erislover, I wasn’t advocating that we “mug” the wealthy in order to pay for these problems. And while it may not directly benefit a billionare to cough up some money to help the homeless (or whomever), it might benefit him in ways not predictable. The space program yielded benefits few people could have projected back when Sputnik was launched.
Not necessarily. It may mean that they don’t have all the facts available to them. Many people thought Bin Laden wasn’t worth going after before 9/11 because they didn’t think that the could really harm the US. Had they known beforehand what he was planning, they might have changed their minds.
So long as you ignore places like Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl and others.
Unless, of course, they happen to be asleep when the plant explodes, then they might not be so lucky.
In America, perhaps, but what about the Third World?
Which is why we should try and change it before they become an active threat to others’ livelihood.
Okay, let’s deal with this, because it’s the most on-topic issue.
The infrastructure will come when stable governments are in place and free trade is allowed, because then companies will have an incentive to invest in these countries. Nike sets up a factory in the Phillippines, and in the process has to help pay to improve roads to the factory site, help string power lines, etc. The Nike builds housing for American management, and hires local people to provide the labor. These people gain valuable experience in modern construction techniques. Factory workers get training for their jobs.
Once the Nike factory is in place and operating successfully, the risk and cost to other companies to also enter the country is lower. For one thing, the infrastructure has improved somewhat. For another, there is now a workforce that is better trained and more efficient. And the experience of Nike shows that the government is willing to let the business operate without interference. So another factory comes in. Now the competition for labor between the two starts to drive up wages from the ‘sweat shop’ levels to something better. But the people are now worth more, because their efficiency is increased by leveraging the newer, better infrastructure and better training. And of course, Nike has brought in a whole bunch of highly-paid foreigners who are now buying products on the local market. In the meantime, the cost of shipping goes down as the volume goes up due to the presence of those factories exporting cheap goods. This makes other local products more competitive on the world market, and demand starts to rise…
This is the way it works. There are no mysteries here. You can look at the example of South Korea, which went from being one of the poorest countries on the earth to a reasonably healthy, wealthy country.
But of course, people without a clue keep throwing wrenches in the works by boycotting companies that set up ‘sweat shops’ in developing countries, and putting immense amounts of social pressure on them. This makes such factories less attractive, and slows the rate of industrial growth in the third world.
You wanna help the poor people in the world? Buy shoes and shirts made in ‘sweat shops’ instead of boycotting them. Educate people when they start ranting about how evil these ‘sweat shops’ are. Support politicians who support free trade. Fight against the imposition of wealthy western notions like minimum wage laws on countries that can’t afford it (this is the opposite of what Tuckerfan thinks will help).
People are not worth minimum wage just because a government passes a law. If we made the minimum wage in Bangladesh the same as it is in the U.S., every labor-intensive industry there would shut down overnight and you’d take away the best hope those people have for a better standard of living.
Why is overpopulation a problem? Do you have any evidence that there is a correlation between population density and poverty? Before you answer, you might want to think about the population density in Hong Kong, Japan, and Manhattan.
The notion that we are ballooning in population growth is way out of step with the latest population trends. World birthrates in all nations have crashed in the last 15 years, to the point where the best evidence we now have suggests that the Earth’s population will stop growing around 2050 or so after reaching about 9 billion or so, with a decent probablility that the population of the earth will start to decline after that time.
A good rule of thumb is to ignore everything you hear on NPR.
Tuckerfan, you defeat yourself here. But no, I wasn’t trying to imply that we should “rob” the rich here, but that that was the only surefire way to get their money. Bit of a difference.
Yeah, and when you can predict it you can have their money. See?
Or rather, you don’t have all the facts to give to them in order to get their money.
Right. As I said, it is easy to ignore places when you have enough wealth to either clean up your immediate neighborhood or simply move.
It will take more than “iffy” possibilities to get them to help these causes with their money.
What about it? There are wealthy there too, aren’t there? Unless you can demonstrate to them that there is a significant chance their wealth is in danger you will probably have a hard time getting it from them without an appeal to some ideology.
Okay, here’s the best I could come up with: here is the RealAudio file of the NPR piece I mentioned. Here is a link to a piece in Discover which briefly mentions a solar plant and describes some of its output. Here is the Department of Energy’s website describing the plant and it lists its capabilities as
and here’s the DOE page listing the US energy consumption for 1999. Now, I couldn’t make the numbers match up, but I suck at math, so I’m not sure if I’ve got a decimal wrong in one place or another. I do note that on the solar site they don’t explicitly come out and say that 100 square miles of solar panels will yield more than enough energy than the US consumes, which leads me to believe that my original statement was wrong.
