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| Borrowers can't drink alcohol if they are applying for the micro-lending scheme run by Phra Subin Paneeto. |
According to "Karmic borrowing: Micro-lending based on good deeds" (2016), a Thai monk and the Jordanian chief executive of a non-profit finance business that evolved from an NGO are helping the poor and socially disfavoured or rejected to get loans to start businesses that can bring them independence and the ability to support their families. In Jordan, Muna Sukhtian's micro-finance business lends almost entirely to poor women, who could never get a loan from a traditional finance company in that very traditionally male dominated society. Meanwhile, in Thailand, Phra Subin Paneeto initiated a micro-lending community credit union in 1992 that replaces the traditional collateral demanded by banks with Buddhist based community principles.
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| Raeda Jaryan has expanded her business after receiving loans. |
Should governments lead in economic help to the poor?
My answer is:
No. It is dangerous to trust in governments to help.
My first question was: "Have you heard of this monk?" I had not, which sort of surprised me, not because I'm particularly well-informed on such Thai stories, but because in Quest 3, one of Hartmann's chapter's on economics includes a reading that discusses Muhammad Yunnus's Nobel Peace Prize-winning Grameen Bank, which is very similar. Perhaps a student has mentioned it and I forget.
I was very impressed by both the monk and the female CEO, who are successfully doing much better than either the Thai or the Jordanian government are doing to effectively help the members of their community who most need help because the traditional social values, attitudes and customs are failing to help. The BBC article also reports that in Jordan, Ms Sukhtian has done much to smash the traditional cultural values that see women as inferior to men. Had the government been involved, they would very likely have been influenced by powerful elites to keep the old values and customs in tact, and women treated like objects of little value.
And in Thailand, the excellent Phra Subin Paneeto is helping people and at the same time setting the best example of what Buddhism can be. Again, were the Thai government involved, it's much to easy to imagine them focussing uselessly, often harmfully, on the whether people were following the proper custom respecting lumps of stone shaped like an imagined version of the Buddha, or obsessing about the sex lives of youth. By sensibly ignoring the Thai government as much as possible, this good monk has actually helped thousands of poor Thais on whom traditional Thai "good" people look down on, as was clear in the disgusting comments made by some of the PDRC mob leaders when they insulting dismissed the great majority of Thai citizens as not being intelligent or well educated enough to vote sensibly, despite the evidence being very much to the contrary.
The two best examples of what happens when a government is trusted to manage very much, or when a government simply takes all the power from the people, are the communist state of China under Mao and the fascist state of Myanmar under the army generals: both were economically disastrous for the nations under the control of those sorts of centralized, all-powerful governments.
Hartmann is a rather gentler in her readings, but I thought a little non-gentleness would go well following your excellent essays on elements of your culture that multinationals need to understand. As the examples of Ms Sukhtian and Phra Subin, it might be important to understand an element of a culture, but that does not mean we should agree with it, accept it, or pretend that it's right.
And in case your worried that I'm being ethnocentric, I could also have pointed out that the US also shows very well that government regulation tends to make things worse: Microsoft is not branch of the US government. Google is not happy to cooperate with the invasive US government and its legal authorities. And Harvard University is a private business.
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Indeed, when I think about it with my morning coffee before the early (way too early) class on Saturday morning, my question could have been: Should governments be trusted to take the lead in anything to help anyone? They certainly don't have a good record at providing quality education, however much money the greedy bureaucrats and dubious teachers of national ministries of education gobble up.
ReplyDeleteThe government shouldn't be trusted at all, since they're not that smart to lead the economic. Even though they are, it's not a good idea either to help the poor too much that they can't help themselves and improve. Furthermore, the economic system can collapse.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, the government should ban the populism policy and support SMEs to make our economic system better.
Fang, what do you mean be "support SMEs"? That sounds to me more of the sort of government interference we should not trust, along with government control of education, government regulation of taxi services, and so on.
DeleteTalking about your question in comment, personally, we should trust the government to do anything to help society and develop quality of life. Though many people, especially Thais, know that there are some bureaucrats trying to defraud anytime when they have chances, I should realize that they are representatives chosen by Thais. Indeed, if you attempted to hinder a government's working, your country would not progress anymore.But, if you helped your government completely such as paying tax entirely as well as following the law, your nation would advance more or less.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the communist state of China under Mao, even though in this period, it was economically disastrous, it was better than the previous regime, democracy established by Sun Yat-sen. an example of evidences is migration of Chinese people in 1940-1949 (before changing regime from democracy to communism). My grandfather told me that in 1945, he had been eight years old and he had lived in China (sorry I can't remember the town he lived). Surely, at that time, it was so drought that few plants could grow. My grandfather had to eat grasshoppers for meal in some days! Hence, he and his family decided to go to Thailand as there are various kinds of food in Thailand such as short-bodied mackerel (Pra-Tu), Steamed rice, fruit and vegetables. Definitely, not only my family went to Thailand, but lots of people who used Chaozhou, particularly who live in Bangkok, are also come from China as well.
Which Thai bureaucrats "are representatives chosen by Thais"? That would be unusual in any country. In Australia, the government is chosen by the people, and the government than appoints bureaucrats, who are not chosen by the Australian people.
DeleteIs Thailand different? Are school district officials, for examples, elected by a vote of citizens? (In some US states, they are, and this seems a good idea to me - it keeps control with the local community, not a distant, centralized government.)
Thank you Chan for the great comments.
DeleteChina might have been better off under Mao, but that seems very unlikely to me. His policies such as the "Great Leap Forward" which nationalised farms directly caused massive famine and the deaths of millions. His policy of backyard iron smelting also wasted vast resources, and his "Cultural Revolution" inflicted massive social and economic harm.
The Chinese might have been better off without the rotten Nationalists, but because Mao made it illegal to criticise himself or his government, his appalling mistakes could never be corrected, and the Chinese suffered greatly as a result - when people, ideas or any topic cannot be criticises, it is impossible to correct misunderstandings, and opinion on the censored topic cannot be informed or of much worth, unless foreign sources are accessed, which is why dictators who hate truth need to strictly control the media and the internet.
I don't think it's an accident that China's amazing economic growth has occurred since Deng Hsiao-ping began loosening the government's control - it is free markets and capitalism that have greatly improved the standard of living of the Chinese people, not government control.
AN excellent example of the government interfering to make life worse for decent citizens using excuses that are at best dishonest is the recent law from the current Thai government unelect intended to deprive some of the worst off in Thai society of the chance for gainful employment. The law creates new regulations for security guards and security companies. It is presumably the bright idea of someone in government and no one had the good sense to stand up and tell him that he was a dangerous fool. The sad story is told in the Bangkok Post's "Job security in doubt for thousands of guards (May 6, 2016).
ReplyDeleteIt is an excellent example of how harmful is a tradition of mindlessly respecting status in a hierarchy and so failing to stand up to bad ideas.
Naturally, it is the poor at the bottom of the social hierarchy who get trampled underfoot by the jackboots enforcing the bad old ways of tradition against healthy progress.