We don't know if these systems will get better without external interference either. Another post on this page talks about fixing systematic corruption within African countries as being more helpful, but that's a hard problem also.

One solution I could think of is a foreign investor investing a lot of money into the campaign of a candidate who isn't corrupt. The caveat of that solution is the perspective that it would be foreign intervention in the political matters of a separate sovereign entity, thus generating discourse among natives.

Another solution is to raise money to raise political awareness, and use that money for programs that get natives to understand the differing positions of candidates (and towards the infrastructure for voting itself).

BUT it's a lot easier to focus on the immediate relief of general ailments such as life threatening diseases, and proper utilities to make the lives of the general public easier. This way natives of poorer countries won't have to worry about things we take for granted in the west, and can spend their time focusing on the systematic issues that caused those time consuming problems in the first place.

My line of thought in a way aligns with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Before one can begin worrying about psychological needs, one must have their basic needs met.

How much does it really help to have a noncorrupt leader of government when a large part of the bureaucracy below them is corrupt? Rooting out corruption is a terribly difficult problem that takes decades.

I read somewhere that removing corruption is a bottom-up process, not a top-down one. That is, the culture has to change. There has to be a grassroots movement to eliminate corruption. If society as a whole does not care about it, then it matters not whether the people at the top are corrupt or not.

> One solution I could think of is a foreign investor investing a lot of money into the campaign of a candidate who isn't corrupt.

The opposing candidate will win in a landslide when the foreign-funded candidate is painted as an outsider, funded by “our enemies”, whether true or not.

Many politicians the world around would characterize government handouts the same way, government enabling morbid obesity. And yet, is there some fundamental objection you have to educating women or providing mosquito nets? Dying to malaria does not seem a good rock-bottom to let people hit, if we can provide them cheap nets.

There's no serious objection to either end of the giving chain--donations are good, and education and mosquito nets are good. But donations can slow or cease based on a variety of factors, and then problems that seemed solved won't be solved anymore.

An enduring solution really has to be internally self-sustaining. (Nations with good sewer systems pay for the maintenance themselves.) It's not clear how to structure voluntary donations so they lead to a sustainable solution. Good public health is necessary for developing a sustainable solution, but by itself it is not sufficient.

The bigger issue from an economics perspective - how do you properly distribute mosquito nets to ensure people use them?

> most developed countries can point to a "great suffering" that made them quickly turn their shit around, akin to an addict hitting rock bottom.

It's an interesting ethical question on paper, but I bet it's one you wouldn't bother to ask if it were you dying from cholera, "for the greater good". In any case, only the living can hit rock bottom, so I salute the humanitarian effort going into saving lives.

There is something to this. Was it Ethiopia that (at some point) instituted a no-NGOs-on-mondays type policy, after realising that all their ministers seemed to do was have meetings with the many aid organisations? (No link, sorry.) From memory such organisations contributed something like half the government budget, but all with their own concerns & priorities & need for visible success back home.

More generally, I think it's a pattern that governments which have to collect taxes from the masses need their consent, and thus tend to behave better, than governments which do not. Whether the non-tax income is from oil money or foreign aid, it probably has some similar effects.

Your argument is that criminals will stop being criminals if they notice their victims suffering a bit more?

No, his argument is that the victims will eventually revolt and overthrow the criminals and a better country will form.

"Charities work with the premise of preventing suffering, but most developed countries can point to a "great suffering" that made them quickly turn their shit around, akin to an addict hitting rock bottom. I would liken charity in Africa to the enabler who always features in morbidly obese people's lives, constantly bringing the person food out of a misplaced sense of love, where perhaps the truly loving thing to do would be to let the person hit rock bottom and change themselves."

Coming back from rock bottom isn't something I would read into the history of developed countries. And I don't know what rock bottom is, it seems like things can get unacceptably bad, and stay that way. Is famine rock bottom? Genocide? Child armies? The hole is too deep, you don't want to go there.

A cycle of incremental improvement from within seems like a better bet. But some of the critique remains: external support does not build up self-directed incremental improvement.

Where in Africa are things going well? Where have people found and created their own prosperity? Their own stable, peaceful civic structures? I entirely believe these places exist! But I have no idea where, because all the discussion is about what's going wrong, and the focus is on where things are the worst. But the answers aren't there. And I think you are right, charity can feed the dysfunction.