So schools serving poor communities have rejected John Key’s offer to facilitate donations from business of breakfasts for hungry kids. I agree with Kerre Woodham:
Thank heavens there are charitable organisations, caring businesses, church groups and community leaders that are just getting on with distributing food and filling stomachs without pausing to argue over who’s to blame.
Labour leaders have denied that malnutrition is a problem among New Zealand’s poor, and the school principals have called free food “patronising.” So much for representing the working class, and supporting social justice.
This whole sorry episode clearly demonstrates the problem with social welfare, and the advantages of private generosity. We don’t need to abolish welfare, just privatize it completely. Politicising it leads to disaster.
The worst part about social welfare, and the best part about private generosity, is moral accountability for the recipient. People on benefits feel entitled to them, just because they breathe. The oxygen-thieves who fail to provide breakfast for their kids – when it could cost as little as ten cents – don’t deserve welfare. But children should not be punished for the moral failures of their parents, which seems to be what many of John Key’s opponents think. At least with private charity, it isn’t an entitlement, and minimum standards can be enforced. That’s why “Tory charity” is so much more effective than social welfare, which isn’t charitable or generous at all, because the givers expect nothing from the recipients, and aren’t even giving their own money.
The same applies to foreign aid and development. I’ve read some fascinating examples of villages given free wells or dams, and failing to maintain them, even allowing vandalism. If they have to contribute to the cost and labour themselves, villagers feel a sense of ownership and actually try to maintain the infrastructure. Just one way that foreign aid by NGOs can be far more effective than that by governments, which acts as a magnet for rent-seeking and corruption.
