Debate: It is in the interests of the world to feed starving nations

[Rolling Thunder]

Ah, good heevening. Ze topic for discussion is posted above, don't expect me to repeat it you lazy bums. Only I or Darth Mobius may post, until at least three posts by both parties (Fondant and Darth Mobius)apiece are posted, at which point either debater may open the debate to the floor (i.e the rest of you can post) Kindly abide by these rules, and enjoy the ride.

I will begin: The world in general should feed the third world in cases of emergancy- whereby famine or warfare looms. My primary argument for this shall be pragmatic- it is in the interests of the world to feed the starving poor:

If the starving poor are not fed, then they invariably leave the third world and emigrate to the first world, thus causing a breakdown of the society of the first world due to the sudden flood of ill-smelling, starving and disease-rideen immigrants to our shores, which we invariably have to control and support with goverment (i.e taxpayers) money in the form of,at the very least, border control/patrol and detention centres, as well as the costs of rehabilitating them. However, if the poor are fed at times of emergancy, there will be a much lessened flow of starving, illiterate immigrants to the shores of the civilised world.

Also, the prospect of increrased economic prosperity due to an indirect increase in trade is another benifit. Simply put, if the third world remains stable then it will function far more reliably as its macroeconomic purpose- a resource base for cheap labour and raw materials. Thus the increase in stability caused by food aid will indirectly benifit the benefactor nations as they will see a drop in both prices and also a lesseing of violence on their borders due to the decreased plight of the people- which will lead to a loss of support for extremist factions that may also destabilise the fisrt world (Al-Queda, etc)

Pray respond, Darth Mobius.

 

[Slingback78]

The problem with teaching someone how to fend for themselves is that they still need some help in the quest for self-sufficience. As for governments using foreign aid for non-altruistic purposes, it's always a risk, but do you send none and definitely have people starve, or send it and try and get it to the people?

Consider the situation in Burma (nuts to Myanmar). The Red Cross, having finally been allowed in, is ensuring delivery by directly handling all the stages, including delivery to those who need it. As for Third world dictators using it for war, America already fund lots of armies directly. Israel isn't using the $3 billion/year for food. Why not chip in a few million to disaster areas on the off chance it goes to actually helping people, considering the amount sent out with the express purpose of killing people.

The Taliban was not funded with the purpose of freeing Afghanistan and founding a stable government. They we're funded to kill Soviets, period. It's that "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" crap that always comes back to bite you in the ass.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

If you two are the only ones allowed to talk, why don't you just go on Skype or something?

 

[Rolling Thunder]

If you two are the only ones allowed to talk, why don't you just go on Skype or something?

Read the fucking first post, dipshit. *Anger*

The debate has not been opened yet.

Rebuttal:

Point one: So, in essence, there is no solution, you claim. I disagree. If a country is starving, you send food to it. I am not proposing the western world spends its time pouring food down the gullets of the poor and miserable, but when a crisis arrives it is best to aid rather than ignore.

Point 2:
The provision of food aid to a country actually grants a degree of external control within that country. Look at the UN efforts across Africa, look at imperialism even. When a foriegn goverment aids a crisis-struck nation, it gives that goverment a right to interfere within that countrie's affairs, in particular with regards to the distribution of aid. It is rare than Aid is ever just 'handed out', and when it is, its usually been given to support conflict.

Point 3: There will always be poor people, unless you propose switching to commusism instead. And I do not suggest that we stop aiding our own staring poor, merely that we aid ALL persons who are at risk of dying from a preventable disease while farmers extract more subsidies from goverment.

My own point: expansion of point on economic benifits to the develpoed world- Given, that the developed farmer cannot compete with overseas competition, the excess goverment spending will stimulate the agricultural sector (as its food being bought) and revitalise the agricultural sector of the developed world, as well as elsewhere.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

If you two are the only ones allowed to talk, why don't you just go on Skype or something?

Read the fucking first post, dipshit. *Anger*

The debate has not been opened yet.

The fact that I interrupted you proves my point. If you want to have a private conversation, why are you doing it in a public forum?

 

[Logan Westbrook]

If you two are the only ones allowed to talk, why don't you just go on Skype or something?

