Reflection: WBO and fairness

I think the World Bank Organization is a great organization. Lending out money to poor and developing countries helps the betterment of the world. When those countries that got the help develop, they return the money and continue the cycle. At first I wondered why first world countries would be interested in donating to the WBO. Then I figured out that the more a country donates, the more it gets to decide how the money is used. The nations in charge decide which programs and countries are appointed money. While this sounds bad at first glance, this actually means the third-world countries get a big assurance that the programs will succeed. If the program fails, the donators receive no return on their investment. Sure certain countries may be favored over others in development, but the quicker the process the faster the rest of the nations receive aid. Once everything plays out, every single country in the world should at least have a stable government with decent standards of living. Even though this may be too idealistic, I think the WBO has its heart in the right place.

The discussion about fairness is quite complicated and can’t be answered 100% for one side. If you saw someone on the side of the street visibly starving, you would be a heartless monster to let the person starve. However, starvation happens all the time in African countries, yet we don’t really lose sleep over it. We seem to be okay with this unfairness. The kids born to families who can’t provide for them really have no chance at getting anywhere in life or possibly even surviving to reach adulthood. Children born in the U.S. are much more likely to have plenty of food and live to 80 just for having the luck to be born there. I don’t think that’s fair at all, but we didn’t do anything wrong. We can’t immediately change the situation so that all kids have the same opportunities. However, organizations like the WBO help these disadvantaged kids. To put it in a simple, but not so simple terms at the same time, we can’t all agree that fairness is fair. But we can agree that we should do our best so that future generations are born into a world that is fairer. Fairness is confusing.