Read my sig, Sam.
Agreed. My apologies if I’ve misled anyone into thinking that I was looking for something else.
erislover, if I could predict it, I wouldn’t need their money (I’d be off at the track making my own fortune!).
About Love Canal, perhaps you forgot that the people living there didn’t know that it was a former toxic waste dump until their kids started getting sick. Kind of hard to avoid an area if you don’t know its bad for you beforehand.
This is a bit of a doozy to me. Lots of wealthy people in the Third World (tho’ “wealthy” is a bit of a relative term in this case, cause having a car in some countries makes you “wealthy” in the US it only makes you “average”), and lots of civil unrest in many Third World countries (not necessarily all). It seems to me that the wealthy in those countries have ample evidence that they need to do something to change things, but their solutions don’t seem to be working. (Maybe its because they involve lots of strong arm tactics and government run hit squads in those places.)
Oh, and Sam, if every US company builds a plant in a Third World nation, who in the US is going to be able to afford to buy the stuff they’re making? Not most people. Also, let’s not forget that if, say, that Third World nation doesn’t have very good enforcement of its environmental laws (assuming, of course, it has any at all), then you’ve got a pollution problem. I was kind of hoping we could avoid that, you see? And another thing, where’d you ever get that I’m opposed to minimum wage laws? Haven’t said a thing about it.
Yes, Sam, let’s look at the example of South Korea. South Korea developed economically not through the practice of free trade and attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), but through government subsidizing domestic businesses, putting up barriers to foreign imports, using foreign aid to develop schools and domestic infrastructure like roads/rails, etc., and aggressively encouraging exports. That’s the same way all the Tigers developed, and how Europe re-developed its economy after WWII. Import-subsitution strategy was the name of the game.
There is no evidence that your Nike scenario actually happens in the real world. If you do have examples, then, please share them.
And I’m certain people there did something about it. See?
Wealth is a relative term to more than just national boundries. What I could do with my income if I earned this amount in Cleveland…
And yes, they need to do something. Well, who didn’t know that? My point is if you cannot demonstrate it to them it is just a horse race. And even at that, you woulnd’t just have to demonstrate it to the wealthy people who are threatened by civil unrest, but all wealthy people everywhere! This is, I think, pretty impossible.
How is homelessness or poverty “my problem”? The only thing that makes it my problem is having to step over them on my way to work, and that’s easily solved.
Why do people think that people with money have to provide for those that don’t? If I can’t afford a nice car or house, that isn’t my neighbors problem.
And so your solution to the problem is to do, what? Because based on this
You seem to be contradicting yourself. First you say “educantion and propaganda” will work and then you say its “pretty impossible” to convince the wealthy of the world that something needs to be done about it. Let’s also agree that the outright lies like those in the environmental movement (Eating meat means we’re going to run out of oil in just a few years!!) do more harm than good. Shall we?
And the folks at Love Canal didn’t all just pack up and move in a day. They spent years trying to figure out what was going on and trying to convince the government to help them out.
No, its not your problem. Until a hundred or so of them suddenly decide that they’re tired of watching you step over them every morning and figure that the easiest way to solve it is by beating you over the head and taking your wallet.
Ha! Think I’ve figured it out! Based on this statement
and the information on Hoover Dam
provided by this site, indicates that my statement that it’d only take 100 square miles of desert was off by a factor of 10 or so (I’m ballparking it here, folks, its been too long since I’ve played with scientific notation for me to be able to make the numbers work exactly.) since the power consumption for the US in 1999 (only year I could get stats for) was 3449.490 billion kwh.
I know this is GD and one is suppossed to offer cites and proofs but it is late for me and I am not about to embark on this but I have to say I am extremely skeptical that solar plants can yield the same per unit of area as coal plants, even if you include the mine. It is just extremely difficult to believe at first sight and I’d like to see some supporting figures (rather than have to find some disproving figures myself). Can someone supply some figures? What is the area of a tipical coal plant and a mine to supply it? Anthracite? And what is the area of a typical solar plant (if there is such a thing)?
