Save the children? Yes? No?

[Mill]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett
I'm sure I'll be jumped on for saying this, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about not saving every person on the planet. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, it's not like we're on the brink of extinction. Are those that can't save themselves worth saving? What is the purpose in sustaining a population whose only contribution to humanity will be to procreate thereby creating another group of people who needs to be saved?

Flame away.

Edit: To Capt Caveman's point, unless a change is made in those conditions, no change will be made at all. You can save all the children you want and they'll grow up in that same system that caused them to starve in the first place. If the parents of those children are powerless to change the system then so too will the children.

Starving people, of course, are generally ineffective at fomenting political or social change when their daily life is focused entirely on trying to find food or a mud cake to eat.

I think your expectations are a little lofty and idealistic.

Really? I'd think starving people would be ripe for unrest. It's the fat and happy ones who have no interest in change.

You don't really understand what is going on in Haiti or how it got there do you?

BTW, for all of you out there saying it is unchangeable and that they could better themselves... just remember that a lot of the time Western Industrialized countries are the ones that went in, took over their country, exploited it, and then left it fucked. Many nations that now face starvation was subsisting fine before we decided to exploit their natural resources, labor pools, or simply interfere in their politics for no good reason. It is not shocking that many of you are so callous and so utterly removed from the reality of the rest of the world.

Contraception? Really? How do you think that works out in a poor and uneducated country? Have any of you ever even been a non-Industrialized nation before?

There is no denying that some of Haiti's problems are self-inflicted, but the majority of it is not. They cannot help that their lands are susceptible to hurricanes or that the topsoil has been washed away.

Most of you against this are arguing theory instead of reality. Join the real world.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett
I'm sure I'll be jumped on for saying this, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about not saving every person on the planet. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, it's not like we're on the brink of extinction. Are those that can't save themselves worth saving? What is the purpose in sustaining a population whose only contribution to humanity will be to procreate thereby creating another group of people who needs to be saved?

Flame away.

Edit: To Capt Caveman's point, unless a change is made in those conditions, no change will be made at all. You can save all the children you want and they'll grow up in that same system that caused them to starve in the first place. If the parents of those children are powerless to change the system then so too will the children.

Starving people, of course, are generally ineffective at fomenting political or social change when their daily life is focused entirely on trying to find food or a mud cake to eat.

I think your expectations are a little lofty and idealistic.

Really? I'd think starving people would be ripe for unrest. It's the fat and happy ones who have no interest in change.

You don't really understand what is going on in Haiti or how it got there do you?

BTW, for all of you out there saying it is unchangeable and that they could better themselves... just remember that a lot of the time Western Industrialized countries are the ones that went in, took over their country, exploited it, and then left it fucked. Many nations that now face starvation was subsisting fine before we decided to exploit their natural resources, labor pools, or simply interfere in their politics for no good reason. It is not shocking that many of you are so callous and so utterly removed from the reality of the rest of the world.

Contraception? Really? How do you think that works out in a poor and uneducated country? Have any of you ever even been a non-Industrialized nation before?

There is no denying that some of Haiti's problems are self-inflicted, but the majority of it is not. They cannot help that their lands are susceptible to hurricanes or that the topsoil has been washed away.

Most of you against this are arguing theory instead of reality. Join the real world.

You're arguing history versus reality. Even if we fucked them, doesn't change they have no resources, no industry, no farmland, nothing to build on so no amount of help will make a difference, just postpone the inevitable.

I'm not immune to the plight of children. I just think there is money better spent elsewhere. If X # of children are going to die without Y amount of help, better to spend it somewhere where they have some future.

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: conehead433
Wow, and here in the US we're converting church donations into political campaigns.

Fixed.

You have a problem with how private people and organizations spend their money, yet have no qualms with how government spends our money?

Now that I am done with techs, , I just wanted to say that I think it is GREAT that private people and organizations want to help others in need, whether they be here at home or overseas. There's just no better way of showing love than to give to others in need via your own free will.

 

[Mill]

Originally posted by: alchemize

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett
I'm sure I'll be jumped on for saying this, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about not saving every person on the planet. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, it's not like we're on the brink of extinction. Are those that can't save themselves worth saving? What is the purpose in sustaining a population whose only contribution to humanity will be to procreate thereby creating another group of people who needs to be saved?

Flame away.

