Dr.Who
Well-Known Member
Here are a few paragraphs from an article called "The World Food Crisis."
"Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.
Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he said.
The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.
Industrial nations are not generous, unfortunately. Overseas aid by rich countries fell 8.4 percent last year from 2006. Developed nations would have to increase their aid budgets by 35 percent over the next three years just to meet the commitments they made in 2005."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10thu1.html?ref=opinion
As I read the whole article I felt compassion for the people who would be facing hardships and a desire to do something about it.
But then I started questioning the underlying assumptions: "The US is guilty for the hardships they will face so we need to give them food or change our policies."
Do those governments have no responsiblity or control over what happens over there? Did they contribute nothing to this mess? Just because we buy ethanol does that make us guilty? What about the people who grow the stuff at the expense of their own rain forests?
Is it the place of the US government to extend benevolence to citizens of another country? Certainly individual citizens can, but should the government?
We have set a goal as members of the UN to provide a tiny amount of aid and we have consistently fallen short (as has just about every other country that agreed to the same goal). Since we made that promise we should at least live up to it.
Nevertheless, when one combines the giving that the US government provides with the giving that individuals provide we as a nation are one of the most generous in the world.
And still that is not enough to stop the hardships over there. I wonder if just giving food to them ever could help. It doesn't build infrastructure. It doesn't teach skills people could use to survive. It might even enable people and governments to make no improvements. This may not be true for donations that go through private organizations but it is most likely true for food that comes through the UN. And changing policies to be "green" is just as likely to hurt as to help. This mess is in small part the unintended consequence of green policies.
How about this for a new strategy:
Let the government do what is best for our citizens while being good stewards of the planet. Let our government not act unjustly toward other nations or peoples. Let our government live up to the promise we have made. Let our individual citizens do whatever they think is best to help - like drilling wells instead of shipping bottled water.
Let's trade the food we have and they want for the things they have and we want. That sounds like the best win-win for all. They learn to be industrous and productive and they get lasting benefits not only in terms of food but in their infrastructure and systems for continued survival. They develop industries which can trade with other countries besides us too. We get oil, or labor, or electronics, or widgets or whatever in a fair return.
True compassion helps them to do for themselves what they can and does not enable them to do less than all they can.
"Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.
Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he said.
The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain.
Industrial nations are not generous, unfortunately. Overseas aid by rich countries fell 8.4 percent last year from 2006. Developed nations would have to increase their aid budgets by 35 percent over the next three years just to meet the commitments they made in 2005."
As I read the whole article I felt compassion for the people who would be facing hardships and a desire to do something about it.
But then I started questioning the underlying assumptions: "The US is guilty for the hardships they will face so we need to give them food or change our policies."
Do those governments have no responsiblity or control over what happens over there? Did they contribute nothing to this mess? Just because we buy ethanol does that make us guilty? What about the people who grow the stuff at the expense of their own rain forests?
Is it the place of the US government to extend benevolence to citizens of another country? Certainly individual citizens can, but should the government?
We have set a goal as members of the UN to provide a tiny amount of aid and we have consistently fallen short (as has just about every other country that agreed to the same goal). Since we made that promise we should at least live up to it.
Nevertheless, when one combines the giving that the US government provides with the giving that individuals provide we as a nation are one of the most generous in the world.
And still that is not enough to stop the hardships over there. I wonder if just giving food to them ever could help. It doesn't build infrastructure. It doesn't teach skills people could use to survive. It might even enable people and governments to make no improvements. This may not be true for donations that go through private organizations but it is most likely true for food that comes through the UN. And changing policies to be "green" is just as likely to hurt as to help. This mess is in small part the unintended consequence of green policies.
How about this for a new strategy:
Let the government do what is best for our citizens while being good stewards of the planet. Let our government not act unjustly toward other nations or peoples. Let our government live up to the promise we have made. Let our individual citizens do whatever they think is best to help - like drilling wells instead of shipping bottled water.
Let's trade the food we have and they want for the things they have and we want. That sounds like the best win-win for all. They learn to be industrous and productive and they get lasting benefits not only in terms of food but in their infrastructure and systems for continued survival. They develop industries which can trade with other countries besides us too. We get oil, or labor, or electronics, or widgets or whatever in a fair return.
True compassion helps them to do for themselves what they can and does not enable them to do less than all they can.
