This shit is boring, your trolls suck. Stop posting.
Thank you for the reply. I agree.
However, this is an extremely controversial proposition, one with which I vehemently disagree.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have always been tyrants and murderers. And, for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fail - think of it, ALWAYS!” Mahatma Gandhi.
“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.” Oscar Wilde
“We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” Joseph Campbell
“I know not all that maybe coming, be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” Moby Dick
“If you want to forget about your troubles - wear tight shoes!” Anon
Why?
I get what 2dot5 is on about, I think. I understand that the world, rather, it’s human inhabitants, are amoral in your view. However. Without humans to, (through their faith, their teachings or their built-in sense of right and wrong) define morality for one another how can we TRULY know what is moral and what is not, according to the laws of the universe, which we assume to know, but cannot possibly comprehend? Nothing is any different from this. If the starving child is meant, in the grandest scheme beyond your piddling comprehensive capabilites, to starve, does it not then become amoral to feed him?
Or. We can just have a nice, tasty, turkey sammich with death-free tomatoes and mayo on a demi-baguette, a nice glass of lemonade, some kettle chips and a little scoop of get-over-yourself for dessert, whaddya say?
But how do your decadent luxury kittens help the third world? You shouldn’t be allowed kittens when children are playing golf in shallow graves.
No actual kittens were harmed in the creation of this post.
Seriously … GAP jeans? Clothing is a necessity, not a luxury, and GAP jeans are pretty cheap considering the wear you get out of them. And even designer clothes are putting food on third-world tables (by employing the children that sew them).
A few. No ways near enough for my desires. So, your point?
Starving children, yet. Hey, maybe those kittens might be useful after all…
Isn’t there some rule against pitting yourself? Anyway, fuck you troll.
In case you missed it I thought I’d repost this for you.
Your terms are extremely broad and ill-defined, but I’ll make an assumption that you’re referring to wealth transfers from rich countries to poor countries, which I see as largely ineffective (and oftentimes come with perverse unintended consequences for the recipients).
If I am mistaken, then please be more precise in your assertions.
It seems we have this thread every few months.
“A Good Person would give away everything to help The Poor. Since nobody does that, it means they are all Bad People. And, waaah, I’m a Bad Person too!”
The solution is to deny the first premise. Giving away everything you have isn’t going to help the poor very much. You know what I do to Make The World A Better Place? Find bugs in computer software. Every time I find a bug and make sure it gets fixed, I quietly imagine some poor slob trying to use our crappy product, and not hitting the bug. And that makes it all worth it. That, and they pay me.
Cool. Now just add something about “in the voice of John Goodman from The Big Lebowski” and it’ll be perfect.
<poor slob wipes away tears of gratitude>
I salute you, sir.
Now when’s that next patch coming out? Get off your lazy…
“Shut the fuck up, Inchy!”
So we should be feeding starving children GAP jeans? That’s excessive. Old Navy jeans are good enough.
Wasn’t there another poster who used to whinge about how unfair the world was? In almost a carbon copy of the current OP. I can’t for the life of me remember who its was now, though it wasn’t that long ago, maybe a year or so.
Is that in a sammich?
You don’t seem to have a clue as to how the world works. For instance, pitting the buying of consumer goods when there is suffering is moronic. How do people rise out of suffering? It isn’t through people giving their money away. It’s through people finding jobs that will pay them enough to live so they don’t have to live in shacks and eat maggots. Jobs are created through people desiring to buy things. The reason that many people are suffering in Africa and elsewhere is not because we buy jeans, but because the governments in these areas don’t want to give their people the freedom to make things for us to buy (as well as the freedom to do a lot of other stuff). Look at the suffering caused by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. That had nothing to do with our desire to buy things. It has everything to do with his desire to deprive his people of freedom.
Again, you don’t have a clue as to how things get done. As Adam Smith pointed out, I’m not fed because the butcher or baker cares about me. The butcher or baker cares about his own self-interest, but the only way to serve that self-interest is to offer me something that I desire. Paradoxically, our self-interest means we must serve others. Yes, I will agree that if some government officials in Africa and other places weren’t selfish, evil men, the world would be better off. But you aren’t pitting them, you’re pitting us. You have no clue as to what is causing suffering. You are merely exhibiting the guilt you feel for living comfortably while others don’t. That’s a ridiculous feeling to have and it’s based on a profound ignorance of the world.
If our desires were different, Adam Smith would be irrelevant. I understand how the world works. I understand that desire helps to create wealth; however, if we had different desires, we could create wealth and help people.
The way wealth is created is by helping people. Wal Mart, although despised by liberals, has probably helped more people climb out of poverty in China than any government program. The outsourcing that everyone despises has helped millions of Indians climb out of poverty. The creation of wealth is a good thing. People move out of poverty by participating in this creation of wealth. They don’t do so because some do-gooder gives away all his money.
You seem to think that if we didn’t have any self-interest we’d all be looking out for other people and living in some utopia. Frankly, that would be horrible. Only I know what is good for me. I don’t want someone else giving me what he thinks is good for me. Give me the power to make my own decisions and earn money so I can purchase the things I have determined I need or want. People don’t need your paternalism.
Not necessarily. I was in Zambia and Zimbabwe back in 2005. Talking to people there, I learned some interesting things:
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A while back, Japan was giving food aid to the Zambian government, in the form of rice. Because African governments are notoriously corrupt, the officials who received the rice didn’t simply hand it out to people, but sold it. No local farmer could compete, and they all stopped growing rice. Japan eventually found out that the rice was being sold, and stopped giving it, leaving the Zambians without any source of affordable rice. Despite the good intentions, the end result of the charity was to destroy a local farming capability, leaving people worse off than before.
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Other nations give enormous amounts of second hand clothing to African countries. They get so many clothes that they distribute them in unsorted truck-sized bales – local merchants buy these in the hopes that they’ll be worth selling. Sometimes you get suits and jeans, other times you get ski jackets and mittens. (The latter don’t sell very well.) Almost no one in the country makes clothing any more, though – there’s no motivation. You can’t compete with free, so you spend your time trying to make money another way.
Even though our giving is intended to help people in need, we’re creating dependency by doing so and destroying local industries. Giving by itself is not the answer. If we really want to help these countries, we need to help them develop self-sufficient industries (which is very hard, given the corruption).