Edit: To Capt Caveman's point, unless a change is made in those conditions, no change will be made at all. You can save all the children you want and they'll grow up in that same system that caused them to starve in the first place. If the parents of those children are powerless to change the system then so too will the children.

Starving people, of course, are generally ineffective at fomenting political or social change when their daily life is focused entirely on trying to find food or a mud cake to eat.

I think your expectations are a little lofty and idealistic.

Really? I'd think starving people would be ripe for unrest. It's the fat and happy ones who have no interest in change.

You don't really understand what is going on in Haiti or how it got there do you?

BTW, for all of you out there saying it is unchangeable and that they could better themselves... just remember that a lot of the time Western Industrialized countries are the ones that went in, took over their country, exploited it, and then left it fucked. Many nations that now face starvation was subsisting fine before we decided to exploit their natural resources, labor pools, or simply interfere in their politics for no good reason. It is not shocking that many of you are so callous and so utterly removed from the reality of the rest of the world.

Contraception? Really? How do you think that works out in a poor and uneducated country? Have any of you ever even been a non-Industrialized nation before?

There is no denying that some of Haiti's problems are self-inflicted, but the majority of it is not. They cannot help that their lands are susceptible to hurricanes or that the topsoil has been washed away.

Most of you against this are arguing theory instead of reality. Join the real world.

You're arguing history versus reality. Even if we fucked them, doesn't change they have no resources, no industry, no farmland, nothing to build on so no amount of help will make a difference, just postpone the inevitable.

I'm not immune to the plight of children. I just think there is money better spent elsewhere. If X # of children are going to die without Y amount of help, better to spend it somewhere where they have some future.

No, I am not. BTW, what is your better option?

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: alchemize

Originally posted by: rudder
Maybe get some more money from the U.N.... or maybe not

LOL - $23 million for spray on spackle and watercolors? F'in disgusting.

That is a great example of government at work.

The OP is a great example of people at work.

 

[miketheidiot]

wasn't haiti a fairly important sugar island in the 18th century? what makes haiti so much more 'unsustainable' than the Dominican republic, which is shares an island with iirc?

certainly with some law and order, better all around health, and some investment, ther is no reason why haiti shouldn't be able to do just fine.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
wasn't haiti a fairly important sugar island in the 18th century? what makes haiti so much more 'unsustainable' than the Dominican republic, which is shares an island with iirc?

certainly with some law and order, better all around health, and some investment, ther is no reason why haiti shouldn't be able to do just fine.

Just so we're clear, you're for US military intervention in Haiti...

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
wasn't haiti a fairly important sugar island in the 18th century? what makes haiti so much more 'unsustainable' than the Dominican republic, which is shares an island with iirc?

certainly with some law and order, better all around health, and some investment, ther is no reason why haiti shouldn't be able to do just fine.

haiti on the left, DR on the right

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
wasn't haiti a fairly important sugar island in the 18th century? what makes haiti so much more 'unsustainable' than the Dominican republic, which is shares an island with iirc?

certainly with some law and order, better all around health, and some investment, ther is no reason why haiti shouldn't be able to do just fine.

Just so we're clear, you're for US military intervention in Haiti...

i really don't know enough about the situation, or if it needs to be a military initiative, but possibly

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: alchemize

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
wasn't haiti a fairly important sugar island in the 18th century? what makes haiti so much more 'unsustainable' than the Dominican republic, which is shares an island with iirc?

certainly with some law and order, better all around health, and some investment, ther is no reason why haiti shouldn't be able to do just fine.

haiti on the left, DR on the right

interesting, you have more information?

reminds me of the continental divide in glacier NP, you drive across and everything is completely different.

Under the possibility that the country is no good, certainly there is better that can be done than to just let people die because the land they live on sucks.

 

[miketheidiot]

France and Spain settled hostilities on the island by the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, which divided Hispaniola between them. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue. Many French colonists soon arrived and established plantations in Saint-Domingue due to high profit potential. From 1713 to 1787, approximately 30,000 colonists, emigrated from Bordeaux, France to the western part of the island. By about 1790, Saint-Domingue had greatly overshadowed its eastern counterpart in terms of wealth and population. It quickly became the richest French colony in the New World due to the immense profits from the sugar, coffee and indigo industries. The labor and knowledge of thousands of enslaved Africans made it possible, who brought skills and technology for indigo production to the island. The French-enacted Code Noir (Black Code), prepared by Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, established rigid rules on slave treatment and permissible freedom.

from wiki.


what changed?

