Last week in Rome the Acton Institute presented a promotional video for the PovertyCure initiative before an international audience of businessmen, scholars, journalists, graduate students and missionaries in attendance at the Institute’s May 18 development economics conference: “Family-Enterprise, Market Economies, and Poverty: The Asian Transformation.” The Acton Institute is one of many partners in this new initiative made up of a network of individuals and organizations looking for free-enterprise solutions to poverty.
The video caused quite a stir in the hearts and minds of the attendees. So I solicited some feedback from the audience, a great percentage of whom hailed from countries with developing and emerging markets.
A missionary Ph.D. student at the Pontifical Gregorian University told me after the presentation: “This brief trailer has already brought to my clear attention the real hindrances to economic growth in South America and throughout (other) developing and emerging markets. And more importantly, what impressed me was what we have to do — through our own pastoral outreach — to begin changing the pervasive dependency on government hand-outs.”
One of the Vatican beat journalists present at the showing, Edward Pentin (who contributes to the National Catholic Register and Zenit, among others) had the chance to interview Acton’s president, Rev. Robert Sirico, about the video’s purpose and potential impact on changing common opinions on failing aid-based development economic systems.
In responding to Pentin’s questions, Rev. Sirico said the video’s aim is “to challenge the development community to really focus on developing, that is, opening spheres of economic productivity and cooperation … allowing the others to contribute to their own prosperity.”
Below you can find the May 19 Zenit article (or go here) and the Poverty Cure video.
Fostering prosperity
by Edward PentinVast amounts of state aid and governments imposing endless regulations are not the way to solve global poverty; rather it will be done through trade, private enterprise and helping populations in poor countries to contribute to their own prosperity.
This is the view shared by members of PovertyCure — an international network of individuals and NGOs who are seeking to encourage anti-poverty solutions through fostering opportunity and unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit in the developing world.
A leading partner and one of the main organizers of the network is the Grand Rapids-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. Its president and co-founder, Father Robert Sirico, told ZENIT there is “plenty of data across the board” that has long been known to create prosperity — namely low taxation, low regulation and increased market globalization. “This doesn’t come without some problems as the Pope and others have indicated, but this is the first time in human history where we know how to solve poverty.”
Father Sirico said one of the overarching aims of PovertyCure is “to challenge the development community to really focus on developing, that is opening spheres of economic productivity and cooperation,” allowing the others to “contribute to their own prosperity.” “When I put it like that it sounds so clear and simple,” he said, “but it is and that’s what’s frustrating.”
The American priest noted the challenges of overcoming a static mindset that believes government aid is the only real solution to global poverty. But he also highlighted a “perhaps more sinister” problem which is a “huge institutional vested interest in leaving the situation as it is.” He was referring to the thousands of people employed through aid program bureaucracies that are averse to change for fear it will put them out of a job. Father Sirico said it is “ridiculous to spend significant proportions of development money on supporting bureaucracies to administer programs.”
Instead he prefers what, in Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI calls “fiscal subsidiarity” — a form of creating credits in various nations not for foreign governments to invest in developing nations but for the citizens to invest in businesses in poor countries, and to have their tax burden lightened with respect to the investment that they give. “That’s one approach,” he said. “The other is to obviously drop the scandalous trade barriers that separate people and create pockets of interest in maintaining unfair portions of the market.”
When put to him that some aid agencies believe international aid should be a mix of private entrepreneurship and state aid, Father Sirico said governments should be “the last in and not be the most dominant” in a development situation which tends to always be very delicate. “The problem is that government is very heavy handed and bureaucrats develop self interest in justifying their existence,” he said. “So it sounds very reasonable to say you want to have a partnership but when the partner is a huge gorilla, and the other partners are small little enterprises, the gorilla has the say.”
He therefore prefers to approach the issue “through the lens of subsidiarity.” Otherwise, he said, there’s a tendency on the part of government to “suck all the air out of the room” and not allow scope for enterprise.
He readily concedes, however, that what he is advocating is not a panacea, nor that the free market is naturally moral. “People caricature my approach, saying [I believe] the market is virtuous,” he said. “But the market will reflect all of the vices and virtues that people will reflect in their own private life because that’s in fact what the market is.”
For this reason, he calls “for a more robust form of evangelization.” It’s evangelization, he said, that “really shows us what we need to do rather than covering it over with regulations and giving the impression that if we made regulations then we’ve solved the problem. That’s simply not the truth in terms of human misery.”Father Sirico was speaking on the sidelines of a May 18 Acton conference in Rome on the transformation of the Asian economy through the expansion of trade, commerce, and entrepreneurship. He said that Asia is one of the “great examples” that “really underscores our point.”
In its vision statement, PovertyCure states that Christ calls us to solidarity with the poor, but this means more than just material assistance. “It means seeing the poor not as objects or experiments, but as partners and brothers and sisters, as fellow creatures made in the image of God with the capacity to solve problems and create new wealth for themselves and their families. At a practical level, it means integrating them into our networks of exchange and productivity.”
The Acton Institute and its co-members of PovertyCure are inviting other partners and NGOs to join the network. More details can be found on its Web site at: www.povertycure.org
