Anyone who has been to cof­fee ori­gins must ques­tion if the world is a ratio­nal place. In coun­tries that exhibit such great wealth, how can there be such cat­a­strophic poverty. How is it pos­si­ble for the low­est of the low to live amongst and for peo­ple of wealth and power and not long for that power as well?

But, in prac­tice, the world is a very ratio­nal place. Maybe not indi­vid­u­als in the world, but within the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic world, behav­iors and actions by a pop­u­la­tion can be dis­tilled into under­stand­able cause and effect sce­nar­ios. Often these expla­na­tions are con­trary to the ‘com­mon sense’ expla­na­tions put forth by activists.

Why are graf­fiti, urban decay, and reduced infra­struc­ture so preva­lent in poorer com­mu­ni­ties and so not tol­er­ated in pros­per­ous com­mu­ni­ties? The sim­ple answer given is that polit­i­cal lead­ers treat the res­i­dences of the poorer com­mu­ni­ties with dis­dain because of their lack of money and polit­i­cal clout

However, is this true? Or, is the real­ity deeper, and more ratio­nal? What is emerg­ing is not as volatile an expla­na­tion, but it is more con­crete. Because poorer neigh­bor­hoods also have a sub­stan­tially high num­ber of rental prop­er­ties, com­pared to more pros­per­ous (notice I don’t say rich) com­mu­ni­ties that have a sub­stan­tially higher num­ber of owner-occupied prop­er­ties, the res­i­dents who live and work in poorer com­mu­ni­ties con­sider their res­i­dence tem­po­rary. With all a poor fam­ily has to worry about, remov­ing graf­fiti seems pretty minor. Why fight city hall for ser­vices when you aren’t going to be liv­ing there two years from now. It sim­ply is not rational.

The inverse of this is that com­mu­ni­ties with high prop­erty own­er­ship do have a very ratio­nal rea­son to force ser­vices out of city hall. They are in their houses for the long-haul and so prop­erty val­ues and qual­ity ser­vices are impor­tant. Petitioning for bet­ter roads and parks is ratio­nal for these folks.

In the dis­course around aid and sup­port in coun­tries of ori­gin, the same les­son is true. It is vital to race past the sim­plis­tic and ethno-centric expla­na­tion and seek the ratio­nal truth underneath.

In a recent con­ver­sa­tion with an NGO leader from Africa, we dis­cussed the basis for the pro­grams she devel­oped and over­saw. She was appalled at the con­di­tions that forced young men from rural com­mu­ni­ties into urban slums. She firmly asserted that all the male youth of sub-Saharan Africa were rac­ing to the urban areas to seek money to send back to the vil­lage to feed their des­per­ate par­ents and siblings.

She was equally appalled that I didn’t imme­di­ately agree.

My con­tention was that such behav­ior sim­ply wasn’t ratio­nal. Why would an oth­er­wise nor­mal teenager move from a rel­a­tively safe, albeit poor, envi­ron­ment to one that is noto­ri­ous for per­sonal dan­ger and extreme poverty with the belief that there was a bucket of money to be made? I thought it more likely that young men leave the vil­lages for the same rea­son that young men leave their “vil­lages” every­where. Fresh female faces, the oppor­tu­nity to re-invent them­selves, tak­ing per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for their des­tiny, and prox­im­ity to the trap­pings of the ‘good life.’ And, just like every­where else in the world, it typ­i­cally doesn’t turn out quite as they hoped.

In the above exam­ple, the true mis­sion might be to develop the moti­va­tion to bring the young men back after they have ‘sown their wild oats.’ During a con­ver­sa­tion over cock­tails with Michael Opitz, from the Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (the Neumann Group’s Foundation), we con­sid­ered this idea and con­ceived of a project called “Bridges.” This may be an idea whose time has come. It could be a solu­tion, or maybe not, who knows.

The ques­tion is, how can we, as insti­tu­tional foun­da­tions cre­ate an eco­nomic and voca­tional (and mat­ri­mo­nial) envi­ron­ment that will draw these older, but wiser, young men back to the coun­try­side? An inter­est­ing model for this might be the Amish Rumspringa, the rite of pas­sage for 16 year old men and women mem­bers of the Amish community.

The point is that we as an indus­try need to address fixes that change the cause, not toss money at causes that address the effects. In this exam­ple, young men leav­ing home to find for­tune and adven­ture is ratio­nal behav­ior that can­not be changed. (Ask any par­ent) What we can change is con­di­tions back home so that com­ing back some­day is also ratio­nal behav­ior. (Again, ask any par­ent) By drilling deeper into actions by a group we are hop­ing to assist, we may dis­cover that there is ratio­nal behav­ior at the root. As econ­o­mists know, once you dis­cover the ratio­nal behav­iors, then it is much eas­ier to design pro­grams that change the cir­cum­stances and there­fore ulti­mately change the results.

So why am I rant­ing on about this? So much of our efforts to affect change at ori­gin are dri­ven by sim­plis­tic and shal­low analy­sis of why things are the way they are. It is won­der­ful to care and want to help but, if you are going to throw money at a prob­lem, it helps to under­stand what the prob­lem really is. Although look­ing for ratio­nal expla­na­tions for behav­iors is not as sexy as the more sim­plis­tic, but more com­pelling “obvi­ous” expla­na­tions. Rational expla­na­tions ulti­mately may prove to be more eas­ily faced and solved. They cer­tainly will be less expen­sive than most of the cur­rent meth­ods of Foundation work.

On another note
Coffee Fest is return­ing to Hawai’i this year. In December we were priv­i­leged to be invited by the Hawaiian Coffee Association to attend the Kona Coffee and Culture Festival. While there we also checked out some really cool things to do while you are there in July. Read our fea­ture for more info.

Cheers,
Miles & Kerri