What is your plan to reduce global poverty?

[whistleclient]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: tangent1138

Originally posted by: totalnoob
Abolish all forms of socialism.

Why would you want to abolish police, firefighters, and the army? We kinda need those things.

those aren't the means of production

No, but they are they do represent the collective allocation of resources. If you're entirely against socialism then you'd have an entirely private police force, private firefighters, and an all mercenary army.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Originally posted by: LunarRay
Poverty is a relative term.... I think anyhow..

Some treasure shiny stones and others shiny gold...

To those in the former ship them stones... and from the latter the gold to do the shipping.

Hayabusa,
Birth Control.... omg... I might not be here but for the lack of it back when.... hehehehehe But then I'm poor... so maybe you're right...

The facts of life are that the population increases, and the more food you give impoverished nations, the more they reproduce. Instead of improving their condition, they breed. Then there are more mouths to feed and the cycle repeats.

On top of that, many nations like China and India with large populations are going to use more and more resources per capita.

More people wanting more stuff.

The only way out is to have fewer people. Imagining that technology is going to pull out a deux ex machina on a perpetual basis is hubris.

Someone once said that truth is beauty, but I've been looking for it long enough to know it can be one homely bastard.

There is truth in all you say...

No, there's not.

The myth of 'don't feed the poor, they'll just multiply more and need more' is contradicted by the negative correlation between prosperity and reprodutcion.

The more prosperous a society, the less reproduction it seems to have - a fact which makes gobal poverty efforts all the harder, since most new people are from the poor.

It also makes global poverty efforts all the more urgent, to prevent that problem.

There are many and sometimes conflicting issues. A billion people are underfed, but a third of the world's obeses people are in developing countries (bad good not no food).

On that last point - some in the thread have advocated 'global free trade', but an unintended consequence, as "50 Facts that should change the world" notes:

Public officials refer to ths as 'nutrition transition'. Farmers who once grew a variety f crops on a subsistence basis begin to concentrate on single cash crops. Countries begin to import more food from the industrialized world. Rather than eating fresh fruit and vegetables, people opt for highly processed, energy-dense goods, heavy in fat, sugar and salt.

...obesity--related conditions cost the US twelve percent of its health budget in the 1990s... more than double the $47 billion attributable to smoking. According to the WHO, the majority of chronic disease cases are occuring in the developing world. And in coutnries where health systems are already sorely challenged, the strain could becom intolerable...

Sixty-four percent of Mexican women are overweight, and 60 per cent of men... in some remote villages in Mexico, it is easier to buy a bag of potato chips than a banana.

Part of the solution seems to be getting better information out to areas where obesity levels are soaring... Singapore's Trim and Fit scheme has reduced obesity among children by nearly a half through changes in school catering and increasing the amount of sport and nutritional education.

But there is a clear danger that criticising certain food types too harshly could spark a huge backlash from the food industry. In April 2003 the WHO and the FAO were poised to issue a report on diet which suggested that sugar should make up no more than ten per cent of a balanced diet. The US Sugar Association launched a stinging attack, calling the report 'misguided [and] non-science based'. The Association said 25 per cen twas a far more realizstic safe level, and it also wrote to the US Health Secretary asking for the report to be withdrawn. It also threatened to put pressure on the American administration to scrap the WHO's funding...

Nutritional education is part of the solution, bur it's clear that economics have a major role to play. In Tonga, a WHO report suggested that development of sustainable farmining and fishing industries would help to make healthier traditional foods available at a reduced cost. Banning the importation of unhealthy food, as Fiji did, it another possibility. But options like this may incense the wealthier nations, who have mch to gain from exporting cheap food to developing countries [who can use free trrade laws to block them]...

 

[Double Trouble]

Originally posted by: Craig234
The myth of 'don't feed the poor, they'll just multiply more and need more' is contradicted by the negative correlation between prosperity and reprodutcion.

Providing free food or aid does not create prosperity, it simply provides a temporary means for sustenance and does indeed lead to increasing populations. Creating actual prosperity reduces population growth, but simply giving (food, money, whatever) without actually making sure it's done in such a way as to create sustainable prosperity is not only a waste of time, it does a disservice to the developing countries.

How many people would be willing to lower their personal standard of living if it would guarantee that someone in (for example) India would no longer be poor?

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Double Trouble

Originally posted by: Craig234
The myth of 'don't feed the poor, they'll just multiply more and need more' is contradicted by the negative correlation between prosperity and reprodutcion.

Providing free food or aid does not create prosperity, it simply provides a temporary means for sustenance and does indeed lead to increasing populations. Creating actual prosperity reduces population growth, but simply giving (food, money, whatever) without actually making sure it's done in such a way as to create sustainable prosperity is not only a waste of time, it does a disservice to the developing countries.

