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Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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I'm sorry that science has been doing what it can to improve our quality of life. Next time we'll just let people develop parasites, diseases and have to hunt or gather their food so the laws of nature will apply more. Sorry again for the inconvenience. Insincerely, Q |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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As far group solutions go, I didn't say anything about them specifically. I attacked the idea that a country should be considered a 'group'. However, you've not backed up how solutions which target dense areas of poverty are more 'productive', whatever that means. From what I remember from my textbooks, intense work with each individual who are in a targeted group is what makes anti-poverty type interventions work in solving household poverty, drug-use, abuse, etc. I'm not even sure you'd have much 'individual' data beyond that, because hardly anyone does studies on 1 individual, so I really don't know how you can make the comparison you do. Perhaps all you're saying is if you fund an anti-poverty movement, giving it to people who all live close together, that money seems to go further than if you did that with the same number of people all over the country. No ****! Quote:
I hate that I have to clarify what I say always. I never said that having the government redstribute wealth would get rid of poverty...I said that the OP said that. Secondly, half of this is reiterating what people have already said, and which I agree with! Thirdly, I don't believe money and value necessarily add up very well, despite what we try to do, and this also goes towards the fact that some rich people, who aren't cheating others, are not creating that much value. And as to people getting rich by 'cheating' others being uncommon, well, that's a matter of opinion in regards to what counts as cheating. Quote:
As to the first part of this paragraph, please don't make it look like it's targeted towards me. As I said earlier, I was talking about the OP. I totally agree with you that you have to fix causes and not symptoms. "Low upward mobility"...what does this mean? How does a socioeconomic structure contain 'aims'? What a socioeconomic structure is, is a result of what you make, not the other way round. As far as not having infrastructure or education impeding wealth, have you ever thought about who determines that you need to be educated and that you need to have 'infrastructure' to have work? Can you not see that these themselves are something that the wealthy of society have forced as prerequisits for wealth? You say that rich people don't impede non-rich people at all, but yet you list 2 very good impediments that wouldn't exist in order to be wealthy, if the people who were rich didn't make them a requisite for being wealthy. As far as poverty on a larger scale goes, if a culture rejects this way of life, who are we, as a rich nation, to enforce it? Unfortunately, we do enforce it, because if a group does not have education and infrastructure to support them, they will be exploited. Quote:
I understand that taking away profits and money from the people who would use them to make more profit slows economic growth. And I suppose I can see that growth is needed on the part of the people in poverty, in order for them to not be poor. However, overall growth is not needed to reduce poverty. In fact, there can totally be economic growth and an increase in poverty at the same time. Likewise, there can exist economic decline and with a decrease in poverty. With all your bitching about socialism preventing growth, it in fact did not address anything about poverty, except that you say it help put low (poverty stricken, in other words?) and middle-class income people in the same playing field. I don't quite understand how you can blame socialism for each country's individual decision about trade laws. (I also surely hope you've never pointed out that communism doesn't work for the reason of 'just look at Cuba!', because they've been under a trade embargo for years.) |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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As a side note my points are not personal, and taking them personally begets a misunderstanding and an adversarial debate style. You are not my adversary in this debate, poverty is. And it doesn't matter if either of us are the smartest and most superior debaters who ever lived if what we propose isn't a viable solution to poverty. Please don't take anything I say personally, because you are not the scope of my points. Quote:
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If your point is that macro solutions can't solve all the problems, then I will say the exact thing that will cease all further debate on this point: you're right. Macro solutions are utilitarian in that they are trying to solve problems in a pragmatic broad way, but these macro solutions are just trying to make the most effective use of a large investment. And it's utilitarian, and no it doesn't solve everything. But that's not the point of a macro solution: the point of a macro solution is to implement a baseline solution which has the most effective return on investment, but not be the end-all be-all solution. These macro solutions are broad infrastructure spending and education spending. Quote:
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A socioeconomic structure has a purpose or reason for existence, and that is its aim. Who decides that you need education and infrastructure to work? Well no one and everyone. You need infrastructure in order for businesses to feel comfortable investing in an area. Without infrastructure businesses will have a huge amount of trouble obtaining any reasonable amount of success. Education? Well businesses traditionally want educated people, as well as the fact that educated people have a larger range of options in society. It's not about telling people how to live their life, it's about giving them the ability to choose between a variety of lifestyles. If a person has no choice in their life about what they do and are forced into every decision while still remaining underfed and in fear all the time, our empathy and altruism urge us to believe that this is a poor lifestyle. It is not judging these people, but rather feeling sympathetic to their external conditions, and putting ourselves in their place. There is no reason that this is necessary the morally right way of looking at it, it's just that a large majority of people have empathetic sentiments like these. Quote:
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As for socialism, I was merely trying to illuminate that socialism has a humanist agenda but in effect has targets of limited scope. Just because someone has good intentions and aims to achieve a specific goal doesn't mean they will accomplish that goal in return for a diligent effort. The truth of the matter is that if your plan isn't good enough it won't work, even if it has the noblest of intentions. This is my personal belief about socialism, and I'm pretty sure that no one on this forum has the capacity to change my mind here, so the point is henceforth moot. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
I only thought you were targeted against me because you quoted me at the top of your post.
