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For those of you on probation...
Freerice.com now features an English grammar category!
This is an excellent way to learn English grammar while also feeding starving people.
This is an excellent way to learn English grammar while also feeding starving people.
Comments
Why bother tying the donation to some metric like that? Sure it can be fun, but why not just donate the maximum you are willing to donate? Instead of having sponsors pay according to how many questions are answered correctly, why not just have them donate as much as they are willing? They aren't going to give more than that no mater how many questions we answer or home runs are hit. We're only decreasing the donation by tying it to a metric.
Also, as Kate said, this is mostly a way to raise awareness. I mean, Freerice.com won't solve world hunger any time soon.
It might help alleviate the plague of bad grammar, though.
Edit: Me and my thick skull! Why didn't I look more closely? I thought she was saying that we weren't doing enough to help starving people. How could you believe allowing people to starve off is an appropriate mode of action? That is torture! Tell me, are you human?
Also, on Freerice and similar things: I think the deal is it allows companies to give money to the poor from their advertising budget, not just their charity budget. It's a way of advertising in a charitable way.
But then I figured that maybe Nuri just doesn't believe in morality, so I figured I'd ask.
Also, while I agree that it's unlikely that the haves will ever voluntarily donate enough of their wealth to make living conditions acceptable for the have-nots, frankly, maybe that shouldn't be left up to them. I'm not advocating complete socialism, but when you have the crushing income inequality and wealth inequality, maybe a limited redistribution of wealth, enough to bring everyone or most people up to an acceptable standard of living (and an acceptable standard of living isn't really that high) would be a good thing.
In my opinion, Nuri's statement was a wholly impersonal one, and Nuri was not personally advocating this approach.
There is no morality inherent in such a statement unless Nuri is advocating that approach. Saying something only implies that you believe it is true, not necessarily that it is right.
Had Nuri used the word "should", or an equivalent, it would be a different matter, because the statement has an underlying worldview that is tied with its truth.
While I completely agree with the rest of you that that approach is morally wrong, it is far more important to note that it wouldn't actually work. It would reduce the number of people in poverty, hence being reasonably effective, but it would be nowhere near "solving" the problem - there is a very large discrepancy between conditions in which humans are capable of living and conditions in which most people would consider it acceptable to live in.
If I could be bothered to, I would hold it against the previous posters that rather than disputing the factual correctness of the statement, they chose to respond with an argumentum ad hominem against the morality (or lack thereof) behind the statement, when it wasn't even clear whether or not Nuri was advocating it...
Maybe this way we'll have a more intelligent discussion, as only those who have actually put up can talk smack.
Look, I don't want to argue about how to solve world hunger. Many millions may starve before the problem is solved, or it may never be solved, I just don't know. But to suggest, even flippantly, that we should actively allow starving people to die is something that I can't allow to pass without comment. I'm sorry, it may make me look like an overreacting idiot, but bullshit like this makes me furious. I'm not an absolutist on many issues, but in this case, I'm making a stand. Yeah, way to fuck that up. It would be an ad hominem attack if I argued that she's wrong because she's immoral. I didn't. I don't know Nuri, I make no claims as to her worldview, I have merely expressed my distaste for what she wrote, and questioned her belief in it.
Let me break my interpretation down:- is an obvious attack on her morality. suggests that her words are wrong because she is immoral.
Additionally,contradicts We will have to wait for Nuri to respond as to whether or not she does, indeed, believe that what she suggested is a good idea.
You might note that nowhere in my post did I say we should attempt to solve world hunger. Assuming that I'd take steps to solve world hunger were I in power...that is your first mistake. And yes, I do genuinely believe what I wrote. You have a better plan to "solve world hunger"? I'd love to see one that will work that doesn't involve eliminating the overpopulation problem. Lay it out for us.
Not recognizing reality may allow you the luxury of taking the moral high-horse and saying "Oh lordy, we must save the starving childrens. Here, I'll give you twenty dollars! Look at me helping to do my part!" and then feeling like you've saved the world. The fact that I recognize reality doesn't make me a terrible person. It just means that I'm not going to waste my time trying to "solve world hunger" with petty amounts of food when other equally pressing issues that are much less futile to act on (like eliminating disease, population control, etc) are better places to spend my time. It's all about priorities. I never said I was going to gun down millions of people in Africa to make our world a better place...but I also won't waste my time sending 10 people a year's worth of rice. Ultimately, that's not going to do jack shit to relieve the problem.
