Obese Egos

Charity which reduces the life of its recipients
is well known, from Pre-Victorian times onward.
Back then the rich in England divided the poor
between the worthy and the unworthy.
The worthy worked hard to keep themselves
in poverty but out of penury, the better to stay out
of the new workhouse where the newly unworthy,
displaced from labouring on the land and the factories,
were kept in squalor as a disincentive to their unworthiness.

The inheritors of that too-little-offered-too-late help
now live in the third world, where the IMF etc
pass restrictions on to failing governments,
and said governments pass said restrictions on to the poor.
Like work house managers, local Kleptocracies
shrink service of their populous in the name of efficiency,
and those shrunk by reduced choice are pushed more
towards mean and too-late-in-coming charity.
It is as if Thomas Malthus, and his queasy mix
of maths, theology, and apparent unawareness
of class-based power had never been refuted.

Meanwhile international charities spend less abroad
than they raise at home, because home is where the profile
of the charity most, more than helping its intended targets.

Who dares do to improve government
in failing states when that would refute the IMF?
What should we do when bad government
leaves big charities so much work to leave undone?