Summary of Stupart

The “7 Worst International Aid Ideas” by Richard Stupart helps give some insight into different foreign aid and development efforts that are either unproductive or even detrimental to the people they’re intended to help. On a several instances, these efforts even appear to driven by selfish reasons rather than a humanitarian mindset.

The first terrible international aid idea is the 1 million T-shirts project. Jason Sadler, the head of this operation, foolishly assumed it would be a good idea to dump free T-shirts in impoverished villages in Africa. However the cost of shipping the T-shirts to Africa is more expensive than making T-Shirts in the first place, and takes away the business of making clothes in these villages and damages their economy. Why would someone buy a T-Shirt made in their village when they can get one that was airdropped for free?

Stupart touches on several other important failed international aid efforts and gimmicks, including 50 Cent’s extortion for Facebook likes of his energy drink and TOMS Buy-One-Give-One scheme which exploits gullible consumers buying their Chinese manufactured shoes in their efforts to help people. What hit home the most for me was the point he makes about the USAID being used as a foreign policy tool. Having just read the Atwood article, it was nice to get some background examples of how the USAID was malicious because of how it was overly-manipulated by politics as a foreign policy tool. The examples of the USAID ceasing operations in Yemen and being tagged as an enemy in the afghan war helped provide background that Atwood assumed the reader knew when reading his article.

Summary of Francis Berenson's "Hegel on Others and the Self"

Francis Berenson begins by praising Hegel’s ability to deeply understand the knowledge of mind in many regards. However, he is in disagreement with Hegel on several points. He uses an excerpt from Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind to give some background information on the subject matter as well as to draw points from to use for his argument. Contained in this information is the concept that our self-knowledge is attained by observing the responses of others to ourselves. In other words, because we live in a world with many people, and how they interact with us gives us more insight about one’s self than a simple self-reflection.

He continues by extracting Hegel’s concept that the mind reaches a point where it represents its thoughts in words, and can essentially speak their thoughts with minimal effort. This process is referred to as assimilation. Berenson’s first main argument is that Hegel is wrong by asserting that no validity can be asserted to knowledge until the assimilation stage. This is because in earlier writing Hegel states that the stage that precedes assimilation consists of objectivity which is impossible due to the inability to have true knowledge before the assimilation phase.

Additionally, Berenson points out that Hegel’s argument regarding reality is ambiguous because he never properly distinguishes the difference between reality and what an object means to us once we have a concept and experience of it. Berenson also touches upon Hegel’s conflict dealing with self-consciousness and self-knowledge being identical. Hegel repeatedly claims that consciousness includes the reality of the Other, and wishes this consciousness to be seen as knowledge. Therefore, the logic for equating the understanding another’s reality to be self-consciousness and self-knowledge simply are not supported in Hegel’s example of Master-Slave dialectic.

Summary of "Fresh Air"

Response to “Fresh Air”

Harvard medical school professor Dr. Paul Farmer begins his story explaining his motivation for his humanitarian efforts. He describes his experiences in Haiti, and elaborates on women in obstructed labor who often can’t receive proper medical care because they don’t have enough money to pay for a caesarean section. While this is just one instance of poverty restricting access to proper medical care, like so many other humanitarians, seeing the differences in the quality of health care in third world countries in person compared to that of our own sparked his desire to change the world in that area.

Dr. Farmer has focused much of his efforts on the treatment and prevention on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. One of the driving forces of inaccessible health care in every nation is the inflation of health care costs. According to Dr. Farmer, the cost of treating a single patient with tuberculosis in Chicago is upwards of $65,000, where he has provided similar treatment for patients for $200 a year with similar success. However, health care services in developed countries aren't focusing on providing affordable health care in developing countries because they can charge more money to patients in wealthier areas.

While Dr. Farmer is making very lasting differences in helping impoverished isolated regions across the world, the only to properly solve the global issue of inaccessible health care is to make health care drugs more affordable by helping third-world countries develop, which can be done by getting the support and proper guidance by first world countries like our own. Dr. Farmer’s work can help set an example for the world for how to create an affordable healthcare model that can effectively help treat epidemics in any country.

Summary of Atwood Article

The current international aid efforts of the United States are disorganized and half-hearted. Great amounts of money are being wasted on disorganized foreign development efforts, often driven by the sole purpose of winning public opinion of politicians. These foreign aid efforts are a shadow of what the U.S. was achieving throughout the 1960’s until the late 1980’s. This is in large part due to the shrinking role of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). To return to the level the United States was once capable of, there needs to a restructured independant USAID, or a new federal department devoted to foreign development.

The USAID was at its greatest strength during the cold war. Since then, it has seen much of its responsibility either shifted to the State Department or lost through cut programs. The USAID lost nearly half of its staff from 1980-2008, despite being an agency which had as important a focus as any during that time period. The increase of the use of the Defense and State Departments to deal with foreign intervention has had a much more negative impact than the NSAID had in its prime. These departments have allocated funds improperly and created unnecessary tension in countries where real, efficient, local development strategies like those of the NSAID and Millenium Challenge Corperation could have made a much more positive impact.

To create a more efficient and effective foreign aid system, the NSAID should become its own cabinet level department, and be in control of all humanitarian and development programs. This will allow for the usage of funds for humanitarian efforts more efficiently, more organized aid programs, and most importantly, a way to escape the influence of both the State and Defense department’s foreign political interests.