pvp@ihuxl.UUCP (Philip Polli) (02/02/84)
As promised, here are the "Oh-Shit-We'll-All-Starve-If-We-Do-That"
arguments for review:
________________________________________________________________________
[1] "Let's say we DO send all the food we have to spare, OK? So, what happens?
For one year, or two, a lot of people survive (that's good,
no doubt about it). The number of people also grows. In several
years, we are OUT of surplus. We stop sending food (surprise!)
and all the people we saved now die. In fact, many MORE die because
there are now MORE people."
[2] "However, the problems involved in bringing about self-
sufficiency are NOT solvable in 2-5 years, or even in 20."
[3] "I don't believe that feeding these people would solve their problem.
When something is simply given, then there is no incentive to ever
improve "your lot in life". All that results from feeding hungry
people is more hungry people."
[4] "so SCREW them...keep politics out of it...Let's
take care of our own first."
[5] "Starvation, unfortunatly, is a fact of life on this planet and the
equal distribution of food will only excerbate the situation. The
twin problems of starvation and population growth cannot be solved
by taking away from the haves to give to the have nots."
[6] "But if we run out of surplus before the hungry achieve
self-sufficiency, we will have done more harm than good"
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I think I got most of the relevant statements out of the articles.
First, let's recognize that there appears to be general agreement on some
important facts:
1) No one has argued that we do not have enough food to
alleviate hunger in the world, at least in the short term.
(say two to ten years)
2) No one thinks that we do not have the technical ability
to distribute the food to the starving,
should we to choose to do so.
3) No one has argued that letting someone starve is a good thing,
in and of itself.
The preceding facts indicate that what we have here a moral choice.
We can choose to let people starve today (evil),
or we can choose to feed them today (good).
So why do all these people claim that we must choose today to
let people die?
Arguments [1],[2],and [6] assert that we will soon exhaust
our surplus and then we will all starve together.
In short, we must do evil today to avoid greater evil tomorrow.
This is merely a variant of claiming that the ends justify the means,
that the evil means must be chosen to achieve the good end.
I don't know of any moral or ethical value system that allows
that argument to justify doing evil. In fact, most of the
people whom we rightly regard as the great moral abominations
of our time used this type of reasoning to justify their actions.
(Hence my previous references to Hitler, Stalin, and Amin.)
I suppose if enough people on the net really don't understand
why it is both morally wrong and self corrupting to use evil means
to achieve a good end, I'll end up posting a tutorial
on morality and ethics. But I really hope that they teach at least
that much morality in engineering school these days!
Arguments [3] and [5] raise the issue of whether we will take away
peoples motivation to become self-sufficient by sharing our
surplus with them. Clearly, individuals starving to death today
due to economic or climactic disaster are highly motivated to become
self-sufficient. Their problem is that they do not have the ability
to become self-sufficient before they die. So let's assume instead
that we are referring to an entire country here. Will being
"on the dole" spoil this country? I don't think so.
Please note here that I am not asking for equal sharing of food
between the haves and have-nots. I am not even asking the haves
to cut back on their consumption! I am asking that the developed
nations use their current surplus to provide enough food to struggling
people to keep them alive while we all work on the solutions to their
problems. How can subsistance rations demotivate people or spoil them?
(In passing, let me point out that my reference to Stalin
does in fact apply to this argument. Stalin clearly believed
that the famine in central Russia was due to the peasants
not having sufficient motivation to produce enough food. He
refused to admit that his reduction of grain prices and attempts
at forcing peasants into the kolkhoz had caused severe dislocations
in the production of food. In order to "motivate" the lazy peasants
to increase their production, he refused to provide them food.
Predictably, several million peasants starved to death.
[ cf "Stalin, The Man and his Era", by Adam B. Ulam, Chapter 8,
The War against the Nation ]
Today we refuse to admit that people starve because of economic
dislocations caused by world-wide recession and natural
calamity. We think that if the under-developed nations were just
motivated enough, or just kept their birth rate down like we do,
then they would be just as well off as we are. We cannot see
that their birth rates are high *because* they starve.
