How should we help the extremely poor?

[Xanikk999]

Giving aid doesnt help in the long run. Poor undeveloped countries need to establish a better system to get the extremely poor on a better footing. We cant do that with any amount of aid.

 

[Perfection]

Giving aid doesnt help in the long run. Poor undeveloped countries need to establish a better system to get the extremely poor on a better footing. We cant do that with any amount of aid.

Actually we can, it's called "infrastructure".

 

[Xanikk999]

Actually we can, it's called "infrastructure".

How well did that go with iraq hmmm?
We cant change thier infrastructure without occupying the country.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Giving aid doesnt help in the long run. Poor undeveloped countries need to establish a better system to get the extremely poor on a better footing. We cant do that with any amount of aid.

anything we do to help them is something they ont have to do themselves later on. AS perf said,iif we are building infastructure, then they dont have to, so they can concentrate their money and time elsewhere, like education.

 

[Eukaryote]

They need to clean up their own act. I dont want my money going to some dictator, so he can buy a 3rd porshe for his mistress.

It's not the people's falt the have a (bleep)er for a dictator, and who told you to give him the money. You give it to charitys to help the people, or help 'em yourselves. Remember, it's not the people falt bad things have happened to them, they just did. I'm going to quote spiderman now and say "with great power, comes great reasponsiblility." And we all belong to rich and powerful nations.

 

[skadistic]

Give then food and water only. In this world the only way to get out of poverty is to work your way out.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

How well did that go with iraq hmmm?
We cant change thier infrastructure without occupying the country.

youve never heard of the Marshall Plan i presume

 

[Mastreditr111]

unfortunately, until we get the corrupt governments of countries like this out of the way, all we can do will be for nothing, as the government will inhale any progress their people have made. We can help, but they, and their governments, have to want it first.

 

[King Flevance]

I think we should help them establish a fresh water supply there as well. Financial help isn't really the solution and also isn't there to give right now IMO. No matter how chap it is really. $1 a day adds up over time and our home countries have their own issues they need to be addressing. Or at least America does.

I think that it would be wise to think of as Cheezy said colonizing these places. I mean life is at the brink of death there anyways. It can even be seen as a breeding pit for disease. Which could in turn be viewed as the rest of the world stepping in to have a say against it. If an African country cannot support the majority of it's people in an area then I think it should be considered a crime against humanity and they must submissivley colonize with another nation if said county is wanting to claim responsibility for the territory.

 

[Perfection]

How well did that go with iraq hmmm?

That's the exact problem in Iraq. We didn't protect the infrastructure when we came in from looters, and now many people are unemployed and unemployed people get pissed off.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

unfortunately, until we get the corrupt governments of countries like this out of the way, all we can do will be for nothing, as the government will inhale any progress their people have made. We can help, but they, and their governments, have to want it first.

I'm telling you, colonialism was the way to go. then with africa you only have like7 governments to deal with, not 30

 

[Xanikk999]

I'm telling you, colonialism was the way to go. then with africa you only have like7 governments to deal with, not 30

Give me a break. Do you know how many people were abused and exploited under colonalism?

If anyone benifited, it was the whites living in africa. The blacks were tied in as servents and poor farmers. They didnt benifit at all.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Give me a break. Do you know how many people were abused and exploited under colonalism?

If anyone benifited, it was the whites living in africa. The blacks were tied in as servents and poor farmers. They didnt benifit at all.

i guess you didnt read my first post on this thread about colonialism, it kinda explains how it would be made to benefit Africa today, had it stayed around.

EDIT: post 900!

 

[Masquerouge]

Not sure they want to be like us. They would like to have clean drinking water , they want education and two sqaure meals a day. That's not really like us (who cosume a per capita income of about $30000 a year which is a hundred times more than they do).

Mmmh. Clean drinking water is really a Western thing. People in the rest of the world can stomach drinking water that would turn our intestines inside out. I'm not sayin that we should leave it like that, mind you. But my understanding is that we should not try to see our standards as the only best way to do things.

