The WTO talks collapsed again. The sad thing is that everyone has the same goal - to get more resources to everyone, but the ideas on how to achieve it are very different.
It would have been so much easier, if one still could have believed in the simple theory: give a poor country money, and it will become rich.
It doesn't work like that, unfortunately. At least not only like that. Giving money without any conditions on how it is used often leads to corruption, as the person or institution receiving the money may be tempted to pocket some of for themselves. And giving money with conditions means that you remove authority from the country, which isn't very nice. Giving large quantities of food to a country hurts the local food industry, which has more expensive (not free) products, which they cannot sell. If the aid becomes too important, it will pay more for the local population to try to get access to aid than to produce something themselves.
The conclusion of this is not that one shouldn't give money to poor people or poor countries. The conclusion is that it isn't easy to do so in a way that is useful.
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