And so we propose to withhold food from them, just as Stalin did,
to provide the motivation. And just as predictably, they will die
because of our actions.)
Argument [4] is at least direct, if nothing else.
"I've got mine, Jack, Screw you."
The main feature of the more lucid versions of this argument seems to be
theassumption that "we" deserve the food that "we" earned,
and "they" don't deserve it because "they" didn't earn it.
As if we went out and developed this country all by ourselves
by the sweat of our brow! What hard work we've all done!
"We" just happened to have been fortunate enough to be born here,
and "they" just happened to have been born there.
For that mistake, we choose to let them die.
We treat mass murderers in this country better!
So enough refutation of the reasons to let people starve.
Are there any positive reasons for us to feed them?
First, someone once talked about the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness". From what I have seen in this discussion,
there are a few people around who think that the right to life is only
applicable to people in developed countries. Perhaps they think it comes
with U.S. citizenship? No, all human beings have the right to life.
If we take their lives from them by withholding the food that would
save them, are we any better than if we simply turned their
country into a "glass parking lot", as somebody recently suggested?
How can we proclaim our respect for human rights if we
do not grant other people their most basic right? Remember
that sins of omission are no less evil than sins of commission.
Second, if you believe that our stockpiles of food will run out in the
not too distant future, then hoarding merely postpones the
fateful day of reckoning. Better to face the problem today,
while we still have some shreds of our self-respect left,
than to wait and watch the rest of the world slowly starve.
The morally acceptable response is to share what we have, and then put
on our thinking caps and get to work finding the new food sources
for all of us. Perhaps we could spend 2 or 3 percent of our defense
budget on solving the world's food supply problems. What would that be,
about 10 billion dollars a year?
Finally, we can, indeed, choose to do good today, and still prevent evil
tomorrow, if we have the moral courage and vision to do so.
If we turn our faces now from the needy, then proclamations of our
righteousness, and our denunciations of Communism
will ring hollowly in a world that will see no difference
between us. If we wish to claim the moral high ground, then
we must act accordingly.
(Gee, I managed to get through another article without calling anybody
names! Now let's see if people respond to the issues raised here.
I'll bet they won't, and then I can go back to the more enjoyable
sport of cheap shots and character assasination!)
Go Ahead, Make My Day!
Phil Polli
{ihnp4!}ihuxl!pvp
kechkayl@ecn-ee.UUCP (02/03/84)
#R:ihuxl:-87600:ecn-ee:13400004:000:325 ecn-ee!kechkayl Feb 3 04:13:00 1984 Hmm... A little pretentious, but well worth answering. I think the main issue here is the fact that if we help the starving people of the world (temporarily), we also hurt ourselves (permanently). I do not think the American people as a whole have the altruism necessary to do this. Thomas Ruschak ecn-ee!kechkayl
saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (02/04/84)
> (Gee, I managed to get through another article without calling anybody > names! Now let's see if people respond to the issues raised here. > I'll bet they won't, and then I can go back to the more enjoyable > sport of cheap shots and character assasination!) > > Go Ahead, Make My Day! > > Phil Polli > {ihnp4!}ihuxl!pvp Just to be a cheap shot: What do you mean, you didn't call anybody names in your article!?! You just called the whole net.politics population "engineers"!!! If that's not an insult, I don't know what is!!! (:-)) Have a nice day! Sophie Quigley watmath!saquigley
renner@uiucdcs.UUCP (renner ) (02/07/84)
#R:ihuxl:-87600:uiucdcs:29200085:000:1434 uiucdcs!renner Feb 6 23:49:00 1984 > [These arguments] assert that we will soon exhaust our surplus and then > we will all starve together. In short, we must do evil today to avoid > greater evil tomorrow. ...most of the people whom we rightly regard as > the great moral abominations of our time used this type of reasoning to > justify their actions. I don't buy this part of Polli's argument. If we assume the premise (and it is an assumption; I don't believe it), then there are two outcomes. Either some starve now and some survive, or all starve later. Surely the first outcome is better. Would he really have everyone die? Why? Imagine two men drowning in the ocean. They have one life preserver; only one man can use it. One man must drown. Must both men drown? Is it murder for either man to use the life preserver? Why? I still don't buy the references to Stalin and the planned starvation in Ukraine, either. Stalin took food by force from those who produced it. He didn't "refuse to provide it." He stole it. This is murder on a grand scale, but it is not relevant to our topic. Oh yes. When Polli posts his "tutorial on morality and ethics", I hope he will explain why it is acceptable to use "innumerable cheap shots and degrading insults" in order to attract attention to a topic that interests him. Without, of course, reference to any of this "the ends justify the means" stuff. Scott Renner {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!renner
nrh@inmet.UUCP (02/17/84)
#R:ihuxl:-87600:inmet:7800058:000:10063
inmet!nrh Feb 15 13:45:00 1984
***** inmet:net.politics / ihuxl!pvp / 5:55 pm Feb 1, 1984
First, let's recognize that there appears to be general agreement on some
important facts:
1) No one has argued that we do not have enough food to
alleviate hunger in the world, at least in the short term.
