I believe aid agencies contributes to global poverty.
Aid agencies provide poverty ridden countries with aid.
Poor people receives the aid and gradually they become acustomed to receiving aid. Their will is destroyed and they become passive and become lazy and become contend with poverty.
Without aid, the poor people would soon feel hungry. They would be forced to make change for the better.
Poor people receiving aid is similar to people on long-term unemployment benefits. Just as it is harder for the long-term unemployed to find work, so it is harder for the poor to reverse their misfortune.
Pinacle, I’d like you to investigate the problems in Somalia, Sri Lanka or any number of other poverty stricken countries to demonstrate your theory.
I’ve heard this theory before, it is one of those great rugged capitalist cliches. It imagines that the only cause of poverty is the individual’s choices, the only reason that people are poor is their individual choices and the only thing separating the impoverished from the rich is individual action. It is the old bootstrap narrative, much like Adam Smith’s myth of primitive accumulation.
If this is your theory, I’d like to see some data helping prove your case.
Do you assume that a destitute who was born in a ghetto has an equal opportunity but only if he applies himself? There are cases where a black man and a white man with equal credentials will apply for a job, but the white man will get the job because the employer is racist. On the other hand, if the black man gets the job it is because the employer cannot discriminate between races and will hire him to save his own ass from repudiation, that is, he’d rather not hire him but will accept the lesser of two evils.
If some people can not survive in this environment, then they should just die off. No point prolonging their agony. I drew a comparison between receiving aid and long-term unemployment. Do you agree on the comparison?
abgrund
Aid is bad because it destroys people’s spirit! It’s like being long-term unemployed.
Efficiency and progress is ours once more
Now that we have the Neutron bomb
It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done
Away with excess enemy
But no less value to property
No sense in war but perfect sense at home:
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonight
Gonna
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
Behold the sparkle of champagne
The crime rate’s gone
Feel free again
O’ life’s a dream with you, Miss Lily White
Jane Fonda on the screen today
Convinced the liberals it’s okay
So let’s get dressed and dance away the night
While they:
Kill kill kill kill Kill the poor:Tonight
The notion that people should merely die if they cannot survive this environment is wildly irresponsible. The “environment” as you call it is a social system that is created by human beings. Our responsbility in terms of justice is to improve the social system so that all people can be sustaining. Our goals are the same (self-sustaining human life) but your concept of do or die does not take into account two things. First, mass starvation and suffering is an effect of our global system and second, if we have the power to help someone, we should do it.
The comparison can hold. I think that there is some shared characteristics in the systemic problems of long term unemployment and mass suffering. In some ways, I can agree with the comparison but in many important ways, it does not hold.
Specifically, the substantial conditions are vastly different. The problems facing a country like Afghanistan have more history and are much more complex than the problems facing whatever long-termed unemployed person you’ve chosen for elimination. We cannot even begin to account for situation in a country until we understand its history, its political rule, its culture, its role in the world, and many other factors.
There is a move to naturalize the idea that human beings must be forced into a situation where they must work as wage laborors or die. It is not a natural condition. Certainly human beings always had to find food, shelter and other necessities, but this wasn’t always dependent on national borders that confine, political situations that bind, and a global system that exploits.
I’m very interested in the fact that you use a cross as an avatar but preach such a callous version of capitalism. I think a nice photosphop addition of a dollar sign in that avatar might be a little more appropriate
I can see from your post that you know nothing of Christianity. We are not obliged to help people when they just want to die.
A person receiving aid in the third world is the same as a person receiving aid in the first world.
Aid keeps a lot of people alive, articifially. It is not solving the problem of poverty. The solution is to withdrawal all aid. Those who become Christians and dies will go to heaven, while those who survied will live a better life. Win-Win situation!
You are wrong mainly because of the reason you give. Unfortunately too many people hold the same view as you do when making a judgment about the third world or any poor population for that matter:
Hunger is not the only motivating factor that drives people to do something about their situation. In fact, this would be the least motivating factor—many have died due to hunger, which just shows you that there must be other reasons why people are poor and starving.
I suggest you read on environmental politics, for it includes not only the connection of degradation of environment to a) impoverishment of both the indigenous people and those living in areas where the livelihood of the people depend primarily on the health of the environment, but also its connection to b) the violence that erupts every so often creating volatile situations in many parts of those countries affected.