 

[Mill]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

France and Spain settled hostilities on the island by the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, which divided Hispaniola between them. France received the western third and subsequently named it Saint-Domingue. Many French colonists soon arrived and established plantations in Saint-Domingue due to high profit potential. From 1713 to 1787, approximately 30,000 colonists, emigrated from Bordeaux, France to the western part of the island. By about 1790, Saint-Domingue had greatly overshadowed its eastern counterpart in terms of wealth and population. It quickly became the richest French colony in the New World due to the immense profits from the sugar, coffee and indigo industries. The labor and knowledge of thousands of enslaved Africans made it possible, who brought skills and technology for indigo production to the island. The French-enacted Code Noir (Black Code), prepared by Colbert and ratified by Louis XIV, established rigid rules on slave treatment and permissible freedom.

from wiki.


what changed?

Revolution, turmoil, falling prices for exports of raw materials (see Mexico, Argentina, and others over the past 100 years), foreign military intervention (several times by the U.S. in the last 100 years).

Don't forget that the French and Spanish basically raped the land and imported a huge number of slaves to work the land.

I could go on and on... but suffice to say there is more than one reason. There are many books explaining the why and how of Haiti's plight.

 

[StageLeft]

Whether the parents should have been neutered or not is rather beside the point now, since it's too late to put their children back inside. I think that the idea people shouldn't have kids if they cannot feed them has merit and is one I've espoused, but the reality is that people in horrendous societies DO have kids and always have and always will. I'm not exactly sure why. I guess if you're a human it's just the thing to do, but also we grow accustomed to what we're used to. In north america if you have a kid you assume it will live. If you're in a destitute sh*thole you may assume there is only a 40% chance the child reaches adulthood and that's just how it is.

Where is that quote somebody has in their sig about republicans rationalizing selfishness...It's easy to come up with intellectual reasons why it's "best" and maybe even morally right to let a 2 year old starve to death while you chow down on doritos and suck down coke, but if there is any point to this life at all there have to be some hard, intangible morals, and I cannot imagine that the founder of them (let's say God) would really care for the rationlization.

 

[LumbergTech]

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: conehead433
Wow, and here in the US we're converting church donations into political campaigns.

Fixed.

You have a problem with how private people and organizations spend their money, yet have no qualms with how government spends our money?

Now that I am done with techs, , I just wanted to say that I think it is GREAT that private people and organizations want to help others in need, whether they be here at home or overseas. There's just no better way of showing love than to give to others in need via your own free will.

life must be hard for you, you know i actually relate to you in a lot of ways..but you NEVER stop grinding that goddamn axe..never..

 

[Fear No Evil]

How much good could Barack Obama's 600 million in campaigns pending have done in Haiti? Why does Barack hate blacks?

 

[bctbct]

Originally posted by: Fear No Evil
How much good could Barack Obama's 600 million in campaigns pending have done in Haiti? Why does Barack hate blacks?

yer grapes went sour....

 

[bamacre]

Originally posted by: LumbergTech

Originally posted by: bamacre

Originally posted by: techs

Originally posted by: conehead433
Wow, and here in the US we're converting church donations into political campaigns.

Fixed.

You have a problem with how private people and organizations spend their money, yet have no qualms with how government spends our money?

Now that I am done with techs, , I just wanted to say that I think it is GREAT that private people and organizations want to help others in need, whether they be here at home or overseas. There's just no better way of showing love than to give to others in need via your own free will.

life must be hard for you, you know i actually relate to you in a lot of ways..but you NEVER stop grinding that goddamn axe..never..

Life isn't hard for me, not at all.

 

[OFFascist]

It sucks when you live somewhere that cannot sustain its population.

If we just left them alone then the situation would reach an equilibrium, but instead we keep sending more aid in the "attempt" to help people when all we are doing is prolonging the misery.