Read the fucking first post, dipshit. *Anger*

The debate has not been opened yet.

The fact that I interrupted you proves my point. If you want to have a private conversation, why are you doing it in a public forum?

He does have a point actually.

 

[Saskwach]

If you two are the only ones allowed to talk, why don't you just go on Skype or something?

Read the fucking first post, dipshit. *Anger*

The debate has not been opened yet.

The fact that I interrupted you proves my point. If you want to have a private conversation, why are you doing it in a public forum?

He does have a point actually.

Well the point is also that it will be made public once both sides have had three posts each. Still, from now on the debates will probably be held by pm until the whole thing is finished, then dumped into the first post of a new thread that will be open from the start.

 

[Singing Gremlin]

I don't see why people are so fussed about this. They want to have a debate, I for one want to watch, if you don't like it don't read it.

/hypocrisy

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

I'm not trying to be a dick, I think it's an interesting topic and I agree with some of their points. I just got annoyed when they announced no one else could chip in until...I dunno the "special posters" got to talk.

*edit*

Nevermind.

 

[BlazeTheVampire]

I'm not trying to be a dick, I think it's an interesting topic and I agree with some of their points. I just got annoyed when they announced no one else could chip in until...I dunno the "special posters" got to talk.

*edit*

Nevermind.

I realize the debate hasn't been opened yet... but I think that he did that because he wanted it to be a real debate and he knew that he and Mobius could make it so. He didn't want a board full of jokes, but an honest debate, and he knew that he and Mobius could set the tone for everybody else. Even I had come into the thread intending to make a not-very-serious proposal but after reading the first two posts I realized that this was intended to be serious and I wasn't upset that he had wanted to limit who was speaking. He just wanted people to take it seriously, that's all.

I apologize for posting before the debate was opened, but I had hoped I would be of some assistance in clearing things up. Please, do continue.

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Responding in 3.....2......1....

I'm seeing predictable counter arguments....

Point 1: This is my primary point, and it is central to the whole idea of the feeding of the poor. Basically, the problem is that your arguments appear to assume that diasasters such as famines create a sort of 'steady state' ground state of third world nations. This is incorrect. The process of building up the nation is happening all the time- it is a continuous process. Unfortunately, during this process the country's infrastructure often does become pushed to crisis point by the expansion of population. Thus, when a crisis occurs, the country, instead of merely taking an economic hit, freewheels off past the catastrophe curve and into the zone marked 'oh shit, your in trouble now'. This not only casues a humanitarian crisis, but also destroys much of the economic buildup of that country that occured pre-crisis.

This creates an effect that third-world nations are incapable of building up past a certain point, becasue the nation is incapable of supporting its population in the event of a crisis, which will inevitably occur before the nation becomes capable of suppoting the population-thus, economic growth is rendered much fraught with difficulty.

Point 2 (rebuttal): As he afromentioned cyclical nature of catastrophe occurs, this means that the country will never be able to sustain itself beyond a certain point. Thus the county will never be capable of producing for itself enough to maintain economic growth, because the population buildup will occur inevitably because, post-crisis there will be enough people for the country to support. however, the same buildup will occur, and the same catastrophes occur, because the country will never reach a steady state of being able to feed itself AND continue economic growth, because the nature of disaster is cyclical.

Point 3: on technology and birth control- These require fundamental change-abouts in both society and infrastructure before they can take any real effect, and these changes require the economic growth of the county beofrehand.

(I also have a very amusing story on birth control in Zulu villages.)

 

[Markness]

Well I want to hear the funny story.

As to the debate, would feeding the poor really change the cyclical nature of the crisis cycle?

 

[Geoffrey42]

I've always been on Mobius' side of this debate (not necessarily attributing the views to Mobius, if this was a true debate, just saying that I fall on the side of that argument).

But, I find the idea of the crisis cycle and needing to get developing nations over the "hump" where they can survive their own crises fascinating. I stopped to think of how the US ever got over the hump, and you can probably attribute it to foreign investment. By the time the 13 colonies got pissed off and broke away, they were generally over the hump, it would seem.

Who said colonialism never came to anything good? Had we just left the continent to the indigenous peoples, (barring any other country from sweeping in and taking the French/British approach) where would it be right now? I'm having very sick thoughts about how to "help" starving countries at THIS moment, so I'll move on...