In any case, land area is a consideration but it’s not like the only consideration. The main consideration is cost and, for now, solar just cannot compete with coal.
sailor, I’ve been looking for almost an hour to find how big a mine is, but it seems everything related to mines is measured in the number of tons produced. I can’t find anything that says how big one of those things is! (Duck Duck Goose I ain’t!) I will say that you’re right that currently it is cheaper to build coal plants than it is to build a solar operation like Sunlab (They claim that costs would come down to comparable to coal once the plants were build in large numbers. Wonder if they’re including the costs of land reclaimation in that as well.). I’d also like to add that not only do you have to add in the size of the mine, and the power plant, but the size of the mining town as well. Even though I’m WAGing here, I would imagine that it takes more miners to run an operation than it does to run a solar “farm.”
Well, Tuckerfan, the education and propaganda schtick is a long-term solution not meant to be effective in a few years’ time. Much longer. It takes generations to change societies peacefully.
Um, he said “peacefully”. America killed hundreds of thousands of Gemans and Japanese, ravaged their countries, and put them under strictly enforced martial law.
So you think that’s the answer to the world’s troubles? That the U.S. conquer the world? Interesting.
Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger understatement of what happened during WW II. Japan and Germany were under martial law for a relavtively short period of time after the war, just long enough for the various civil organizations to be set up. After that, the US’s role in those countries was limited to mainly monetary aid and technical advisors. My point in my comment was that thanks to the Marshall plan Japan and Germany were able to go from war ravaged countries to self-sustaining First World countries in a short period of time.
First off, thanks for noticing that, Alessan. Secondly, Tuckerfan, this further illustrates my point about forcefully taking things from people. You want a quick solution you’ve got it staring at you straight in the face. If you want a quick solution that the wealthy will go along with things get tricky without excessive corruption, and if you want a quick solution that the wealthy will go along with, and will allow them to stay relatively wealthy, and will solve the actual problems… well, I think it simply cannot be done.
Secondly, the WWII analogy fails in many ways. We aren’t talking about a wealthy country helping to rebuild a war-torn one. We’re talking about getting wealthy people to use their wealth to combat the problems you mention. You’re going to have to take it from them or you’re going to have to convince them to give it to you. This thread is asking how we could get them to willingly give it to us. I answer, as honestly as I can, that we cannot, and we must work toward education (to help eliminate poverty for those who have homes) and propaganda (to help philanthropy find homes for future persons who won’t have them, or to demand that “something” be done about pollution).
I answer that we cannot because it is not obvious that using this wealth will eliminate those problems. Once that (if that) becomes obvious then I think we will see an increase in philanthropy.
Ok, so my solution to the homeless problem is to have jackbooted soldiers in riot gear place all the homeless into camps until they can be ground into Soylant Green. That’s a solution right?
I think the question the OP is asking is “How do we get people to come up with solutions that are in everyones best interest, not just their own?”
You seem to be assuming that there is a solution to problems like poverty, war, crime, homelessness, etc. and that the solution can be found and implemented if we just throw enough money at it. The problem is that most people don’t have a solution to these issues so simply throwing money at them won’t work.
In that if you have say, a large segment of the population as dirt poor, and a small oligarchy that is filthy rich, and a HUGE gap between them-well, I wouldn’t want to live there.
When you have these gaps, you have instability. Resentment and it creates a climate that’s ripe for revolution and anarchy. What you need for stability is a large middle class, to put it in VERY simple terms.
I would say two of our biggest problems are poverty and lack of education-it seems to me like a good recipe for creating anarchy and violence. Revolutions don’t happen because of big government and overpopulation. Usually, people become revolutionaries out of desparation against a rigid regime-not because the government is taxing their inheritances.
As far as the poor being our problem, well, I subscribe to the story of Lazarus and the beggar. If I have this fabulous spread of food on my table, and I eat half, and then throw most of it away, and only throw a few crumbs to the starving beggar outside my door, you better believe I think that’s immoral.
I’m not talking about throwing money at the problem. But I do think that we need to be more aware of the have nots, and stop resenting them, or the fact that we DO have a duty to them. I firmly believe that.
Solutions? Perhaps looking at foreign and domestic policies based on human rights, as Jimmy Carter tried to do. Perhaps looking at people as having dignity, and not assuming that everyone is poor or homeless because they’re lazy. Perhaps we need to look beyond ourselves.