(say two to ten years)
[ That's because you're being vague. What do you mean by
"alleviate"? Keep hunger from happening? Make hunger slightly less
profound? or what?
]
2) No one thinks that we do not have the technical ability
to distribute the food to the starving,
should we to choose to do so.
[ I don't think we've got that ability. Not while people in THIS country
go hungry while others are "welfare millionaires". And then there is
the teensey little matter of whether the Governments of those countries
will let us waltz in and start feeding people there without taking
the cream off the top. If you doubt this, have someone tell you of
Lagos's big loan from the World Bank, and how little is actually going
to build the New City in Nigeria. Not that attempting to feed the
hungry is an unworthy thing to try, but if your budget for doing
it ASSUMES no corruption.....]
3) No one has argued that letting someone starve is a good thing,
in and of itself.
[This I sort of agree with. Would you have force-fed Ghandi, though?
No? You would have given in to his demands. Good for you! What about
the fellow in the English prison who died about two years back.
Not to nit-pick -- I see you're not talking about people who are TRYING
to starve, but please don't talk about "everybody agreeing". I don't
agree with your three points, so not everybody agrees]
The preceding facts indicate that what we have here a moral choice.
We can choose to let people starve today (evil),
or we can choose to feed them today (good).
[Hmmm.... Would you sell your soul (assuming you're religious) to
feed them today? No? How about murder a lot of people? ("How many?"
I hear you ask.... well, to quote Mark Twain when a woman said
she'd sleep with a man for a million dollars but not for 2 dollars
(which she refused indignantly, asking what kind of woman Twain
thought she was): "We've established what you are, now we're just
talking price."
]
So why do all these people claim that we must choose today to
let people die?
Arguments [1],[2],and [6] assert that we will soon exhaust
our surplus and then we will all starve together.
In short, we must do evil today to avoid greater evil tomorrow.
This is merely a variant of claiming that the ends justify the means,
that the evil means must be chosen to achieve the good end.
I don't know of any moral or ethical value system that allows
that argument to justify doing evil. In fact, most of the
people whom we rightly regard as the great moral abominations
of our time used this type of reasoning to justify their actions.
(Hence my previous references to Hitler, Stalin, and Amin.)
I suppose if enough people on the net really don't understand
why it is both morally wrong and self corrupting to use evil means
to achieve a good end, I'll end up posting a tutorial
on morality and ethics. But I really hope that they teach at least
that much morality in engineering school these days!
[Oh? Where do you suppose this "surplus" comes from? I'll give you
a guess or two, but ultimately, it comes from government-backed
price floors under farm products. The reason the government can
do this is by virtue of taking money from those who do not wish
to give it. This is called "theft" or "taxation" depending on how
directly you wish to put it. To expand, or even continue this
program involves expanded or continued theft. What did you
say about the end not justifiying the means?