"Poverty exists because of a lot of reasons, but the chief among them being people living in an socioeconomic structure which requires them to be a part of that structure to survive, and for various reasons people either don't or cannot integrate themselves successfully into that structure." This point is what I want to talk about in regards to saying that having rich people causes poor people. It touches on a point I almost put in in my first post which I decided to remove, but I want to touch on it again. We are both agreed the quoted sentence above. So surely you must see that if that infrastructure weren't there, there'd be no problems of trying to fit into it. By definition poverty cannot exist without richness existing, because poverty is a comparison in resources. For instance, if you go to a secluded tribe in a jungle, they don't think they're impovershed until they have a comparison of what they don't have. Now, this does not mean that merely having wealth itself causes poverty, but its pretty damned close. Poverty would be much less of a concern if people could simply stay in poverty if they chose, and keep a lifestyle they're used to that they like, or climb the ladder of wealth if they wanted. Unfortunately, people can't do that, because people who are wealthy and who are climbing the wealth ladder, take control of vaste quantities of resources and dictate how they are used. For instance, owning and running a personal farm is not feasible for the majority of people. Another example is that of any small company where there's a megacorp that provides the same service/makes the same thing. It's really hard to get your foot in the door once there's massive control of that specific thing, where they'll always be able to undercut your price. People are forced to work for large companies whether they want to or not. Furthermore, the wealth that exists in pretty much any large corporation relies heavily on a huge amount of low-wage workers who have little to no prospect of advancement, where the jobs are often incredibly boring. With enough low-wage workers, they pretty much have to buy the cheap goods, and you've got a catch22. You say that economic growth gives people more of a choice, but it also closes doors to some choices too. |
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If we're talking about poverty in Africa your point has some weight, but what has greater weight is the fact that the flow of goods that give power to the few has been unimpeded. Guns have done more harm than infrastructure ever would. And it is other elements like these. If we could stop every gun from going into Africa and allow Africans to live as though there wasn't anything going on in the rest of the world, we just might, but that is not the case. Quote:
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I mean when we're being altruistic we're being realistic about it as well. And when a business is searching for investment prospects they are searching for places where there is stability and a possible workforce that is enthusiastic about working hard. Actually to be honest I'm curious if you have a romantic view of the past, and you see modern culture as anathema to the better nature of humanity. I get the hint of this in what you say but I'm not sure if it's just misinterpretation based on the way you've phrased things. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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I don't know where you got the impression that my statement regarding the laws of nature still applying to us meant ignorant savagery or the cessation of scientific endeavour. I just mean that I hope when I'm 85, in the hospital, dying that nobody will feel obliged to dump 60 or 70 grand a year worth of treatment, machinery and hospital space into keeping me going until I'm 95, in the hospital begging to be let go. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
Although it is completely tangential: I prefer the double post. It signifies to the reader that there was a gap in time between the two thoughts.
