Money well spent?

Aid agencies good or bad? I often wonder. My own experiences have shown me that they do a lot of good, yet I also hear that the opposite is true. I am also puzzled with how aid is distributed, however when you see it in action, like I did often in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta I did feel like it does make a difference to peoples’ lives.

When big sums of money are involved there is the possibility of corruption. I was impressed about the moral stand of an employee of an international organisation who came out to criticise that organisation on its role in corruption. By the end of the article I was saddened to learn that her brave moral stance resulted badly for her.

Then there is the question that having large sums of money, requires spending large amounts of money to ensure that you get large sums of money next year in your budget. So, there is some waste as agencies try to assist the less fortunate to better their lives. Being the year of the potato lots of money is being used in helping farmers with better techniques of potato farming or something like that. However, thinking about the cost to develop, I didn’t understand the point of the potato world.

I went back to the books reading about price formation and value then light finally penetrated dense wood.

The assurance that consumers want and will pay for many be over something as trifling as the crispness of a French fry. You might say, “Fries are fries.” This would merely show that you do not have it in you to be a burger mogul. In the 1950s, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, was obsessed with them. “The French fry would almost become sacrosanct for me,” he said later, “its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously”. He sent employees with hydrometers into farmers’ fields, rejecting potatoes lacking the optimal water content. He devised a way of curing the potatoes to convert natural sugars into starch. He developed the “potato computer” to calibrate the cooking time for a batch of fries. Kroc found his firm’s competitive edge in the uniformity of his fries – the reliably precise combination of starch and grease. In Minneapolis or Minsk (not HCMC though), the brand name McDonald’s promises you exactly what you will get (Page 54).

And that leaves me to another thought that is hanging around in my mind; does McDonald’s (or any other fast food franchise) really taste the same in Australia as anywhere else? I hope I get to test that soon.