Charity is Generally Bad

A few people have asked me if they can send money to help. My answer up to now has been no, not at all. There are several reasons for this:

1) Free money can build a dependency and/or inferiority complex (and in many people I’ve met, it has).
2) When you can get more money just by asking for it than you can by working, there’s no incentive to work.
3) Free money rarely goes to where it would actually be most useful.
4) Money isn’t always what’s needed to aid development.
5) Some donations are worthless when there’s no follow-up. For example, someone might donate equipment to a farmer but not teach them how to fix it, so once it breaks down they stop using it and the equipment rusts in a field somewhere.
6) People are more likely to squander free money than money they had to work hard to get.
7) Free money doesn’t always get used in the way the donor wants.

Eventually I’ll try and get a project started that could benefit from donations, most likely involving tomato producers. But this is still a few months away at best.