(FORTUNE Magazine) – So you're a big cheese with a lot of dough--giving a billion dollars to charity has got to be a swell thing to do, right? Ted Turner's recent $1 billion pledge to the U.N. has raised the question, though it's not yet clear how he plans to hand over the money. What doesn't make sense, at least according to one expert--Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (Free Press, $25)--is to just write a check. "Look at the recent history of Asia," Maren told FORTUNE's Anne Fisher in a recent interview. "It wasn't charity that built those economies up to world-class status. It was private enterprise, intelligently applied."

Let's talk for a second about those starving-children ads that play on our compassion. You're saying, "Don't write a check"?

I'm saying three things. One, understand that charities--and foreign aid organizations like the U.N.--are really held to no standard of financial accountability that you or I would recognize. Two, this is one instance where financial accountability and moral accountability are very hard to separate. Most people think they can judge a charity by what percentage of funds is spent on "programs." But programs usually include six-figure salaries and first-class plane tickets for administrators--not shoes, clean water, and medicine for the adorable kids in the ads. This is a $50-billion-a-year industry. You have to see past the marketing, which is extremely clever and effective. And three, most Americans are naive about what causes extreme poverty in the first place--and therefore about what, if anything, they can do to help.

So what causes it, and what can we do?

It's ironic that in the great centers of free enterprise, people don't see that free enterprise is the answer. An aid organization, whether a government agency or a private charity, cannot operate in any developing country without the permission of the government that is in place there. So every time you try to "help," you are propping up a regime that is--to use a current example--responsible for murdering 80,000 Rwandan refugees, who were in fact hostages. And these same repressive governments will keep anyone who survives in abject poverty to preserve their own power. Write all the checks you want, but it won't help.

What do you recommend instead?

There are, of course, some terrific charities that make tough moral decisions and are smart about what happens to the money. Among these I'd put Oxfam and the French group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). I wouldn't give a dime to a bloated, overfinanced, incompetent bureaucracy like the U.N. The most farsighted option would be groups like Human Rights Watch. There is no point in dumping cash into countries where there is political oppression. Have you been to Kenya lately?

No. What's happening there?

Look at the people without basic medical care in the villages, and the traffic jams of Mercedes-Benzes in Nairobi. The aid money bought those Benzes. By contrast, look at economies in Asia that are growing. It wasn't charity that did that; it was business. And Africa has the labor force and the natural resources. It would be a great place to do business if you could be patient enough to work through the systems--the Japanese are already there.