Really, the question is therefore "What is the most efficient way to improve the global standard of living as much as possible?"
I guess Nuri's suggestion is based around The critical point in Nuri's argument is that spending money in other areas will result in a greater increase in the global standard of living, which I would say clearly needs a bit more back up than just her words.
We have the technology and the means to produce more than enough food for every living person to be healthy, and moreso. We also have enough physical space to house every person on earth comfortably. If we build arcology-like structures, that will be even more true.
The problem of starvation is a problem of distribution. We can't get the food from where it is to where the people are in enough quantity, or with enough speed. And sometimes, even when we do get the food where it needs to go, warlords or dictators will steal it or hoard it.
Take for example this TED vieo about Ethiopian economics. If you do not know, the southern part of Ethiopia is very fertile and is great for farming. The other parts are not so fertile. In the same year that the farms of Ethiopia produced more food than ever before, more people starved in Ethiopia than ever before. How can this be? It is because they did not have the means to distribute the food, even though they had it. Food was spoiled and wasted while people starved on the other side of the country. The TED video explains how by setting up a commodities market, and enabling the farmers with the tools to utilize that market, rather than be stuck with their simple local market, they were able to get a lot more food where it needs to go, and get farmers a lot more money for their work.
If you want to solve the problem of people not having food there are two major things we can do. One, we can do things like what is in that video, helping to distribute food properly. Two, we can move people to places where it is easier to distribute food. In many ways it's a lot like people in the SouthWestern USA not having enough water. It's because they live in a desert! Why do people starve? Quite often it is because they live very far away from fertile soils.
Consider the lifestyle and wealth difference between the US and Most of Africa. Take a look at the GDP/GSP stats. African GDPs, US GSPs
Now consider that there are only 10 states in the US that have a population density of over 100 people/km^2 as of 2007 (cite). In Africa, there were 12 countries as of 2002 that had an estimated population density of over 100 people/km^2, and the populations are growing (cite). Does it look like these African countries have the resources to support an increasing population?
Also, we have the technology to produce enough food, probably. But can we do it on a sustainable basis? Until our waste treatment, power, and other facilities equal our ability to produce food, we won't be able to keep up. Particularly with the waste treatment: there is already a problem with not having enough water. We have to have the base resources to put into the food before we can make the food. Just having the tech isn't enough. There is a lot of land that isn't being use right now for farming for a good reason; it's not fertile. We can throw fertilizer on it and try to grow things, but they will probably not be very nutritionally beneficial. One of the reasons that vegetables provide us with essential nutrients is that they pull them out of the soil. They have to BE there first for the plants to pull them up.
Also, I think you are mistaking the capacity to produce food for the capacity to support a population. People need more than just food. Water and waste treatment are BIG on the list of things we've gotta have. Once food stops being the limiting resource, something else will step up. If we're going to globalize, then it has to be all or nothing. You can't give people all the food they need and then leave them to wallow in their own shit and die from contaminated water.
That is, unless you don't care about morals, as someone so carefully pointed out that I must not.
The solutions I see to these problems come in a few forms. They come in the form of major technological advancements, like cheap water filtration or genetically engineered crops. They come in the form of putting economic systems in place that allow resources to be distributed to where they are needed. And they come in the form of things like what the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is doing.
For example, micro-loans are an excellent tool that have helped people in extreme poverty get themselves started on the right foot. The problem is that many people default on their micro loans. Why? The most common reason is that someone in their family is ill, and they spend the loan on medical costs. If you make sure that people stay healthy, and actually able to use their loan on putting their best foot forward, good things happen. Medicine, economics, and technology advancing and working together with no national borders are the best shot we have of eliminating poverty.
edit: Oh, and it's also important to realize that this involves advances and work yet to be done. Before we have the capability to globalize and alleviate poverty, we have a lot of work to do.
Haha, thanks. ^_^;; Pretty sure my candor won't be appreciated in politics. I'm not much for softening truth with pretty words and empty promises. I wouldn't last long in a campaign.