It has meant a blind eye being turned to corruption - aid being like striking oil, or finding diamonds, in its potential to tempt.
This imbalance results in what can be termed a "market-first" approach to human rights, which in practical terms means that most corporations will, and do, go to great lengths to avoid cutting off relations with a favored supplier, even if it means turning a blind eye to sometimes horrific abuses. .
Does Obama really think that the only morally steady position is one that endorses the current air campaign that not agreeing with him means turning "a blind eye to atrocities," and that anything short of close to two hundred cruise missiles "would have been a betrayal of who we are"?
For the Americans, Turkey, with its 62m people, is still a necessary ally in a combustible part of the world and if that means turning a blind eye to the suppression of those among Turkey's 15m Kurds (the figure is vague) who wish to assert their identity, too bad.
And that means turning a blind eye to the reality of climate change.
They are overwhelmed by the glut of news sources out there and will do anything to scoop the competition, even if it means turning a blind eye to some really obvious questions, like "Is this true?" When an editor at Agencia Reforma (the New York Times of Mexico) finally took Yoshua's call he became hysterical and deployed journalists over there like torpedoes.
For decades that has meant turning a blind eye to the monkey-tricks of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.
But for many Africans then, the struggle against European colonialism meant turning a blind eye to the oppression of Africans by Africans.
"Better intelligence needs to be shared between them and other agencies, and that might mean turning a blind eye to lesser crimes in order to get at gun-related violence.
The approach proposes to tackle corruption at its roots: a deeply ingrained mentality where friendly reciprocity can too easily cross the line into nepotism, and where tolerance, on the one hand admirable, can also mean turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.
