What Should We Do for the Poor?
Focusing on different perspectives, Charles Kenny’s “Haiti Doesn’t Need Your Old T-Shirt” and Tate Watkins’s “How Oliberte, the Anti-TOMS, Makes Shoes and Jobs in Africa” both discuss the ways to help the poor. Kenny pays attention to the way of donation while Watkins cares about the enterprises’ behaviors toward the poor. By comparing these two essays, we can come up with a better solution for helping the poor---giving loans. Giving loans to the companies in poor countries can boom indigenous economy, making up the shortcomings of other solutions.
Kenny’s essay “Haiti Doesn’t Need Your Old T-Shirt” mainly talks about a common global phenomenon: Donations. To be specific, the author provides example of Super Bowl XLV. NFL produces both teams’ T-shirts before the Finals and “donates the losing team’s shirt to the charity World Vision”. (Kenny, 8) Using a rhetorical question “Everyone wins,
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right?” , Kenny meets what people may normally think that donating free goods from people who don’t want to people who are in need is perfectly fine. However, Kenny expresses his unexpected point of view toward this kind of behavior in the next paragraph. Starting with “what they need is rarely the stuff we don’t want”, the author suggests that shipping the donation stuff is expensive and they can hurt the local economy because they diminish the local shirts’ proportion and decline the apparel industry employment. (Kenny, 24) Then, Kenny turns his discussion into castoff food. Basically, his point is the same --- “Castoff food exports can hurt local economies” (Kenny, 37). After showing all these criticism, the author provides an alternative solution: donating cash. In this way, price of the shirts or food can be cheaper and delivery can be faster. Moreover, the developing countries can grow their own economy without any intervention. In short, Kenny wants to show to the readers that donating things will not help the poor, unless there is a local shortage of goods. Watkins’ essay “How Oliberte, the Anti-TOMS, Makes Shoes and Jobs in Africa” introduces two companies which are helping the poor through different ways.
Oliberte is a footwear company that “makes premium shoes in Africa using African materials”. (4) Dehtiar, the founder of Oliberte, founds the company because his “African friends kept telling him they were tired of charity---what the continent needed was jobs”. (61) Therefore, Oliberte establishes the company, hires only Africans, and uses raw materials in Africa. After introducing Oliberte, Watkins turns his focus into TOMS, “a footwear brand with a humanitarian bent”. (32) They also have their own way to help the people in poverty. They give out free shoes when they sell shoes. Then, the author starts to use other people’s opinions toward these two companies without giving out his own position. The opinions presented in the essay are mainly partial to Oliberte. “Donations can pressure local shoemakers and vendors”. (41) Moreover, Oliberte focuses on quality which is an advantage for
them. From the information in these two passages, we can see the strong debate about how to help the poor people. I think the way that TOMS is doing in the second essay can be classified as the donation of goods in the first piece. Basically, TOMS is giving out free shoes to the poverty-stricken areas. Kenny makes a point in the essay that donation of goods, like shirts, can hurt the local economy because people are getting free shirts which allow them not to buy new clothes. The fabric industry is under threat and people may lose their jobs. The same comment appears in Watkins’ essay. TOMS is “competing with local producers by handing out free goods and for being ‘quintessential Whites in Shining Armor’”. (Watkins, 46) Although with good intentions, the donation of free shirts is harmful for the economy. Kenny’s solution for this problem is to donate money to the developing countries, because people die from the lack of money for buying food instead of the lack of food. Also, when people get the aid, they can buy clothes and food on their own land, booming their own economy and improving their life standard. What’s more, at the last paragraph of the first essay, Kenny states a study which concludes that people who buy cause-related products may donate less because they feel they’ve already done their part”. (Kenny, 72) TOMS’s shoes are example of the cause-related products and people tend to donate less after they buy the shoes. Therefore, donating money seems better than donating free goods. However, when people think about money in the developing countries, corruption is an inevitable problem that needs to solve, so there need to be some better way. In Watkins’ essay, Oliberte’s way of operating can actually help the poor and the economy without worrying about the corruption. A brand new business that produces job spaces and uses domestic raw materials for local selling and export has “far more impact than aid”. (Watkins, 49) There need to be more companies like Oliberte, because one company is not going to change a lot. In the essay, Dehtiar said that, “it needs people to start shaking hands and companies to start making deals to work in these countries”. In order to have more companies working in these developing countries, money is a prerequisite for the companies to start. Instead of giving aids to these companies, loans are better choice. Loans are different from aids and they can motivate countries to end the dependencies gradually, because the countries need to pay more money back to the lender. Loans can eliminate the problem of corruption, because the lender will not give more loans if the countries can’t pay back. Comparing to loans, donation of money is not a good idea. By ensuring the usefulness of money, loans decrease the possibility of corruption. Furthermore, the money is supposed to be used in companies like Oliberte rather than TOMS. In this way, the developing countries can enhance their local economy with incentive for independent. This is what everyone wants to see, right?
