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Aswad -> RE: Eradicating women. (8/22/2007 3:26:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
I don't see this as some competition for excellence in the world, nor as an effort to equalize everyone's resources. I see it simply as a call to alleviate severe suffering, period. It's simpler, and it works better for me that way. But to each their own POV.
The problem is that your approach causes new suffering, and aggravates what already exists.
Don't get me wrong, I get the impulse to help. But you're not helping. You're not part of the solution. You're part of the problem. For every generation you help bring up, you are helping bring new children into the world that you cannot support. There is a limited set of resources available, and funneling our surplus into their deficit is not going to help them one iota in the long run, nor is it going to be good for the world at large. It's just going to cause a downward spiral of suffering until the whole world suffers.
Let's start out with the basic facts of life. To live, we need resources, which is another way of saying "currency", which breaks down as goods or money (which is goods that have yet to take a form). Thus, each life needs a constant stream of currency, making it a matter where economics are applicable. Very simply put, economics of this sort breaks down as follows:
First you eliminate debt, then you lower expenses, then you invest in profit.
When you engage in charity, you are transferring an asset to them. Their land has other assets; i.e. natural resources. Assets should be spent in the order outlined above, as the constant stream of currency is what allows life, while growth in this stream of currency is what allows the standard of living to be raised. Work is the source of the income, the stream of currency, and land is one of the means to do this; agriculture, trade, etc.
The problem is that when spending an asset properly causes short-term suffering, people will always make the compromise of suffering less in the short term but more in the long term. You end up financially supporting one generation as a band-aid, and then the generation you supported will create a new, larger generation, one which will be an expense in the economy of life. However, you have not raised their income at all, so the new expense needs to be supported in the same way, or it, too, will suffer and die.
It is the way of nature, indeed reality, that these things stabilize themselves in a cruel way.
Unless you can contribute to lowering their population, or raising their ability to sustain themselves, you are just causing more suffering. And virtually all regular means of doing such a thing are horribly inefficient, at best. If you really care about suffering, you must think economy. The first viable step in this direction is to teach them about economy and how it applies to family planning.
Regular education is next in line, but will only benefit them if they are able to bring things up to a subsistance standard of living; basically, it is an investment, and thus a very poor choice when the expenses exceed the income. Reading, writing, math, and so forth, is a useless set of skills at first. How to build and manage a society, from the bottom up, is a very useful set of skills, however, starting with family planning, hygiene, disease control, agriculture, construction, and so forth.
Treat the disease, not the symptoms.
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