Haiti: A Libertarian View of World Hunger

With some justification, rights-based libertarians have been accused on being chronically insensitive to world hunger. Actually, the issue is much more complex. Take, for example, the ongoing food distribution debacle in Haiti. It seems that much (if not most) of the food aid being funneled into earthquake ravaged Haiti has been plagued by bribery, corruption, and theft perpetrated by gangs of predatory males. (This was true even before the eathquake!) To combat male-dominated food piracy, and maldistributed food aid, relief agencies have been issuing food coupons to women, who in are expected to exchange them for food and distribute it equitably among men, women, and children. Unfortunately, to the surprise of profoundly naive distributers, women are now being robbed by men of their coupons and food rations before they even get home with the goods. As reported by USA Today, these same women are being raped and victimized by these predatory males in the re-settlement camps.

Back in the 1970s, Neo-Malthusians like Garrett Hardin pointed to the intergenerational "ratchet effect" that invariably plagues food distribution. You feed one generation, they have more babies, population increases, and your moral obligation to feed them increases geometrically. But there is also an intrageneration "ratchet effect." In order to feed the hungry, distributers must first clear the rubble out of the streets, then police the roads for gangs that demand bribes for safe passage, set up distribution centers, make certain that the food gets to vulnerable women and children,and then police the camps where the Haitians are living to make sure that women and children are not victimized by men on the way home or at the lawless camps. In other words, at least in Haiti you cannot realistically expect to "feed" anyone without monitoring and enforcing a semblance of "rule of law" and, ultimately, without rebuilding their nation from the bottom up.

If you are a utility-minded libertarian and you want to spend your hard earned money to feed starving fellow humans, is Haiti a good place to send your money, or are there other countries where you'd get more "bang for a buck?" Of course, once the intragenerational ratchet effect subsides (if it ever does), then what? When is the job finished? How long will it take to teach Haitian males not to advance their individual and collective well-being through violence, threats, thievery, and corruption? If you expect the Haitian government to soon rise to the occasion, forget it. It is too busy prosecuting misguided missionaries caught trying to smuggle a few children out of a Malthusian quagmire.