I have no problem with children, but I also think alot of lets "do it for the children" mentality ends up screwing all of us over. We get bullshit like "no child left behind," and in public schools we have so many resources wasted on kids who probably should be left behind and maybe even kicked out all to the detriment of children who actually want to learn and succeed. We have government intervention in how parents raise their kids. We have government supporting people who proably shouldnt have kids, this thus encourages them to have more, yet people who should probably be having kids dont get this support because they are "too well off" and thus it encourages them to have less. We have people trying to take away our right to keep and bare arms because "if it only saves one kid" its worth it. I think its bullshit. A child isnt any more important than anyone else except maybe in the eyes of their own parents and rightly so.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Where is that quote somebody has in their sig about republicans rationalizing selfishness...It's easy to come up with intellectual reasons why it's "best" and maybe even morally right to let a 2 year old starve to death while you chow down on doritos and suck down coke, but if there is any point to this life at all there have to be some hard, intangible morals, and I cannot imagine that the founder of them (let's say God) would really care for the rationlization.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith

 

[Vic]

Without children the world ends.

 

[Mani]

To the people who are making variations of the "let them die" argument...since I've noticed a few of you in other threads in defense of religion, have you ever asked yourselves WWJD?

I might be going out on a limb here, dont think he'd be encouraging people on message boards to let starving children die.

 

[Mani]

By the way, anyone trying to ridiculously justify to themselves that any giving is "prolonging misery" know that there has been a spike in starvation caused by the rise in food and energy prices. As the spike is temporary, lives saved by giving now could very well be sustained once the short-term crisis subsides, or international aid arrives.

 

[MikeyLSU]

you also have the problem of how much help are you really giving?

If I could give food to children and know it would help, I would do it in a heartbeat.

But tell me which scenerio is better? Because this is what I truly believe.

You help out 100 kids/families, they eat for a couple of years, each family ends up having 4 more kids, now you have 300 starving people/kids. They now die of starvation.

Or the first 100 die of starvation and the other 200 are spared life.

I know numbers are way off, but I see it is a lose/lose situation that entirely sucks.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: alchemize

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett

Originally posted by: Mill

Originally posted by: BoberFett
I'm sure I'll be jumped on for saying this, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about not saving every person on the planet. There are 6.5 billion people on this planet, it's not like we're on the brink of extinction. Are those that can't save themselves worth saving? What is the purpose in sustaining a population whose only contribution to humanity will be to procreate thereby creating another group of people who needs to be saved?

Flame away.

Edit: To Capt Caveman's point, unless a change is made in those conditions, no change will be made at all. You can save all the children you want and they'll grow up in that same system that caused them to starve in the first place. If the parents of those children are powerless to change the system then so too will the children.

Starving people, of course, are generally ineffective at fomenting political or social change when their daily life is focused entirely on trying to find food or a mud cake to eat.

I think your expectations are a little lofty and idealistic.

Really? I'd think starving people would be ripe for unrest. It's the fat and happy ones who have no interest in change.

You don't really understand what is going on in Haiti or how it got there do you?

BTW, for all of you out there saying it is unchangeable and that they could better themselves... just remember that a lot of the time Western Industrialized countries are the ones that went in, took over their country, exploited it, and then left it fucked. Many nations that now face starvation was subsisting fine before we decided to exploit their natural resources, labor pools, or simply interfere in their politics for no good reason. It is not shocking that many of you are so callous and so utterly removed from the reality of the rest of the world.

Contraception? Really? How do you think that works out in a poor and uneducated country? Have any of you ever even been a non-Industrialized nation before?

There is no denying that some of Haiti's problems are self-inflicted, but the majority of it is not. They cannot help that their lands are susceptible to hurricanes or that the topsoil has been washed away.

Most of you against this are arguing theory instead of reality. Join the real world.

You're arguing history versus reality. Even if we fucked them, doesn't change they have no resources, no industry, no farmland, nothing to build on so no amount of help will make a difference, just postpone the inevitable.

I'm not immune to the plight of children. I just think there is money better spent elsewhere. If X # of children are going to die without Y amount of help, better to spend it somewhere where they have some future.

No, I am not. BTW, what is your better option?

Fantastic question, mulled this one for a while. Here's what I came up with:

- Have the UN write a strongly worded letter. OK I kid.
- Dissolve the government, bring in enough troops and aid to keep the country stable for a period of about a year
- Come up with a program to reduce the population through immigration to other countries, birth control, etc.
- Come up with a plan to rebuild the island environmentally, politically, socially, economically. Probably will take 20 years.

 

[Xavier434]

Since this is about charity, there is little to debate here. There is no "convincing" to do. If you believe in it then donate. If you do not then don't donate. That's it.

What I am seeing is a lot of people discussing this topic in the same way they discuss federal aid to other countries, but the fact is that you are comparing apples and oranges.