I’ve been thinking more and more lately about how human behaviour divides neatly into good and bad, positive and negative, constructive and destructive, helpful and unhelpful, kind or evil, and so on. But however you describe it, for every positive there is a negative. For every person fighting for something, there are people fighting against it. These struggles have existed since the dawn of human-kind, and are still very much alive today.

The problem is that things are rarely black and white. What is good for one person can turn out bad for another, so it all depends on your perspective – which side of the fence you’re on, in other words. If you’re in the ‘fine by me’ camp it’s easy to forget people in the other ‘not so good for me’ camp. When people voluntarily reach across this ‘void’ we call this charity, and the reaching hand usually does so with a fistful of hard-earned dollar bills. This might solve the problem, but then again it might not.

When people give to good causes they assume their money will be used wisely and that it will tackle the problem in the best possible, most efficient way. But for every few dollars given to solve the problem, infinitely more goes towards keeping things as they are. Maintaining the status quo is big business. Indeed, big business, governments and lobby groups are all guilty to some degree. Their job is to keep things good for their ‘fine by me’ constituents, and what happens on the other side of the fence doesn’t concern them. With this going on, are people effectively pouring their money down the drain?

Take international trade as an example. The global system is heavily weighted against the smallest, poorest and most disadvantaged nations. At World Trade Organisation (WTO) gatherings, developing nations with their four or five delegates are regularly overwhelmed by the several hundreds sent by the European Union and United States. It’s not surprising they find it hard to get their voices heard.

Meanwhile, the man and woman on the street are giving their few dollars to ‘help’ tackle world poverty, wearing their white wristbands or whatever. This might be the easiest and most convenient thing to do, but is it the most effective? Is it really doing any good? The real problem might not be poverty, but the world trade system which perpetuates it.

Fact: A one percent increase in world trade would generate an extra $70 billion in Africa, five times more than it currently receives in aid

Isn’t it time we re-thought the problem?