Column from USA Today.

Excerpt:

In one NPR vignette, a mango farmer needs a small canal from a river abutting her property if she wants to expand her crop beyond two meager trees. Technology “Sumerians probably took for granted 5,000 years ago” could transform this single mother and her kids from “some of the poorest people on earth to much better off,” according to reporter Adam Davidson. But despite a surplus of both cheap ditch-digging labor and aid agencies, she can’t get a loan to build it.

“This is what kept striking us in Haiti, just a little upfront investment and people could be living so much better,” added fellow correspondent Chana Joffe-Walt.

Instead, Haitians themselves explain, most aid agencies spend much of their energies trying to justify their own existence rather than helping Haitians help themselves. There are important lessons here for U.S. policymakers, not just in regard to Haiti (hardly a national security priority) but also for such places as Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly now that President Obama has announced the combat phase of the Iraq project is coming to an end.

The “root causes” crowd always had a point about the effects of poverty on political stability. Where their case truly fell apart is in the remedy: economic planning from above. For decades, the “international community” bet on big-ticket state-run make-work jobs and white elephants. The West, including America, is expert at pouring aid into poor countries; it’s less adept at teaching poor countries how to stop being poor.

Capitalism and foreign investment work better than foreign aid. We should feel good when what we do produces good results. We should not fel good when we cause harm out of our uninformed good intentions. Results matter. We need to try different ideas and then stick with what works. Capitalism works.