KickStarter, Patreon, and Palisade: An argument for crowdfunding

    Charity is an interesting topic. On one hand, its the universal symbol for generosity, good deeds, and selflessness. On the other, its an economically-depriving system that doesn't even really help people.

    In Nuseir Yassin's (Nas Daily's) words, "Why would you learn how to fish, if all the fish is free?" He created a 1-minute video on the relationship between charity and dependency, and how damaging of a relationship it is. To solve this, charity needs to be re-imagined. Kids across the globe are developing a dependency. Why work, why develop skills, why improve the infrastructure of your own country and government when you can get it for no cost to you at all?

    The modern system of donations by merely giving free food and clothes to families of underdeveloped nations damages incentivized progress and ruins the local economies. Every dollar not spent on local businesses is a dollar lost, due to families rationing foreign donated food. All for the kids to go hungry again after the donated rations are used up and the local markets are still dirt poor. It ends up being a vicious cycle. Wartime and rescue relief donations are exceptions due to emergency funding, but even in places like the Gambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, the list goes on, it still leans to a downward spiral of the same poverty these organizations were created to destroy.

    No amount of amassed money is going to change that.

    It is certainly reasonable though, and charity in itself is a cherished thing. I'd rather see someone donate from the goodness of their heart than the thousands of other things they can waste money on. I'd rather take advantage of corporate domination to do some good for the world, even if its only temporary. The eternal question has always been while invest money in a long term system when with the money we've amassed right now we can feed a child tomorrow?

    Is the nearsightedness justified? The amount of time it will take to raise these countries back on their feet could take who knows how many years? Would you risk that if you had the money to save a child's life today? These are existential questions charities are faced with.

    And this is only explaining the issues with organizational charity, but it extends to federal aid as well. There are over 10 million global nonprofits - not 10 million people, 10 million organizations. But federal aid amounts to major superpower governments sending over large amounts of money to underdeveloped third world countries. This extends internationally to political entities like the United Nations, the Arab League, the European Union, and other large consortium-style unions that send humanitarian funds. With that much man-power, one would expect world hunger and poverty to have vanished by now. But famine, war, piracy, plague, and poverty are all too common in the horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Indo-China. Where is the gap between innovative charity and realtime progress with results?

    The reason why none of this has changed anything is because the system of international aid perpetuates imperialism. YouTuber Jake Tran released a video that, when fact checked, stands to be true and have very valid points on the current "modern imperialism" that has been changing the world ever since the United Nations took form. The reason being, as stated in the video, is that these countries themselves build a dependency on nations like China, Germany, Japan, the US, the UK, France, and other nations that these countries have to pay back once the innovation projects are up.

    But it's a YouTube video, an incredible well done and well put together one but I digress, is that really a credible source? Well, there are several arguments against the current system of charity that showcase precisely what Tran is talking about. This BBC article  recognizes the nearsightedness of most current charity organizations. A Socialist Worker article describes the history of foreign aid and the link to modern day imperialist tendencies that keep the poor countries poor and the rich countries rich. Ultimately, the current system of charity is the equivalent of putting a band aid on a bullet hole. It's targeting the symptoms of the disease, and not the cause of it. It is a shallow answer to a deeper question. It is not a cure. But it can be, and I'll explain that later.

    Nations will send hundreds of thousands of dollars, euros, yen, whatever as well as top notch scientists, engineers, financial advisors, the cream of the crop from their countries in order to start up massive infrastructure projects to build roads, hospitals, schools, and develop a better economy and transport in these nations to develop them better. But these expenses come at a cost that puts the developing nations in debt to these superpower countries, being forced to pay back this debt which essentially leaves them as broke as they were before these projects, and thus even with more advanced and modernized technology, they fall right back into the cycle of poverty.

    Because in truth, debt is an imperialist device. And a powerful one at that.

    Any college student would agree, while the chance to go to a university, learn valuable trades and skills, make connections, and earn a degree for a cheaper price is enticing and tempting, the afterthought of crippling debts that must be paid at a deadline with the risk of ending up in a collections office is a mighty scary one. And its often why students have to rely on parents and other third party scholarships for help to pay off these debts, and then the students have to pay their parents, and it ends up being a very long time before these graduates even start making big money for themselves. But eventually they do, so what's the issue? Eventually, these countries should pick back up to speed, no?

    Given that when this debt is paid back, if it rolls back over the economy, people lose jobs and go unemployed, which is what leads to these thousands of impoverished homes in the first place, and if it takes too long to get the economy and by extension the country rolling again, this poverty bleeds into and stunts the next generation. Kids growing into poverty, which inhibits their ability to learn or have a stable home environment. And because of the poverty, the child mortality rate goes up as well, and its also how more diseases continue to pop up without the medical expenses to pay. Thus, we have a snowball effect.

