How many times have you been unable to finish your plate at a restaurant and not asked for a to-go box?
I am certainly guilty of that every time I go to an Italian restaurant where the plates are as wide as the table. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that food waste in America is about 30 to 40 percent of the food supply. But one charity in Atlanta has found a solution.
That organization, Goodr, provides a service for local restaurants, while also helping those in need and reducing waste. Restaurants hire the company to deal with its leftovers, and Goodr uses it’s community data to allocate the food where it is most needed.
The food doesn’t go to waste. People who would otherwise go hungry eat great food, and these businesses save on trash removal services they would otherwise need in order to deal with the waste. Using localized knowledge, and in possession of a serious desire to help, Goodr is able to accomplish a lot. And the good news is they aren’t alone.
But people will never help one another without government intervention, and this example is just a fluke … right? Wrong. Charitable giving hit an all-time high across all categories in 2017.
Charitable giving is demonstrative of a healthy culture in which people seek to better their communities, fund the issues they care about, and help their fellow man. Americans gave more than $410 billion to charity in 2017. Individuals donated, foundations and corporations funded and performed charitable work, and people left parts of their estates to causes they cared about.
Government often offers incredibly broad, one-size-fits-all solutions that are heavily bureaucratic, and fail to accomplish their ultimate policy aims. Their methods are ineffective because the best solutions are usually the most localized ones. They require specific knowledge and flexibility that bureaucratic government programs can’t provide. Enter private charity.
Voluntary association and charitable giving often come together to create incredible outcomes. When offering help to those in need is instilled in the culture before it is enshrined in law, or brought into the government purview, society can thrive. A strong civil society, in which people genuinely care for one another and offer assistance to their fellow man based on their own free will, leads to the empowerment of individuals. It prevents people from falling into a position where they feel trapped by their situation and unable to break out on their own.
The federal government lacks the localized information necessary to allocate and distribute resources in the way that local charities can. This is why localized startups that put leftover food, which would otherwise go to waste, into the hands of organizations that feed the needy are so important. They fill a gap that government cannot.
All across the country, organizations and companies spring up to fill the needs in their communities. People love to solve problems, they love to help each other, and they love to see their communities improve. When we lower the barriers that prevent these sorts of organizations from springing up, we encourage people to help one another, and leave the room that a robust culture requires to thrive.
Big government is not the answer to all of the world’s problems. When it comes in with limited knowledge of the problem, and tries to solve it through an excess of rules and procedures, the creativity that is essential to finding real solutions is eliminated rather than cultivated, and problems persist year after year, decade after decade, unchecked.
When you consider this country’s incredible willingness to give, and the wide array of creative problem solvers just looking for the space to thrive, it’s clear government is definitely not the only option for lifting up the poor and needy. In the case of leftovers at restaurants and the hungry community members those leftovers can feed, the answer to the problem lies clearly in innovative charity.
Paige Lambermont is a political science major at American University. She is also a media ambassador for Young Americans for Liberty.