On the whole, it seems difficult to judge foreign aid to any and all countries. I think you'd have to look at them on a case by case basis and say "Is this issue a temporary one, or a long term sustainability issue?" So often, when it is famine, it wasn't brought on by a cataclysmic event (like a hurricane or a monsoon or an earthquake), it was brought on by a dry spell, which happens with relative frequency, and their subsistence level of farming suddenly resulted in not enough food for anyone. If you feed them now, will they resume farming at a subsistence level, or will they begin producing enough to export? Is there an economic opportunity to be exploited by the people living there? If not, why are they there? Just because their parents were? I understand why you end up someplace just because your parents lived there, but that does not mean you should stay, or should be encouraged to stay. Places that have outlived their economic utility should be abandone, not strung-along; my hometown is a case study in this, or will be in 5 years. Half of West Virginia is a case study in this, in our own backyard.

 

[Kraj]

This is a pretty old dichotomy which I've discussed with my Philosophy/ethics group a few times. The best we could come up with is saying that Ethically, humanity should be working together to progress, which means taking care of each other, the flip side of that is that in taking care of each other, humanity should be responsible enough not to overpopulate regions which have hit their natural environmental cap, "and therefore shouldn't sustain the excess to allow it to reproduce more and worsen the problem" As far as morally, my view of morality comes from too many years of pure disgust at a species who's only real accomplishment is the almost total ignorance and self-justification of breaking natural law, so I can be a bit macabre. "Murder isn't actually :wrong: per say, its just incredibly antisocial" type of outlooks spiraling into a hateful and diseased tone etc "and this is how i spend my days thinking"...
Back to natural limitation, there is a finite amount of space in the world and a finite amount of resources, we have space yet, but our concentration and population regulation is terrible. If you support 80 in an area which naturally supports 50, 30 should die off through starvation/natural selection/war, or be forced to move, thats the way nature's done it for quite a long time. "and its seemed to work rather well". In the case of humans when WE see 80 in an area which naturally supports 50, we fly in food to support 80, but those extra 30 add their children into the mix as well, so the next generation could be as many as 140... It gets perpetually worse, all the while congestion raises the disease rate and crime-rate, lowering the overall standards of living and through that, the education, which makes it harder for them to understand whats going on "in the short term on an uneducated individual standpoint", which all reinforce the problem further.
So short answer, no. Long answer, "No and i consider anyone who says yes ignorant for choosing morality over logic and reality, so find another solution or another argument"

 

[Rolling Thunder]

And geoffrey, the answer to what would have happened without colonisation:

China would be a massive superpower, but only in regional terms.
America wouldn't exist.
Africa would be just as disease-ridden, foul-smelling and corrupt as it is now, only without AK-47s.

And Kraj- stop stealing from Yahtzee. He is not clever, and mimicry of his style is neither entertaining nor intellignet. To be frank, it makes you sound like a mentally-backwards halfling with a penchant for cattle.

 

[werepossum]

My only objection is that I think the country being fed should be shamed. "Hey dumbass, you had thirteen babies and bred cattle as a show of wealth and they ate all the grass and now your cattle are all starving and your thirteen babies are all starving and you're sitting around hoping your crappy handful of UN flour doesn't get hijacked by bandits. You need to change your lifestyle."

My point being that it's great to give someone charity, but if his own behavior caused the problem you need to hammer that point home with a huge hammer or the problem is likely to continue whilst growing exponentially due to uncontrolled breeding. I would prefer to offer them Western technology and culture, then let them make the choice. The problem now is that third-world nations get just enough Western medicine and medical knowledge to increase birth survival while holding on to their native way of life, which is not able to sustain the increased population. Once they master Western culture and can support a stable government, the culture will naturally in time blend into something unique to that particular culture and geographic/climatic conditions but also capable of supporting an increasing population.

Obviously this wouldn't apply to famines created by such natural phenomena as typhoons or earthquakes, just to the normal cyclical famines due to recurring droughts, civil war, and especially horrendous government.

Personally I like the debate format, even if it petered out a bit early. But then I also find Yahtzee to be quite clever.