How many people would be willing to lower their personal standard of living if it would guarantee that someone in (for example) India would no longer be poor?

1. Do you have studies showing a correlation between aid and reproduction to support your distinction? No one said just give unlimited food. Rather, some seemed to suggest that the best thing is to not allow the poor to have food - to keep them chronicall so hungry that it inhibits reproduction. My point was countering that notion.

2. I would. Remember my OP, the reference to the 1% plan from leading anti-poverty people - that's not much of a reduction to your standard of living to do huge benefits.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: Craig234

The more prosperous a society, the less reproduction it seems to have - a fact which makes gobal poverty efforts all the harder, since most new people are from the poor.

It also makes global poverty efforts all the more urgent, to prevent that problem.

I think at some point you have to agree that what we can produce exceeds the needs of the people. There is a wall there somewhere beyond which the same issue you are speaking to will occur anyhow... The poorest nations will die from lack of what they need and the rich nations will too but it will not be the rich who die off in a rich society.. it will be the poor..
I do think a universally applied fix is in order or we should work to that... pump China or India up 20% and you increase the deaths.

I can see no way to engender prosperity into a place that has no resources and has to rely on what another can supply to exist. Food is food! Maybe if we found a way to sustain life in a sort of equilibrium it would work out fine... I think that means you populate according to your ability to feed that population level... maybe in concert with others or maybe not?

 

[bamacre]

The best thing and the only moral thing we can do for the rest of the world is to be a good example, to prove that we can be free, peaceful, and prosperous.

And unfortunately we haven't been doing a very good job of this.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

From 1997-2001 in Minnesota, the rate of births to women ages 15-19 among the Medicaid population was four times higher than the rate for non-Medicaid women in that age group. For ages 20-24 the birth rate was almost three times higher among Medicaid women. For women over age 35, the birth rate was almost three times higher in the non-Medicaid group than for Medicaid women of that age.

From this site.

With medicaid having a child increases income. What happens then is that there's another birth, and another. Note it's across the whole age spectrum.

They have more resources, and they have more children.

Now I'm not advocating starvation as a means of population control, but it has been mentioned that more advanced societies have fewer children, and Europe is a good example however increased food in itself does not advance society. If left to their own devices people may reach the point where they don't need human labor to grow crops, but in the real world money goes to dictators and the military in most instances. People may get more food, but they have no means to advance themselves. So they have more kids partly because they have no good means of birth control, and family is needed to plow the fields.

It completely sucks, but that's the real world.

 

[Ozoned]

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Craig234

The more prosperous a society, the less reproduction it seems to have - a fact which makes gobal poverty efforts all the harder, since most new people are from the poor.

It also makes global poverty efforts all the more urgent, to prevent that problem.

I think at some point you have to agree that what we can produce exceeds the needs of the people. There is a wall there somewhere beyond which the same issue you are speaking to will occur anyhow... The poorest nations will die from lack of what they need and the rich nations will too but it will not be the rich who die off in a rich society.. it will be the poor..
I do think a universally applied fix is in order or we should work to that... pump China or India up 20% and you increase the deaths.

I can see no way to engender prosperity into a place that has no resources and has to rely on what another can supply to exist. Food is food! Maybe if we found a way to sustain life in a sort of equilibrium it would work out fine... I think that means you populate according to your ability to feed that population level... maybe in concert with others or maybe not?

Nature had a sytem to take care of this. It was called adaptation. WE screwed it up.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: Ozoned

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Craig234

The more prosperous a society, the less reproduction it seems to have - a fact which makes gobal poverty efforts all the harder, since most new people are from the poor.

It also makes global poverty efforts all the more urgent, to prevent that problem.

I think at some point you have to agree that what we can produce exceeds the needs of the people. There is a wall there somewhere beyond which the same issue you are speaking to will occur anyhow... The poorest nations will die from lack of what they need and the rich nations will too but it will not be the rich who die off in a rich society.. it will be the poor..
I do think a universally applied fix is in order or we should work to that... pump China or India up 20% and you increase the deaths.

I can see no way to engender prosperity into a place that has no resources and has to rely on what another can supply to exist. Food is food! Maybe if we found a way to sustain life in a sort of equilibrium it would work out fine... I think that means you populate according to your ability to feed that population level... maybe in concert with others or maybe not?

Nature had a sytem to take care of this. It was called adaptation. WE screwed it up.

Eh?

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

I'm not advocating starvation as a means of population control.

You are not but think of the folks in this forum who would advocate letting the poor amongst us right here in the good ole US of A starve and be homeless... I think they would rather folks in other poor countries simply cease to exist and call it an evolutionary event... what's that called... survival of the fittest or some such.

 

[Ozoned]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Originally posted by: Ozoned

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Craig234

The more prosperous a society, the less reproduction it seems to have - a fact which makes gobal poverty efforts all the harder, since most new people are from the poor.

