Poverty, Inc.
(1) Describe this aspect in the movie (what happens, with whom, why is it entrepreneurship/entrepreneurial).
The documentary of poverty, Inc. describes the issues that some nations experience when they receive aid from richer countries. The documentary starts with a song written because of a famine in Ethiopia, it was performed by several artist to raise funds for poor communities. Nevertheless, part of the lyrics of the song describes wrongfully the country of Ethiopia, it describes the country as a place with no rain nor rivers, although it was created with good faith this may encourage an erroneous image of the country.
Additionally, the documentary shows how Haiti have not been able to organically develop its economy after the earthquake that hit in 2010. Part of this, is mainly focused on the agriculture sector, more especially on the rice industry, and how farmers are struggling to survive even several years after the earthquake. Plenty of NGOs arrived in Haiti providing all types of aid to the country, however, they are providing more help than what they need. Many of these organizations have become a type of mafia with good purpose because they receive funding from governments to help. Thus, they keep providing aid to countries that aren’t in need anymore, causing alterations in the economies of these countries.
(2) Discuss why it is interesting.
This documentary is interesting because it goes against the normal economic logic that most people would think. This is because the most logical way of thinking is that developing nations need aid from richer countries. Many countries have NGOs that perform these duties but there are many different ripple effects behind the activities that are performed by these organizations.
(3) Elaborate on the interaction/relationship between entrepreneurship and society from the perspective of the movie.
This documentary is the most vivid and authentic example of the seen, the unseen, and the unrealized, terms taken from Dr. Bylund’s book. The seen is what typically people would see when NGOs arrive to poorer nations providing all types of aid to the society of these countries. Most people would think that they are doing an awesome job and that they are changing people’s lives in those countries, and they probably are.
Nevertheless, the unseen is the ripple effects that are caused by the organizations when they arrive in those countries. As it is shown in the documentary, the NGOs destabilize the economies in these countries, causing that entrepreneurship does not develop organically. A clear example is the rice industry in Haiti, local farmers are unable to produce rice because they cannot compete with the free subsidized rice brought from the NGOs in the market, so this action pushes rice producers to abandon their farms and to find something else to do for living. Another example are the TOM shoes that started as a brilliant idea for the market and to help poor communities, but some of the ripple effects of this caused that local shoemakers in South America abandoned their business and find other occupations as they could not compete with free shoes. These are just a few examples of some of the ripple effects that NGOs caused in these countries.
Now, what is the unrealized? since it is such an abstract term, it is hard to define. However, it is well explained in the documentary, countries and NGOs have created what’s called the “social fact”. A loop where social facts are already stated and there is little room for change, in other words, governments keep providing aid to NGOs, so they can keep providing aid although these countries no longer need it, but because there is money in between NGOs keep performing their activities. Thus, the unrealized is what would happen if this social fact circle would not exist. Corrigan Clay from the Apparent Project in Haiti was able to break this circle in the foster houses sector. He is trying to solve the main problem, which is providing job opportunities to the parents of children in Haiti, instead of building more foster houses that parents would use because they don’t have the resources to take care of their kids. Hopefully, more people can see this documentary, so they can realize of the harm that these organizations cause to developing nations. As it was mentioned in the documentary “let’s teach people how to fish, so they can catch their own fish, instead of just giving them the fish ourselves.”