    For three going on four decades now, this has been the issue. Bill Clinton addressed Congress “We rich countries produce a lot of food and should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burdens of producing their own food, so thank goodness they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It has not worked.” In another statement to the press, he explained how countries like Ethiopia are incredible farming countries, but are reputed to have multiple famines a year because they lacked a modern storage & transportation network. Regardless of the controversy that surrounds Clinton's name or the reality Clinton's presidency in the US became in the 90s especially with what happened in Kosovo, he told the American press the words that needed to be told. Because his words still ring true even until today:

    "If we had taken a tenth of what has been spent dealing with famine in the horn of Africa in the last decade, to maximize the capacity of the countries next nearest to famine, then Africans would be taking care of the famine."

    This, if anything, highlights just how much money is wasted yearly on federal aid. Taxpayer dollars that are used inefficiently and inadequately. The stats do not lie, charity and federal aid do help, but only for so long, and when those resources run out and its time for countries to pay their debts, they're already poor again. China's economic investment in Africa is the most blatant example of this contemporary imperialism. 

    One could ask why countries choose not to fight this if it really is imperialism, but there's multiple reasons. Old imperialism involved armies invading lands and using weaponry and cruelty to rule the masses by fear, as Machiavelli would have loved to see. But this fear gave the colonized populace a symbol to represent their problems and struggles - something to direct their hatred at. And thus, we have revolution🗽. But with this new imperialism, it becomes a much more feathery and lighthearted symbol that the populace would be much more hesitant to fight. Why bite the hand that feeds?

    If one were a citizen of, let's say, Kenya, and the EU offered your president $1.5 million euros in international aid, and it became publicly known that he refused it, that person would be fairly upset, wouldn't they? They couldn't quite understand it, even if the refusal makes sense when understanding the ramifications of it. There would still be uproar. 

    It's better to err on the side of caution for a developing nation.

    Now that this has been established, what does it all mean? Where exactly do we go from here to end poverty around the world? What would have to happen is that a charity would have to step in that could potentially do the same job as international aid could. It would have to be a group that could establish the same level of production as a superpower-led humanitarian aid package at a 10th of the cost.

    Doing something like that, in the Informational Era, is very feasible. Crowdfunding is the key. Crowdfunding (which is sometimes interchangeable with the term fundraising but is different because it) is a unique blend of individualism and collectivism. It utilizes the power of a collective people putting in their money by their own choice to give to an individual who they believe knows how to use this money more efficiently. Because of that, not that much money needs to even be put in for crowdfunding.

    Unlike (traditional) fundraising which usually involves amassing funds in a lot more offline methods for a charity or organization that has a specific goal like a soup kitchen, a clothing drive, a blood drive, building a well, etc. that is often a really humanitarian and incredible gesture, is still only a surface-level objective that doesn't get to the core of the issue, and will only create a need for more and more fundraisers in the future. Where crowdfunding is unique is it funds the start-up for long-term projects, big or small, that can go viral online a lot faster because they have a personal element to them.

    Take Kickstarter for instance. Kickstarter's platform, which started in 2009, allows content creators to test out an idea. Not only does it raise them the funds they need to launch the idea - say its a film or an art piece, and now they have the money for film equipment and art utensils - but now that content creator KNOWS there's a consumer audience for what they've created. If people were willing enough to see it, share it, donate money, and invest in it, now the author knows the potential for profit. Other articles also point to similar conclusions on how crowdfunding is changing industries.

    Patreon as well allows for thousands of individuals to receive small increments of money over time from what will eventually be a large enough pool of people to make a sustainable career off of in order to buy necessary equipment for their work.

    There are other platforms as well. Global Giving, GoFundMe, Circle Up, Lending Club, Care2Causes are all viable options, but these don't have to just be used for content creation in the arts, but these can legitimately jump start missions trips and overseas rescue relief. Independent journalism, individualized charity that seems far more personal, closer to the heart, and relatable than the big-named advertising giants that are usually at the front lines of charity fundraising. These would include organizations like No Kid Hungry, the World Food Programme, Oceana, the Red Cross, etc. Many are rumored to even pocket millions of dollars, since (at least in America) even registering as a non-profit doesn't prevent non-profit workers to actually make money, despite the term. It ends up being quite lucrative.

    This extends to churches, mosques, and synagogues too, that are supposed to only be funded through tithes, but there are thousands of fundraising techniques like selling shirts, merch, auctions, etc. and aren't taxed nor regulated, so what stops them from pocketing the money? Ask Joel Osteen.

    Where does Project Palisade step in? A project loosely based off the UN and consortium-style organizations that's principally interested in solving the aforementioned problems above is a door-opener in the argument for crowdfunding. Palisade is still a blank canvas that can be dyed any color. It has the potential to become a second Peace Corps-level opportunity without the need for 90 master's doctorates or federal implications that go along with it. It could be a Kickstarter-style platform with varying different projects crowdfunded and used for publicly funded mission trips to the third world, while offering long-term solutions like improved transportation systems and reliable food markets. Or it could be anything in between. The sky is the limit for this group, but it will also seek to answer some of these questions, reinventing the charity game, and pave the way for future organizations to follow.