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Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
I know and understand why it makes a certain kind of sense to post again instead of editing a post, but it would still be better to edit, and then either preface your edit with "Edit:" or seperate the content with a line of *****'s or something, considering I'm pretty much going to be obliged to merge them all anyway.
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Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
Vendetta: Ever study the social effects of the industrial revolution? Suicide rates soared, at least in England. And yet job prospects of working in a factory within countries undergoing industrialization were what drew people to live in ****-holes of cities. My own romantic view of the past, perhaps, but I've learned facts to back this up. But again, I don't even need this. People like nature. People vacation in the wilderness, along beaches, and take pictures of sunsets because they like them and are drawn to them. Oh, there's also the suspiciousness of current staggering rates of depression in the developed world too. Don't get me wrong though, I'm no luddite. I wouldn't be sitting here, talking on the internet from my home computer if I were. I do imagine how nice it'd be to be able to own a small farm and actually make enough money to not live in poverty. That's the extent of it.
When I've written my posts, I've generally been thinking of poverty within North America, and I doubt that you can say that our lifestyle has been fully embraced by everyone. And what I was trying to say is that rich people DO force certain life choices on those who aren't rich enough to resist, and make other choices an impossibility. You laugh that no one forces jungle-faring tribes to work in factories only because the possibility to have such a lifestyle in North America is so far gone you failed to even think (probably) about it. I understand that generally people will plop down jobs where they're wanted, but that in no way fixes or helps poverty when those are dead-end jobs. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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I understand the effects of industrialization, sir, but I also know that industrialization is a stepping-stone for cultures. China went through and is going through huge industrialization, but they are trying to move forward from that. They implemented a universal health care system last week. People are willing to submit to industrialization, by their own choice, because they are willing to sacrifice for what they believe is a better future, and because life with food and water is better than life without, whichever way you slice it. I honestly think you're arguing from some Platonic seperation of reality in your head, sir. And I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just trying to be honest. I would wholeheartedly suggest you watch some documentaries about what it's like to live in other places in the world, and maybe take some classes on other cultures, or maybe read or listen to a world news service. When you understand what goes on in the developing world, everything in your heart and mind can't help but be wrenched into a horrible knot as you sit there on the couch and tears well up in your eyes from the portrayal that has been given you from Anderson Cooper or Ken Burns or some other person. And it's not as important how these situations arose in the world as it is important that you get rid of them. It's about real, plausible solutions, not about getting angry at the ways of the world but having empathy for your fellow human. I have thought about this. I think about this a lot. I'm going into development and foreign aid as a career (which is why this is such a pet subject for me), and one thing I know for sure is that wherever I will go in the world, my skills will be in demand, because most people in the world want better things, they want the 21st century, they want a better life by their own terms. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
Ok...
I clearly don't want what's best for people. Also, I specifically implied and stated that "I want everyone to live 'naturalistically', and that this is best for everyone". This was made clear in my post when I said that the extent of what I'd like to be able to do is be able to own a farm and not live in poverty. I also have never taken an anthropolgy class, or have read, watched or heard any media that talks about people in third world countries. When I say that I was thinking about modern day North America and developed nations, I was actually talking about the third world countries, obviously. I also said that I'm against any industrialization or development, particularly for starving people, all because industrialization isn't perfect. Unsarcastically now though, you said yourself that you thought you were getting a hint of a 'romantic view of the past'. My following post to that statement merely addressed something that you brought up. You railroaded yourself into into seeing what you think to be my philosophy. You say "it's not as important how these situations arose in the world as it is important that you get rid of them." Solving solutions almost always involves understanding how they come to be. Otherwise the solution is usually just be a bandaid. As long as when you develop and give foreign aid in your career you make sure you're not forcing yourself on others, all the power to you. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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There are some tenets of the interventionist philosophy that are not based on choice, such as tyrannies, dictatorships, and insurgents that are ruthlessly killing others. We assume that the abuses of those in power are not the will of the people, even if the group has popular support, and we intervene. Now you can argue that this can been done well or it can be done poorly, and that is true. Our intervention in Iraq was a poor idea from a stability and well-being standpoint. Our intervention in other countries, such as Czechoslovakia, was a good idea. Quote:
