> I agree completely. There has to be common programs, and a social safety
> net, simply because while I'm concerned about the welfare of people far from
> me, there is nothing I can do for them personally except to pay into
> programs designed to help them. However, there is a balance between helping
> and intruding. Helping is asking the individual or family what assistance
> they might need and then working out how it might be provided. Intruding is
> knowing what is best for them and applying one-size- (or concept) -fits-all
> programming. Such programming is open to all kinds of abuse. There was a
> case in Canada recently where social workers swooped into a community and
> took all of the children they considered at risk away from their parents
> simply because the particular government agency had been criticized for not
> intervening fast enough in earlier cases. And we have a longstanding legacy
> of similar intervention - amounting to the theft of children by the state -
> in our Indian communities. In both cases, some of the children may have
> been at risk, but surely not all of them. And in both cases, the community
> itself would have taken effective action had it been given the time and help
> to do so.
>
The problem is the often mentioned lack of local and also wider
democracy. The government agencies are run to be able
to meet the most desperate needs for the least money, most of which
is eaten up by bureaucrats who need to prove that they are useful
in a world where permanent govt. jobs are getting scarce...
This is the usual hierarchical monster, where independent
opinion and criticism of the management is risky.
All of these don't mean, that a non-market economy with
a democracy with the basic aim of meeting needs and not of meeting
economic constraints, wouldn't work, when it cooperates fully with
those who require the care and those who are physically giving it.
> The Brazilian state is very generous in principle. For example, kids can go
> to very good universities free of charge, provided they have finished
...
> While Brazilians do help each other, they also get help from the outside.
> Foreign churches contribute to programs in Brazilian churches, and rich
> churches contribute to poor ones. I saw this happening among fundamentalist
> Protestant churches. I don't know if the same thing goes on among Catholic
> churches, but I suspect that it does.
>
Doesn't this mean, that the community/the individuals have to
conform to the religious expectations, so the church behaves
like just another "local government" led by the local
elite - whether underworld or other? Leading to the
"deserving" and the "undeserving" cases?
The church has a more positive image in South-America in
taking some role in fighting poverty, but in general, I cannot
trust them, there were suspect motives in the past, why not now...
Eva
> Ed Weick
>
>
>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
