My previous thread is obfustucated by the way I structured it. So I’ll start a new one.
When a food is priced so that the very poor cannot afford to buy it - and you can do without - is it ethical to buy it?
And if the answer is “it depends” - does it depend upon the purpose of your buying it? I.e. is buying rice because you are hungry qualitively different to buying rice to, for example, burn it instead of coal?
The answer to this is:
For every rice consumer the reasoning is different.
Buying it to send to my relatives in Bosnia - is the same as -
Buying it to consume myself.
No matter what the price is.
So I can afford rice and other grains. Should I avoid buying rice so to keep the prices down for those who cannot afford it? Then what? I eat more meat which uses up more grain than if ate more rice? Or should I just not eat?
How about if instead we work on policies that help avoid the food shortages in the first place.
I’m not sure what else you should eat. I’m sure you can find something.
As you say maybe you should consider going vegetarian. Or, alterantively, supporting the world food program or the like. Feeding a hungry world.
Is it ethical to go to the movies when you could send that $10 to someone starving in Africa? OMG, I just realized I have to live like a hermit in order to be ethical!!!
This is a more difficult question that I anticipated it to be.
I noted in another thread that I felt that it was nearly impossible for a country to make any sort of progress if it was mired in a famine. I stick by that, but I’m not certain how avoiding a specific product will alleviate that issue.
Firstly, even in the United States, considered to be one of the wealthiest countries, we have many people who depend on cheap grains to fill out their diet. Further still, we have many people who depend on rice for their livelihoods such as those who run ethnic restaurants and such.
What we NEED to do is institute policy that will allow humanitarian missions and programs to achieve their food goals, without local government interference. We also need to assure that the market will be sustainable so that such grains are affordable to all.
That last part is the crux of the matter. There is plenty of food in the world, and plenty of agencies trying to get that food to people in need. But when a country is ravaged by civil war or run by a corrupt regime, it is sometimes simply impossible to get food to the people who need it.
Agreed. But what can we do about this? To bring enough safety to ensure fair distribution would require a significant armed force, and one that would remain long enough for the population to recover. That’s several months at minimum, and would mean the implied supporting of one regime or another in order to bring peace. Cries of neo-colonialism, and imperialism will run rampant. If we take the other logical course, to simply cut these quarrelsome countries off until they stabilize; and thus not waste resources, people will scream that we don’t care about the poor starving populace.
The current situation is not adequate, and amounts to massive wasted welfare that only a fraction of which makes it to it’s target.
So the questions instead become what current policies have inadvertently contributed to today’s food shortages, what immediate Band-Aids can be used, and what are the long-term policy changes needed to fix it?
Yes, fund the extant programs that get food to the starving, such as the World Food Program. Help developing counties invest in the means to increase production long term. Either get biofuels to a cellulosic level or decrease mandates of their use. Meanwhile decrease the risk of further catastrophic climate changes by addressing global warming. Stabilize conflicts so that production and distribution are possible.
And if it makes you feel better, don’t eat yourself. But don’t delude yourself to believing that such really helps matters or that such makes you ethically superior.
BTW, the current issue of The Economist has some cogent analyses of the issue.
Given that most rice is eaten within 100 miles of where it is grown, and that only 8% of the world’s rice production is traded internationally, I don’t see how my buying a box of Minute Rice affects the access to food by the poor in 3rd world countries in any way, shape or form.
I know nothing whatsoever about economics.
But reasoning from first principles:
Imagine you have 999 potential buyers of X and 1000 potential sellers of X. The price of X will be that at which the first seller of X drops out.
Next
Imagine you have 1001 potential buyers of X and the same number of sellers as before. The price will be the price at which the first buyer of X drops out.
I think you can see the difference?
I can’t edit the above post.
But
I mean:
I think you can see how a slight imbalance can lead to massive price swings?
Also.
My point is not to debate to economics.
When I see incorrect statements I find it hard not to correct them.
But I want to discuss ethics.
Let us discuss ethics.
What are the ethics of allowing a corrupt, oppressive or criminally violent regeime to continue in power within a nation versus the independant right of that nation to choose what sort of power structure it wishes to live under?
Do we have an ethical responsibility to governments or to people?
I believe that local corruptions and local criminal acts are the responsibility of the nation within which they occur. However I think the ethical thing to do would be to define acts which are socially criminal on a global scale and enforcable on both a political and military scale as needed.
Take over your country with a violent and bloody coup then exploit the resources (including the human resources)? Hey, no problem, have fun, give us a call when you want to work out some sort of agreement with the civilized world. However try to stop non-sectarian humanitarian aid, whether it be medical or food or whatever as long as it is 100% neutral, then run the risk of being deposed, violently as need be, and replaced with either a new government or colonized until a new independant government can be established.
Rice farming is a major industry in my area (though why we try to grow rice here is a mystery to me). No, I don’t feel guilty about the rice pudding I ate for breakfast. It probably helps people I know keep their jobs, and given that I live in one of the poorest counties in California, that’s probably OK.
Anyway. Economics and ethics are probably more interrelated that you would think. You should read up on economics in order to better understand the consequences of your ethical decisions.
The very poor cannot afford a lot of things I eat, drink, buy, drive, live in and so on. I do not find it at all unethical for me to buy the things I can afford.
Exactly.
To the degree that any individual’s actions will affect world food prices, you should continue to buy rice. The bottom line is that as a human being, you have to buy and consume some type of food. If you’re not eating rice you’re just eating some other food instead. And as DSeid wrote, many of these alternatives will actually use more rice (or its equivalent) in their production than eating the rice directly would.
If people who can afford something else stop buying rice, and the price of rice goes down so it is more easily affordable to poor people, that also means that the rice farmers will get less money for the rice they grow. That means that they might switch to growing something that is more profitable for them. There isn’t a fixed supply of rice that is independent of the price at which rice sells.