[Martin Taylor 940831 10:45]
Rick Marken (940830.1330)
The only "helping" programs I favor are those that help people (who
want it) learn to control whatever it is they want to control.
I would add those that provide an environment within which people have more
ability to control. There is a daily item in our paper called "Your
Morning Smile." Yesterday it read: "It would be a lot easier to become
self-sufficient if someone would help you." That's supposed to be funny,
but if you look at things that really DO help people to become self-sufficient,
you get big things like the Marshall Plan, or the bank whose name I forget
that gives little loans (as small as $5) to villagers in Bangladesh to
capitalize a basket weavery or the like (very profitable for the bank, and
very effective in improving the borrowers' ablility to control, when their
income begins to exceed their repayments). Big loans to low-risk borrowers
can help, too. How many of us would own a house, if there were no
mortgages? That's help, too, in allowing people better control.
The "help" that doesn't work is the help that actually increases disturbance
(two hands on the handle) or that incorporates restrictions. Financing
big dam(n) projects in third world countries is supposed to provide an
environment in which the people have better control, but does the opposite
most of the time. Giving money may improve the recipient's ability to
control until the money is gone, but the transient effects (in the technical
sense of control system transients) may well make matters worse afterward,
depending on how the money was used.
The fundamental factor is reorganization. If "help" makes the organism
(person, animal, whatever) better able to control in the same environment,
that's real help. That's Rick's point about education, isn't it? But if
help changes the environment so the same organization can control better,
that's useful, too.
Martin