In his essay, “How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended up on Yusuf Mama’s Back”, George Packer points out an issue that has often been ignored in the society. People leave their used clothes outside the Salvation Army or church, but they do not know where the clothes will go eventually. George Packer did a lot of interviews and investigation into the used clothes trade. Based on this report, many cutural and gender issues have been raised. George Parker uses convincing data as well, since he followed closely the trail of one T-shirt to its final owner in Uganda.
In the article, “Haiti doesn’t need your old T-shirts,” Charles Kenny explains why donating old clothes or food to countries in need doesn’t help those countries, but rather hurts their own economy. Charles Kenny is a developmental economist and has written a plethora of journal and magazine articles, books, and blog posts. Kenny is able to inform and influence his audience by including examples of the problem, people of authority, and a solution to the problem he writes about in his article.
Charles Johnson, in his philosophical fable “Exchange Value” traces the cause of social inequality by illustrating two African American brothers, Cooter and Loftis’ fateful tragedy. Influenced by James Coleman, Jonathan Little, and Asraf Rushdy’s previous work, Linda Ferguson Selzer draws Karl Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism in her analysis of Johnson’s short story. In “Charles Johnson’s ‘Exchange Value’: Signifying on Marx” (2001), Selzer explains that under capitalism, the society praises the “exchange value” of an object over its “use value”, thus compelling one to prioritize his pursuit of objects at the expense of freedom, morality, or even life (Marx 126). Likewise, in Lauren Berlant’s “Cruel Optimism”, the brothers become excessively obsessed with the “promises” of wealth, so that instead of spending the money for the betterment of life, they “hoard against death” (Berlant 41).
These governments usually neglect to treat the poorest and continuously oppress them yet these corporations and governments still make deals and sales with these corrupt governments. (Singer, 2006) For Instance corporations run their operations in developing countries. Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century English philosopher, argued that all people act in their own interests, however he would give alms to the poor because providing people with some relief from misery would give Hobbes comfort. (Singer,2006) I would personally give alms to the poor because no human being should live on street it is truly sorrowful and
The slave trade, yet horrific in it’s inhumanity, became an important aspect of the world’s economy during the eighteenth century. During a time when thousands of Africans were being traded for currency, Olaudah Equiano became one of countless children kidnapped and sold on the black market as a slave. Slavery existed centuries before the birth of Equiano (1745), but strengthened drastically due to an increasing demand for labor in the developing western hemisphere, especially in the Caribbean and Carolinas. Through illogical justification, slave trading became a powerful facet of commerce, regardless of its deliberate mistreatment of human beings by other human beings. Olaudah Equiano was able to overcome this intense adversity and actually accumulate wealth by making the best of certain situations he faced throughout his experiences. Even though he was a victim of the slave trade, he willfully took advantage of the opportunity to see the world and to become a productive individual.
People are often deceived by some famous brands, which they will buy as useless commodities to feel they are distinctive. People require brands to experience the feeling of being special. People spend their money to have something from famous brands, like a bag from Coach or Louis Vuitton which they think they need, yet all that is just people’s wants. Steve McKevitt claims that people give more thought on features or brands when they need to buy a product, “It might even be the case that you do need a phone to carry out your work and a car to get around in, but what brand it is and, to a large extent, what features it has are really just want” (McKevitt, 145), which that means people care about brands more than their needs. Having shoes from Louis Vuitton or shoes that cost $30 it is designed for the same use.
"Opinion | Your TOMS Shoes Won't save the World." The Miami Student. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.