It also makes global poverty efforts all the more urgent, to prevent that problem.

I think at some point you have to agree that what we can produce exceeds the needs of the people. There is a wall there somewhere beyond which the same issue you are speaking to will occur anyhow... The poorest nations will die from lack of what they need and the rich nations will too but it will not be the rich who die off in a rich society.. it will be the poor..
I do think a universally applied fix is in order or we should work to that... pump China or India up 20% and you increase the deaths.

I can see no way to engender prosperity into a place that has no resources and has to rely on what another can supply to exist. Food is food! Maybe if we found a way to sustain life in a sort of equilibrium it would work out fine... I think that means you populate according to your ability to feed that population level... maybe in concert with others or maybe not?

Nature had a sytem to take care of this. It was called adaptation. WE screwed it up.

Eh?

All species, even early man, adapted to their surroundings. If they couldn't, they would go elsewhere (migrate) or cease to exist. It doesn't work that way anymore.

 

[0marTheZealot]

The best way to lift people out of poverty is for their governments to actually give a shit. For example, look at Africa. If even 10% of the governments in that continent gave a shit about their people, they would lift more people out of poverty than all the efforts of the last 200 years combined.

Look at the Arab world, instead of investing in schools, infrastructure and industry, the governments choose to spend the money on extravagent palaces, gold-plated bentleys, and massive amounts of top-of-the-line jets and tanks.

All the aid in the world won't do anything if the governments handling that money are corrupt to the core.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: LunarRay

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

I'm not advocating starvation as a means of population control.

You are not but think of the folks in this forum who would advocate letting the poor amongst us right here in the good ole US of A starve and be homeless... I think they would rather folks in other poor countries simply cease to exist and call it an evolutionary event... what's that called... survival of the fittest or some such.

Some think that dying a miserable death in poor conditions is a good thing, yet I see no one volunteering for the cause

History demonstrates that several things are needed for a culture to advance. One is sustainable agriculture. Another is to be free from the effects of war to allow a stable society to develop.

There is no way to provide this in most of todays impoverished nations. The governments are corrupt and use their offices to feather their own nests, and the people be damned. It's gone on for so long that living any other way is incomprehensible to many.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: cubby1223
The next generation of Americans need to be "fixed" before we can attempt global poverty.

I can't help but picture spaying and neutering animals when you say fixed like that.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam

Originally posted by: OCguy
Why is it always moron liberals who dont understand the concept of limited resources?

Probably because there aren't. Conservatives love caves and progressives are bound for the stars.

I don't recall the founding fathers living in caves, but I can see where you'd want to demean those who wish to conserve the nation.

 

[cwjerome]

This 1% thing sounds like BS to me. Charity is great, when it's voluntary and when we have some control over where it goes or how it's spent. Charity can be very good a temporary stop-gap, not a solution. But a bigger problem is that giving so much money to poor nations would almost certainly involve strings and agreements on how it's used. There is something intensely imperialistic about dangling hundreds of billions of dollars over the heads of poor countries with instructions on how they have to spend it. And would it create a sense of nation dependency, and worse yet, entitlement?

These poor, desperate nations need to westernize elements of their economy and culture. That's the solution for creating the wealth needed to promote sustained improvement, because it doesn't happen overnight. We can start by shipping these poverty stricken nations copies of the Declaration of Independence.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Ausm

Originally posted by: OCguy
Why is it always moron liberals who dont understand the concept of limited resources?

and the GOP does? lmfao

Not since they learned how to pander to the new voting block.

 

[Double Trouble]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: Double Trouble

Originally posted by: Craig234
The myth of 'don't feed the poor, they'll just multiply more and need more' is contradicted by the negative correlation between prosperity and reprodutcion.

Providing free food or aid does not create prosperity, it simply provides a temporary means for sustenance and does indeed lead to increasing populations. Creating actual prosperity reduces population growth, but simply giving (food, money, whatever) without actually making sure it's done in such a way as to create sustainable prosperity is not only a waste of time, it does a disservice to the developing countries.

How many people would be willing to lower their personal standard of living if it would guarantee that someone in (for example) India would no longer be poor?

1. Do you have studies showing a correlation between aid and reproduction to support your distinction? No one said just give unlimited food. Rather, some seemed to suggest that the best thing is to not allow the poor to have food - to keep them chronicall so hungry that it inhibits reproduction. My point was countering that notion.

2. I would. Remember my OP, the reference to the 1% plan from leading anti-poverty people - that's not much of a reduction to your standard of living to do huge benefits.

1) No, I do not, but it seems a pretty logical assumption. Even if that assumption is not correct, it doesn't change the bottom line: handing out aid in any form is stupid if it's not done in such a way as to create sustainable prosperity. Humanitarian aid is fine in terms of relieving human suffering, but it does nothing to help fight poverty.