You make a brilliant argument for the separation of church and state, PoR. Your idiocy is truly astounding. I don’t think you are capable of grasping why I will never respond to you again, so I’ll just say bye.
Foreign aid isn’t the only reason for declining infant mortality rates–in fact I doubt it’s even the main one–but that’s hardly relevant. The real question I suppose is whether the decline in infant mortality rates is, in itself, a good thing. The global ethical consensus says that it is. After all, most of us have been blessed with a dose of empathy. We still have our violence obsessed “realists” like yourself who like to casually advocate genocide…but these types had their heyday in the 1930s; today you guys occupy a rather pathetic minority.
Of course, all good things have side effects. Overpopulation is the side effect of lower infant mortality. But this problem, like most problems, has a rational solution…one that involves, of all things, foreign aid. Because it is foreign aid that will quicken the development of sex education and spread access to birth control and reproductive health care across the developing world. Foreign aid may indirectly contribute to overpopulation, but it can also be its antidote.
I wouldn’t say destroyed. It clearly has set them back, but the biggest problem for developing countries is the technology gap…which existed between industrialized nations and the third world long before overpopulation became a pressing issue. Since technology breeds technology, the gap is widening and is basically insurmountable without intervention from the wealthiest nations. There’s really no way around this. Even your absurd genocide and eugenics scheme wouldn’t give developing nations the technological buy-in necessary to compete in the game of global economics. For that you need foreign aid.
As for the genocide and eugenics bit…I’d rather not dignify it with a response; it’s probably only there for shock value anyway. Still, you’re scum for posting it.
beleive it or not capitalists, sharing is not the worst thing in the world, no matter what the King MTV Bible told you.
didnt i hear about some guy who wrote a paper on how africa could be expensively refurbished with high tech farm whatnots and could be made self sustaining if the west did actually want to make them self sustained? thats definetely what i heard. and im sure the west would prefer selling weapons to warlords over… well pretty much anything in the world.
plus youve also got the post colonial borders messing wth conflicting ethnicities. they dont go to war just because they are stupid. hutsis and tutsis used to be two different countries. then some whitey came along and put them in the same arbitrary colony. then whitey left and said ‘up for grabs’ and its been war ever since. the hutsis wouldnt have tried to take over the tutsis if they were in a separate country, but they would if the infrastructure of rwanda was in place to facilitate their genocide. i dont know thats my theory.
africa is fucked up, and it was before we started giving them money. maybe not so much before we started giving them weapons though.
when the resident christian hater knows more about christianity than the guy with the cross avatar… thats just sad… well i guess i just know that catholics are definetely anti-euthanasia. i guess the heathen-christian-wannabes could be ok with it.
Huh? When did I say that you are obliged to help people that want to die? That is a very strange statement, where did it come from?
Are you speculating on the intention of the starving in the world? Do you assume that they want to die? hmmm… I guess that the problem with starving people around the world is that they want to die, is that what you are implying?
In that they are receiving aid? That is a rather vulgar way of understanding it. If you mean that receiving aid has a similar form any time aid is receive, then yes, I agree with you. But this is hardly helpful in understanding the need and the people in need.
Artificially? I suppose under this notion, we shouldn’t feed babies either, why don’t those little children just pull themselves by their bootstraps, right? Is your solution to poverty to let the impoverished die? Interesting, I guess I had a wrong opinion on christian charity. I suppose christian charity is the idea that people should convert to christianity before they die. I truly hope that you don’t believe these statements, if you do, please show us the teachings of Jesus that support this attitude, I guess I know nothing of christianity.
I would add to this, everything that gives birth to weakness.
People’s ignorance of Christianity is astonishing.
A lot of people here are racists. Do people think grown men from other races can not take care of themselves? Do people think they are all intellectually impaired? The people I refer to are grown men, who can take care of themselves but are pacified by aid!
If people just want to sit on their butt all day and do no work. Then they are committing suicide. It is not a Christian duty to prevent suicide. When someone does something wrong, there is justice! If they choose to do no work then they are only condemning themselves!
You displine someone when someone does you wrong on purpose. For a Christian, the truth is always clear, and morality is always absolute!