On an empty stomach?

Again, living on less than one dollar a day does not necessarily mean starvation.

btw, I am not trying to naively shoot holes in your posts. Just trying to point out how difficult the problem is and that there might not be a simple solution.

I know and my answer was painfully short given the complexity of the problem. But I'm really convinced that your best bet when helping people is to focus on education.
However, I also think that since our progress was once based on child labor, who are we to criticize nations where kids work all day long to bring money home? What if that was the necessary and mandatory step allowing the emergence of a middle class?

This is the key, isn't it? What are the basics required to survive? We have determined that $1 a day does not buy the basics and these 1 billion certainly do not have those basics. So who funds their basics today? How about tomorrow?

In fact once they have the basics we can forget about them. Historically, we have seen that people with basics can pull themselves up. Thousands of villages in China and India are testament to that fact.

We reached those basics through a really dirty period for our societies, the 19th century. Maybe we should accept that morality is a luxury of well-oof countries. I'm not talking about ways to spend your help, but about the necessary steps to reach those basics: it was not a nice progress in China and India either.

 

[toh6wy]

Anyone remember my colonialism thread? This is one reason why colonialism is/was good, or at least had the potential to be good, in the right hands. If the African nations had remained under the rule of Europe, then once today came, and we are adressing something like this, we can consult with industrialized Europe to provide for these countries, not the bankrupt nations themselves.

But the longer Africa would have been under colonialism, the greater the tensions between its various people -- the Europeans split everything up with no regard for the territory of the native cultures, and put more "European"-like groups over other groups in the social hierarchy. That's already screwed Africa up. If it had gone on longer, watch out when colonialism finally ends...

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

But the longer Africa would have been under colonialism, the greater the tensions between its various people -- the Europeans split everything up with no regard for the territory of the native cultures, and put more "European"-like groups over other groups in the social hierarchy. That's already screwed Africa up. If it had gone on longer, watch out when colonialism finally ends...

well after people are split up for so long, that cultural identity goes away. For the good of their respective countries, they would have to start thinking of themselves as Ghanans or Malians and not Bantu or Songhai or whoever they were before.

 

[amadeus]

But there are thouands of such villages - and at least a billion people living in them in total. Where would you relocate so many to? Who would finance the relocation? Even if you do relocate them what would they do in this new place? They have no marketable skills either.

A billion? What areas are you talking about? Africa doesn't even have that many people.

I'd relocate them to areas that had suitable land for trade and industry, so mostly the coastal regions, rivers, or other urban areas. Africa has plenty of good land availible, it just isn't being put to use.

I'd also support job skills training and industry. As Perfection put it, sweatshops. It's the same way every other industrialized country started out, producing cheap junk for richer countries.

 

[Mastreditr111]

But the longer Africa would have been under colonialism, the greater the tensions between its various people -- the Europeans split everything up with no regard for the territory of the native cultures, and put more "European"-like groups over other groups in the social hierarchy. That's already screwed Africa up. If it had gone on longer, watch out when colonialism finally ends...

yes, look at Rwanda, BUT

i think Cheezy is proposing a more benevolent colonialism, one existing, IN TRUTH as well as the imagination of the colonizers, for the benefit of the people in the colonies. It wouldn't even be colonialism, more of a Pax Americana/Western World. After all the Pax Romana era was immensely peaceful, and the people of the empire benefitted greatly in almost every way from Roman rule, with very few exceptions. We would have to be sure that we were sensitive to the divisions and differences between the various African peoples, something that the old empires never were aware of.

 

[puglover]

Nothing can be done until the people put aside differences, tribalism, and general lust for power. Once most of the population realizes they have to work for the good of their community, only then will aid do any good.

 

[Gangor]

I think the biggest economic problem for the very poor is the protectionism practised by the west. The best thing we could do to help them would be an immediate removal of all trade barriers, particually those on agricultural products. Sure some wealthy farming co-operatives would lose some money, but so what? They're making money at the expense of the poor in the 3rd world and of consumers who are paying too much for their food.