2) You're making a huge assumption about the benefits of such a 1% "plan" --- that there would actually be any. It's much more likely that a vast amount of money would simply go towards financing the wealthy elite corrupt, the warlords, the governments etc. It would do very little to actually fundamentally change the underlying situation, much like the billions and billions that have been given to poor countries for the past 50 years have done nothing to make things better for the desperately poor. Sure, feeding the hungry is the right thing to do, but pouring more money into it is just like pouring more money into public schools without fixing the underlying problem. It's a waste.

 

[LunarRay]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Some think that dying a miserable death in poor conditions is a good thing, yet I see no one volunteering for the cause

History demonstrates that several things are needed for a culture to advance. One is sustainable agriculture. Another is to be free from the effects of war to allow a stable society to develop.

There is no way to provide this in most of todays impoverished nations. The governments are corrupt and use their offices to feather their own nests, and the people be damned. It's gone on for so long that living any other way is incomprehensible to many.

Especially in the ME area.. and East of there... hmmmmm ya don't suppose ...nah.. Bush would never have had that agenda in mind... :shocked:

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: Craig234
Perhaps the most important issue for humanity, we all but never see any construvtive discussion about it here.

So, let's see who has any good plan.

You can use whatever you want - tough anti-illegal immigrant enforcement, war, new political setups, you pick - but show it will be good for the people of the world.

Sadly, the real point of this thread is to show how bankrupt our political culture is on this issue - how we can bicker over every little bit of garbage, hundreds of posts about two acticvists who entrap a couple of people into helping with with advice on prostitution, somecrazy thing a pundits said, but all we get is 'it's not our problem' on global poverty.

Anyone who just says 'it's not our problem' and isn't concerned with looking for what can be done is IMO amoral at best, and not much of a member of the human race.

Has our culture degraded to that point, that there is no concer as the richest country in the world for the rest of the human race?

I know private charity provided a helpful couple drops in the bucket; if you want to push that, show how it can be increased by orders of magnitude.

Leading anti-poverty people talk about 1% from the advanced nations as making a huge difference. I don't see a problem with that approach.

So, let's see, who has a plan? Only plans are invited, not excuses why to ignore it, not arguments about what our current small foreign aid efforts do.

The last new big thing we did was the Peace Corps - helpful, if modest.

Some say we're on the verge of people becoming more expensive than what they contribute and that this will lead to policies letting many lose their lives to disease, etc.

Other - better IMO - tools include land reform, birth control, and encouragement of the development of local industries.

I work for an international development finance institution with the goal to help its developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life.

The organization provide loans, technical assistance, grants, advice and knowledge to developing countires. The organization provided over $11 billion in loans/grants and technical assistance in 2008, and in addition provided experts in economic, infrastructure, agriculture, finance, and environment to help member countries with project to improve their countries and reduce poverty.

Yes there is tons of politics here, just like UN, World Bank member countries from the developed countries are more interested in winning bids for those project than actully helping the poor. But the end results is the same, project gets done, infrastructure gets built, developing government gets advice, and poverty level gets reduced.

IMHO, you can b!tch about poverty or how all these organizatin are ineffective or full of politics, but until you actually do something about poverty you have no right criticizing those who actually give an effort. Those of us who are actually doing the work knows the system is not perfect, there are tons of politics, but at the end of the day, if some people got help, we've achieved something.

 

[Moonbeam]

There are no limits, there is only limited vision.

 

[Fear No Evil]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
There are no limits, there is only limited vision.

There is no limited vision, there are only limits.

 

[Craig234]

ReL the Libertarian quoted previously saying aid only hurts Africa - Wikipedia:

James Shikwati (born 1970) is... a "self taught" economist...

Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University professor who is a leading aid advocate, calls Mr. Shikwati?s criticisms of foreign assistance ?shockingly misguided? and ?amazingly wrong.? ?This happens to be a matter of life and death for millions of people, so getting it wrong has huge consequences,? Mr. Sachs said.

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: cwjerome
These poor, desperate nations need to westernize elements of their economy and culture. That's the solution for creating the wealth needed to promote sustained improvement, because it doesn't happen overnight. We can start by shipping these poverty stricken nations copies of the Declaration of Independence.

What would they do with the DoI besides wipe their rears?

 

[Jaskalas]

Originally posted by: Craig234
ReL the Libertarian quoted previously saying aid only hurts Africa - Wikipedia:

Regarding the concept. All the aid we provide relieves pressure on the dictators and other tyrants in place in the region. For each billion dollars we provide, that is a billion they do not have to provide. Less pressure on them helps them stay in power, helps them continue to oppress the future prosperity of their people.