Additionally, the leaders of America hold the view that Africa does not qualify for America’s national strategic interests. Consequently, the aspect of the debt repayment problem in most African countries confirms the schemes of the US in Africa. Herbert says, “…these are mostly illegitimate foreign debts, contracted during the Cold War by unrepresentative governments from Western creditors that sought to buy geopolitical loyalties, not to finance development in countries previously set back by Western colonialism…” (Herbert 63). The concern of prejudice across Blacks is real.
In The Looting Machine by Tom Burgis, the author discusses corruption and the effects of corruption on Africans living under the resource curse, or Dutch disease. He also talks about a system responsible for the looting of Africa’s natural resources to benefit individuals and companies from Chinese, French, American, Brazilian, British, Israeli, and African elites. Burgis suffered from PTSD, which stemmed from the aftermath of the Jos massacre and other events he experienced in Africa. To cope with his PTSD, Burgis wrote down what he saw during his research, experiencing tremendous guilt in the process. Instead of his initial reasoning that the Jos massacre occurred due to “ethnic rivalries”, he started to see the real reason and how the massacre
In the face of media campaigns and political sanctions, the question about whether we owe the global poor assistance and rectification is an appropriate one. Despite television advertisements displaying the condition of the poor and news articles explaining it, the reality is the majority of us, especially in the Western world, are far removed from the poverty that still affects a lot of lives. The debate between Thomas Pogge and Mathias Risse regarding our obligation to the poor questions the very institution we live in. Pogge created a new framework in which the debate developed. He introduced a focus on the design of the institutional global order, and the role it plays in inflicting or at least continuing the severe poverty people are exposed to. Whilst both Mathias Risse and Thomas Pogge believe that the “global order is imperfectly developed. It needs reform rather than revolutionary overthrow”, they differ on whether or not it is just and entitles the global poor to assistance. Pogge believes that the global order is unjust as it “helps to perpetuate extreme poverty, violating our negative duty not to harm others unduly”. Risse believes that the institution is only incompletely just and can be credited to improving lives of the global poor. According to him, these improvements contribute to its justifiability and negate any further obligation we have to the poor. Through assessing their debate, it seems that one’s obligation to the poor depends on one’s conception of duty, their unit of analysis, and whether improvement rectifies injustice. On balance, it seems that we do indeed owe the poor, only we may lack the means to settle it.
... aid across the world. As we have established that we do have an obligation to redistribute globally in a cosmopolitan perspective, distributing wealth however we may need to rethink what the best assistance is. Amaryta Sen conveys that before sending aid to the third world state, we would need to fully understand the limitation of freedom in the country. Redistributing wealth to global countries requires it to be evaluated by the economic shortage that they are suffering and to see whether it will be efficient in the long run. The more effective ways to contribute would be to international relief agencies or NGO’s that would pursue international development projects to help those in poverty or the alternative option by Tom Campbell’s idea of a ‘Global humanitarian levy’ which suggests a more appropriate taxation on all citizens to collectively aid those in need.
Meyers, Chris. "Wrongful Beneficence: Exploitation and Third World Sweatshops." Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. 35, no. 3, Fall2004, pp. 319-333. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9833.2004.00235.x.
Philosophy Public Affairs 32, no. 2 (1995). 4 (2004): 357-383. Singer, Peter; Miller, Richard "“What Duties Do People in Rich Countries Have to Relieve World Poverty”."
In conclusion, the book was mostly about the struggle of the Senegal people and how they were being treated unfairly by the railroad companies. People have gone through series of unfortunate events to get to the freedom necessary for life. In this book the people’s need for change conflicted with the management’s desire for unequal rights to continue. Greed had led them to think like this, but the people prevail against all odd so they find independence from oppression.
“…increasing international trade and financial flows since the Second World War have fostered sustained economic growth over the long term in the world’s high-income states. Some with idle incomes have prospered as well, but low-income economies generally have not made significant gains. The growing world economy has not produced balanced, healthy economic growth in the poorer states. Instead, the cycle of underdevelopment more aptly describes their plight. In the context of weak economies, the negative effects of international trade and foreign investments have been devastating. Issues of trade and currency values preoccupy the economic policies of states with low-income economies even more than those with high incomes because the downturns are far more debilitating.1”