The Catholic Church’s teaching on subsidiarity is inextricably connected to the bypassing of globalism through the employment of appropriate technology. Whereas big government globalists, such as the World Bank and the IMF, wield their financial muscle to force developing countries into the globalist camp as a condition for the receipt of financial aid, subsidiarity calls for investment in technology that does not force developing countries onto the globalist treadmill. Whereas international financial institutions deal with corrupt governments in the developing world, handing them mega-bucks for mega-sized development projects, making the governments more corrupt and destabilizing the traditional cultures of the indigenous populations of the world, appropriate technology calls for small scale investment on the local level, helping people on the ground, in the villages in which they live. Instead of investing $100 million on a huge power plant on the edge of a big city, forcing men to leave their families and their villages to live in shanty towns on the edge of the city, appropriate technology calls for the same funding to be employed to build generators in the villages where people already live. At a cost of $10,000 per generator, the same funding would provide electricity for 10,000 villages. For more details on the importance and applicability of appropriate technology, please see the two chapters on the subject in my book, Small is Still Beautiful.

Here’s an interesting video about how one teenage boy in Malawi has used appropriate technology to provide electricity for his own village:

African genius, 14-year-old self taught engineer makes electricity for village. [VIDEO] <http://www.wimp.com/africangenius/>