tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5683446064054569523.post5444564371766479857..comments2024-03-28T14:05:05.234+13:00Comments on Little notes from Heather and Martin: Give a man a fish...Heatherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17588832912375311757noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5683446064054569523.post-71487434758521356542013-10-15T08:08:14.150+13:002013-10-15T08:08:14.150+13:00These people definitely weren't subsistence fa...These people definitely weren't subsistence farmers. They didn't explicitly say so, but as far as I could tell they lived completely in a cash economy. They earned money from things like labouring and definitely used it not only for the kind of occasional needs you describe but also for their 'daily bread'. So money functioned quite differently for them than it sounds like it did in C's village.<br /><br />There was no mention of people using their windfall for communal needs. Nearly everyone used about a third of it to roof their own individual house. The balance generally went on income-generating assets so they could have a more steady income than they previously had. Quite possibly they then would have used some of this income as you describe, but not the capital.<br /><br />Given that they lived in a cash economy, maybe giving away the windfall would have been more analagous to people in C's subsistence-farming village giving their actual farm away, rather than some of its produce or cash?Heatherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17588832912375311757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5683446064054569523.post-3876677629513786302013-10-15T01:03:47.355+13:002013-10-15T01:03:47.355+13:00Other schemes that trust people to know best what ...Other schemes that trust people to know best what to do with the money (to varying degress): conditional cash transfers, microfinance. This definitely seems to be a positive trend.<br /><br />One thing you didn't say that surprised me, though. C's experience of living in a remote Kenyan village was that the economy was essentially cashless: each family was subsistence-farming and made enough for their own use, supplemented by reciprocal sharing of produce and of cash. The way the cash thing worked was - each family had some cash (from sale of excess produce, remittances, etc), and if someone had need of cash (e.g., for equipment, medical treatment, etc) there would be a get-together and the hat would be (metaphorically) passed around. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communal_work#Harambee). I was surprised that the article implied each family spent the money on stuff for themselves - that was a much more American-individualist approach than would have been the case in C's village. Was it really like that?Keithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10731302336174830606noreply@blogger.com