and I both live as individuals in a society that has substantial social support systems: taxes, leveraged higher against the fortunate and wealthy, help out the weak, disadvantaged, or otherwise poor segments of society. The advantage to the wealthy is indirect and non-obvious, but it's still there: every time my tax money pays for a proper education for an at-risk youth, the crime rate drops a little. Every time your taxes fund rehabilitation for a broke heroin abuser, heroin abuse drops a little and we have one more functional person in society.

The only difference here is that every time we fund education in Sudan, the warfare rate in the region goes down. That means fewer people turning to lives of violence as mercenaries, terrorists, or warlords. Every time we buy mosquito netting in Ethiopia, malaria rates fall and we have better control over the disease. Maybe sometimes there's no obvious benefit to helping out -- but you can bet that the people in Haiti remember that Canada helped.

To put the whole thing in perspective, of the Federal budget of ~ 275 B$, we spend 4.6 B$ on foreign aid -- about 1.7% of our Federal budget. (Source: http://www.fin.gc.ca/taxdollar/index-eng.asp )

In my experience, politicians have a really hard time "selling" foreign aid to the population. Yes, they like to look good when a disaster happens and we can say "Oh yes, we're helping". But the reality is that when there isn't a disaster going on, foreign aid is not a hot topic, and pressing for it hasn't ever done well (as far as I can tell).

A philosophically-unrelated, but realistically-related point is that a dollar in foreign aid tends to go a lot further than a dollar spent in Canada. For $3 in Canada you can get a slice of pizza; for $3 in aid to Niger, you can buy an immunization against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). For $366 in Canada you can get a decent smartphone; for $366 to Niger, you can buy a water-purifying pump to help halt the spread of cholera (https://supply.unicef.org/unicef_b2c/app/displayApp/(cpgsize=5&layout=7.0-12_1_66_68_115_2&uiarea=2&carea=4BE9720F1D9A74CEE10000009E710FC1&cpgnum=1)/.do?rf=y).

Just as no person in society lives or works in isolation, no country lives or works in isolation. The same kinds of social support networks that work between individuals within a country tend to work between individual nations in the world. Allowing people the chance to opt-out of foreign aid would be a disaster -- foreign aid would rapidly drop to 0 (causing widespread outbreaks of disease and famine in affected countries), and Canada's reputation would be irreparably tarnished.

The mistake in thinking, in my opinion, comes with the idea that the money you "earned" is yours. The fact is that without people working "lesser" jobs for lesser pay, that money wouldn't be ours. Without people in other countries willing to build things in slavish conditions, we wouldn't have the same purchasing power we do, even with the same amount of money -- a fairly-produced cup of coffee is more expensive, a shirt sewn by a paid adult is more expensive, and a computer not built out of materials recycled by orphans is more expensive. The only reason we have so much money in the first place is that we are standing on top of a pile of less-fortunate people, without whom we would be digging in the dirt to try to grow crops before winter comes. The least we could do is have a little compassion.

Consider it this way: as a citizen of Canada, you pay taxes to Canada's government, to help other Canadians (probably about a 15-20% rate). In turn, Canada pays a strictly voluntary tax to help other countries (1.7% rate).

[Raknarg]

Owned.

[Insectoid]

Ahah, thanks for pointing these things out Demonwasp. I didn't think of that. But this is why we discuss things rationally.

@Raknarg, get out of this thread. You aren't contributing. All you did was piss me off, which gets us nowhere.

[Tony]

Probably not as applicable to Canada, but there's a hilarious U.S. -> Israel -> U.S. "foreign aid" pump that keeps on moving money back and forth in a loop. U.S. contributes something to the tune of $3 billion per year[1], which goes right back to U.S. via weapons purchases[2]. Naturally some cut of transactions will end up in private pockets of... someone. 1% of $3 billion is a lot of percent.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_relations#United_States_aid
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Military_Financing

[DemonWasp]

@Insectoid: Thanks for reading -- that's rare on these here Internets. Philosophically, I agree that you have a point about freedom and individual rights, but the practical level is (as usual) a completely different issue. The point of view you originally posted is most closely related to Libertarianism (specifically, statist proprietarian libertarian) while I gave an overview of the motivations behind our existing (partial) socialist system (specifically, we are most similar to a Social Democracy).

@Raknarg: I didn't "own" Insectoid. We both made valid points. His points were more oriented to a political philosophy, mine were more oriented to a modern practical state. Neither of us is necessarily right or wrong. Like most things outside of math, there are valid arguments for both sides, and choosing one side over the other because one "owned" the other is hiding from complexity. It is conceivable that, had history played out (radically) differently, my arguments about social responsibility would be laughable compared to the straightforward freedom-based reasoning Insectoid originally wrote about.

@Tony: I probably should have guessed that something like that would exist, but it's a little depressing to hear how straightforward it is. In fairness to them, though, that's just a relatively short cycle in our insidiously-complex graph problem of a global economy. You could also argue that foreign aid to Sudan plays out something like this: Canadian taxpayer -> Cdn Federal Government -> (various charitable organizations) -> (corporate manufacturers, transporters, distributors) -> Canadian workforce. Notably, Sudan itself generally doesn't see any of the money first-hand.

[Raknarg]

Sorry, I'll restate my sentiments: I personally agree with DemonWasp rather than your seemingly selfish one. Of course, I can totally understand the idea behind the philosophy, as the world has always been based off of every man for himself, but I think it's time that view has changed.

I would consider this; every great civilization has been brought down to its knees by two things: selfish desire and (eventually, as it declines from a result of this) more powerful adversaries, either through warfare or by surpassing them. Consider the Roman empire, which had incredible power, but eventually fell to the barbarians from the strength falling from the inside (selfishness of the people; a civilation is only as powerful as the will of its citizens). There's also the Athenian Empire, which became ununified from disputes about government spending, and was taken over by the Spartans. The British Empire would have fallen more dramatically had it attempted to retain control of its colonies, but still admitted bankruptcy and receded back to its small island. Even America, which I think has undisputedly been the most successful empire of all, is on its decline due to the fact that the citizens demands within the nation are too much for the nation to deal with itself; we're collectively becoming too lazy.

I am of the opinion that if the entire world were to unify into one powerful, uncontested empire, the prosperity any one nation experiences from this would be accessible to every person in the world, and I think we would profit from it.

Of course, this is a rediculously huge picture to imagine or to think possible, but extending friedship to less able countries seems like a good first step to achieving this.

Then again, this is just all my speculation, I could just be totally wrong.

[Insectoid]

The idea of one powerful uncontested empire is nice in theory but as plausible as communism. Competition for the position of emperor would lead to people once again forging their own domains, or a global police state where nobody has any rights. Furthermore, people that live far apart have very different ideals so democracy would be pointless. I am of the opinion that a government's power should be inversely proportional to the size of its jurisdiction. The United States was founded under the 'vote with your feet' idea. If you don't like one state's laws, move to a different one. There's enough states that at least one probably has a lawset that you agree with. Unfortunately, the massive US federal government has almost completely removed that power from the citizens by making each state's laws essentially the same.