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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I'm not American but i've worked in Western Europe. I don't know why but there seems to be a lot of taxes for everything. You have to get govt permission for everything. People seem to rely on the govt to provide things rather than have some agencies fill niches that aren't filled by the govt (for example I saw signs like don't help homeless people, the govt is helping them).
I'm from an Asian country, we don't have much tax, we don't rely on the govt for anything (we can't), and we have many NGOs. I think it's similar in America.
As an Asian, there are a few things I can note about Europeans.
Europeans seem to have lost their sense of traditions, to me as an Asian it doesn't make sense since keeping our traditions and values is a huge part of our culture and society.
Europeans also accept blame for bad things they did in the past (which is a good thing) but I think they can go overboard to compensate for that (to their detriment). I don't think accepting blame for things in the past is a thing that's done in Asia; we rewrite history instead. It would help if we acknowledged what we did and can have better relations with others moving forward.
Europeans identify more with nationality than ethnicity. For example, someone from Czech Republic moving to France is considered French. In North America I think they would be considered Czech-French. In Asia they would be considered to be a Czech expat living in France. Our ethnicity matters a lot.
Most (but not all!) Europeans consider NGOs to be undemocratic, whereas the government is (theoretically at least) under democratic control.
But at what point would you stop doing so? I'm Dutch yet can trace back my ancestry to the 16th century in Belgium and northern France, what ethnicity do I have? And some have an even longer and more dispersed pedigree.
Also, you gave the example of French but what is now called France was made up from a large variety of ethnicities. Being French then is not defined as being a particular ethnicity but as belonging to the French Republic. It's a cultural thing that matters a lot to them.
what does it mean that europeans consider NGOs to be undemocratic?
if your ancestry is from belgium/north france then you would be belgian/french with dutch nationality. I suppose when we refer to France we mean French before the 19th century immigration.
It differs a bit where I'm from. I have a friend from Malaysia who identifies as "Tamil-Malaysian" (Tamil being the ethnic group and Malaysian being the country). In HK we have a lot of ethnic minorities. Speaking frankly, if you look chinese, you would be considered HKer right off the bat, if you look any other skin colour (white, other asian, etc) you will be considered a foreigner living in HK even if your family has been there for generations. Here is a video i found as an example where some Indians who were born and raised in HK struggle to be seen as HKer
In a democracy power should allways be held by the people. If you have a NGO -even when it does very good things- there allways is a danger that it could go against the peoples ideals or even their interests. You (as in the people as a whole) are also not as soverign when relying on NGOs for basic societal needs like a social saftey net as the voluntary donations founding them could stop any time. Thereby the power is transfered the donors (althought luckily most small-mid sized donors do not really exercize that power) who are mostly the wealthy as they just have more money to spend. A better solution is taxing fairly and using the common found gained throught that in a way the majority decides.
I recently watched an interesting video from Adam Conover on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I. Altgought I do not agree with everything said (I don't think the Patagonia nonprofit in particular is problematic in my opinion the focus should have been set even more on the issue of something like that beeing possible) I agree with the key message for the reason provided above.
isn't this the same reasoning for govt though? politicians will say one thing for votes and do another thing. If anything it's worse to trust a govt who will more likely go against people's interests. At least an NGO has a stated aim.
not really. In an ideal democracy you could simply vote those people out in the next election . In a well working democracy there is only so much they can do before they are not reelected.
The difference to NGOs is that in a democracy one person (ideally) has exactly one vote while your influence on non profits -especially when you are wealthy enought to afford your own- is mkreso connected to what you (can) donate, so how wealthy you are. In my opinion that makes relying on government more egalitarian whereas a system built on charities is more seceptable to oligarchigal structures.
(I understand that in many places Governments are (very) currupt or not democratic to begin with and there are many NGOs that are democratic (or meybe just plain better for the interests of the people) compared to those governments. And in those cases these NGOs are -for now- obviously better then the government. But imo with a stable democracy the government is a fairer morer stable and more equal solution.