Reading through Guardian the other day, I came across an Oxford philosopher that gave away a third of his salary away to charity. Of course we hear all about noble actions that give money to developing countries every single day: The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation with over 26.1 Billion USD endowment, the Rockerfeller foundation with over 4.6 Billion USD Endowment. Those amounts make you think that they are doing a lot to help the poor and improve the situation in the third world countries.
Well, you are wrong.
First of all, the majority of these countries are constantly under war. Genocides, coups, civil wars, tyrants, rapes, hunger, diseases. The first logical question that pops in my mind when I see war in these countries is one: these guys don’t have food to eat, where do they find the resources to buy or manufacture weapons? Of course, you’ll say that the tyrants ruling these countries have access to valuable resources, such as gold and diamonds, and trade these for weapons.
Fair enough, but instead trying to stop the war in these countries, why don’t you just get those weapon dealers? Getting the knife out a child’s hands will stop it from harming itself. Why we do not do that instead?
Then, moving on to the next question. Where all these huge pile of money we are donating going? I mean, people has been donating actively for the past 40 years towards the development of these countries. The answer is quite simple: you buy them a plate of food and a pill today, but they need these and tomorrow. So your donation help 10 people live through the day. But what happens the next day? They need these resources again, because they have no means of growing their own food. They have no resources of buying the medicine themselves. So, even you can’t just throw at them 1 billion dollars for food and auto-magically they’ll start growing food of their own. You’ll need to constantly throw billions to keep them fed.
Instead of buying them food, why don’t we show them how to grow it? If they have water issues, why don’t we build them water desalination units? Why don’t we build them a city with that 1 Billion dollars and let these people live in it? Oh, but the tyrants aren’t going to let that happen, are they? Of course the won’t. UNTIL YOU START EDUCATING THEM. Until you get the guns out of their hands. Until you stop the weapon dealers of selling them bullets. Until you stop accepting blood diamonds. It is logically and fundamentally easier to catch and stop 100 gun dealers that are selling bullets to all fractions in Africa, than convince a tyrant to stop killing people. Why don’t we do that first, and then focus spending 1/3 of our salary on feeding them?
And then, there’s another truth that the G8 governments know really well: if African countries were as developed as we are the global warming would be accelerated, oil would be up 50 years earlier and food would not be enough for 10 billion people. Earth will have no resources to support our exponential growth. So, to summarize, our economies are grown in expense and thanks to Africa. It is to our interest that people die by the hundreds every day in Africa, so we can use the resources that normally would go to them for us.
Lets face it, earth’s resources are allocated unequally. The problem is not the tyrants, nor their unfortunate luck. The problem is that governments want Africa to stay like that. Why face resource exhaust issues in 100 years, when we just leave Africa die off? The real issue is that we are going to face these issues anyway, we are just postponing them. Why don’t we start developing technologies that will help make this world a better place? Why don’t we stop spending our resources on weapons and 500$ bags and open our eyes to see the real pressing issues?
But maybe I am just a conspiracy theorist, not a technocrat.
November 30th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Well that was quite a post, bold and truthful.
To begin with, you are right on all references to the problems described in your article. This isn’t a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact, thus disagreeing is far from an option to anyone reading your article.
As far as feeding them or better yet, teaching them how to fish, consider Lao Tzu’s words when he said “Give a Man a Fish, Feed Him For a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, Feed Him For a Lifetime” . If Lao Tzu could stipulate such truthfulness in his words during acient chinese times, I find it highly unlikely we are unable to do so in the 21st century.
Regarding war, we are by far the most shameful creature that ever set foot on this planet with death tolls of 160 million people (approx) in the 20th century, and we are already in the 7 figure mark in the 21st century. Considering we only just managed to walk into this century, a new millenia too, we are still the shameful beings we started out to be in the previous centuries.
Without wanting to go off-topic too much, war is what seems to be a necesity. Conspiracy theories state that population control must be in check for the sake of the rest of the world to ensure survival. Overpopulation is a problem that conspiracy theories have stated to be solved in many different ways such as enducing controlled substances in particular ways to ensure targeted deaths within a particular time frame. An example of such a theory is one related to tobacco industries which state that cigarettes are used for population control as a service to governments based on their predictions of socioeconomic outcomes in the future.
And with such an example, control is probably the keyword here. We have a finite number of resources, and whatever pushed the creation of the human being also ironically gave us the urge to reproduce rapidly in the billions. Thus, war could also be considered a form of population control. It makes sense for this to exist. The methodology of one government buying into countries to suppress them is far from a lie (at least in serious speculation), and media covered stories always manage to keep the rest of the world that is unaffected by conflict into check.
I do wonder however, particular countries such as Russia have grown silent in terms of “macho” attitude, which makes me think they might be progressing much like the Dutch do. But then again Russia is nobody’s pushover, we saw the conflicts in 2008, and we saw the Ukrainian gas pipeline issues.
Conclusively, I agree. There is something wrong. But it is wrong for the right reasons. At the end of the day, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So what do you do? Do we improvise and regulate the level of survival to a lesser state by allowing equality amongst the masses? Do we allow the current situation to grow into an impossible task for media to cover or for governments to deny?
I would say that this is my 2 pence, but this is more like a 10 pound note. I could spend a whole degree dissecting this topic…
December 7th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
War is such a broad issue you can see it from many all different angles. Do people donate money because they care or because they want to look good and blind people so they can`t see all the profit the donators make from war? Nobody cares about helping those countries develop, or help those people. All they want is to take advantage of everything.