Using History as a standard is weak because our understanding of history is often not empirical but anecdotal. We have historical records of things from the 70s forward in businesses, who keep long backlogs of information to act on and analysis of that information, and I would call that empirical history: it's worth using because it's based on verifiable true evidence, and the contingents in the decisions in the past closely resemble the contingents now. We also have a wealth of information on the Great Depression which is not evidential but anecdotal. We like to use the Great Depression as a model for understanding the pitfalls of every financial crisis and how to act in response to the crisis, but the problem is that our knowledge of the great depression is still limited in terms of the pertinent financial information, and it does not help us in solving our current financial crisis; it is anecdotal history. This is the problem with using anecdotal history to try to understand things. It's a straw man argument. The two cases often superficially resemble each other but the pertinent contingencies are completely different. There are different ways to view the past, but I treat history as a potential data set, just like I treat conversation like a potential data set, and I treat the internet as a potential data set. Each of these sources has a chance of giving me good information and bad information, and all that is important is good information towards making the best decision. And where that information comes from doesn't matter, all that matters is that it is verifiable true information or that it is verifiable efficacious philosophy. Quote:
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I urge you to thumb through http://www.devex.com It's Monster.com for development and foreign aid professionals. This is how most of the world's foreign aid is done: by professionals who are hired by the country or by firms in the country. Charity does not even come close to doing what development does. Charity is an issue of band-aids, not surgery. Development is not. I do not like charity because I think charity can make things worse, but I do like development and foreign aid, and the distinction here is the goals of the two things. Charity often solves a surface problem, like hunger or sickness, but often tends to feed into the causal problem. Development offers things that are not directly useful in solving the surface problem, like roads. People are more willing to give to something that solves hunger or sickness, which is why charity exists. Not many people are willing to give to road-builing, bank formation, police force stabilization, agriculture experts, and investors because they don't think this will solve the problem, but it seems to be the only way to solve it for good. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
It all has to start with the little ones. Teach the younger children if they want a change they need to use there voice. Their voice is very strong. As a little child I was thought to help anything and everything from a bug to a crying elder. I wanted a change and still do. See when you want to change something and tell someone about that change it is like a pandemic, it spreads so rapidly. But in this case of poverty in 3rd world countries or poverty period, people really don't get the full picture. I donate every chance i get. I don't like to see poor people on the streets or on the television. It hurts and i don't take things for granted.
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Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
http://www.thevenusproject.com/resource_eco.htm
You can read about a recource based econemy, as well as many other wonderfull and inovative ideas presented in the Venus Project here. There is more then enough food, and other needed resources needed for EVERYONE on this planet to be fed and housed. There are enough resources for everyone to have a computer, a phone, a car, an Iphone. I could go on, but this subject bothers me. Its is only the greed and ignorance of men that stops our society from leaving a monetary system based on scarcity, when there is in fact, thanks to modern technology THAT EXISTS TODAY, no scarcity left, but still the barter ( or money system ) still holds on as " needed ", just becuase one wants more then another, when there is more then enough for all. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
This may be kind of a short answer, in my opinion, as a Christian, eradicating poverty is impossible. Jesus said in the bible "The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want." Mark 14:7 (there is also another part of this verse that will cause many arguments, but that's for another time)
Does this mean that we shouldn't try? No. Jesus does say that we can help them, and says that we should (see Luke 12:33). |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
So what you're saying is that God has made "Keeping part of the population in abject poverty" part of His divine plan? For what purpose? To give the wealthy a chance to engage in some good acts? To give the poor a chance to suffer quietly?
It really sounds to me like you're saying "God has MADE it so there will ALWAYS be poor people" Pardon me if that sounds like a pretty crappy plan. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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So is it " God did it " or " Man did it " ? I personally lean more towards man when presented with it like that. Just a thought. |
Re: Solutions to World-Wide Poverty?
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There was actually a debate on this that I saw. If I find it, I'll link it, but I'm not sure where I could find it. |
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