]
Arguments [3] and [5] raise the issue of whether we will take away
peoples motivation to become self-sufficient by sharing our
surplus with them. Clearly, individuals starving to death today
due to economic or climactic disaster are highly motivated to become
self-sufficient.
[Yes, but feeding them for free for a couple of years will change
their motives quite readily. Take a look at what happens to people
on Welfare in the United States. As a reference, look up the
New Yorker series on Welfare (about a year ago, as I recall).
]
Their problem is that they do not have the ability
to become self-sufficient before they die. So let's assume instead
that we are referring to an entire country here. Will being
"on the dole" spoil this country? I don't think so.
[Does that give you the right to steal
other people's property to test your theory?
]
Please note here that I am not asking for equal sharing of food
between the haves and have-nots. I am not even asking the haves
to cut back on their consumption! I am asking that the developed
nations use their current surplus to provide enough food to struggling
people to keep them alive while we all work on the solutions to their
problems. How can subsistance rations demotivate people or spoil them?
[Again! It seems unreasonable, I agree, until you look at what happens to
people on the dole. They grow dependent. Look it up. Look at history!
1 ounce of history = 10 tons of theory]
Argument [4] is at least direct, if nothing else.
"I've got mine, Jack, Screw you."
The main feature of the more lucid versions of this argument seems to be
theassumption that "we" deserve the food that "we" earned,
and "they" don't deserve it because "they" didn't earn it.
As if we went out and developed this country all by ourselves
by the sweat of our brow! What hard work we've all done!
"We" just happened to have been fortunate enough to be born here,
and "they" just happened to have been born there.
For that mistake, we choose to let them die.
We treat mass murderers in this country better!
[ Nope! "We" choose NOTHING. You can send half your salary to these
people (good luck!) and test your theories of how to save them. I
wish you luck, I sincerely do. I might even participate.
BUT -- neither you nor I have the
right to seize food owned by others and send it to those you deem
deserving. You have no right to help set up a committee to do the
same thing (rather, you do have that right, but such a committee still
does not have the right to seize the resources)
That the food has already been seized makes it no nicer. We must end the
seizure. If you argue that the food has not been seized, I agree! The
money to buy the food has been seized. There's a difference, but not
so far as the legitimacy of the government piling up the surplus is
concerned.
]
So enough refutation of the reasons to let people starve.
Are there any positive reasons for us to feed them?
First, someone once talked about the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness". From what I have seen in this discussion,
there are a few people around who think that the right to life is only
applicable to people in developed countries. Perhaps they think it comes
with U.S. citizenship? No, all human beings have the right to life.
If we take their lives from them by withholding the food that would
save them, are we any better than if we simply turned their
country into a "glass parking lot", as somebody recently suggested?
["we" are not taking their lives from them. "we" do not have the RIGHT
to take tax money from individuals to buy the food for this purpose.
Remember -- the end does not justify the means. You cannot steal money
from me to give to your church, no matter HOW GOOD the purpose the
church will put it from. If you find money that's been stolen from
me, the moral thing to do is return it, not to use it for your favorite
charity.
]
How can we proclaim our respect for human rights if we
do not grant other people their most basic right? Remember
that sins of omission are no less evil than sins of commission.
[Okay Phil -- I hope you're living at subsistence level yourself.
That's YOUR philosophy, not mine. Mine holds that coercion is
the ultimate evil, that property rights are human rights, and that
I don't have the right to grab money from other people to put it where
I think it will do the most good. Give it a little thought. I don't
like the idea of starving people, but I won't steal from others
to prevent it.
]
Second, if you believe that our stockpiles of food will run out in the
not too distant future, then hoarding merely postpones the
fateful day of reckoning.
Better to face the problem today,
while we still have some shreds of our self-respect left,
than to wait and watch the rest of the world slowly starve.
The morally acceptable response is to share what we have, and then put
on our thinking caps and get to work finding the new food sources
for all of us. Perhaps we could spend 2 or 3 percent of our defense
budget on solving the world's food supply problems. What would that be,
about 10 billion dollars a year?
[That's real kind of you to re-allocate those resources so casually. NO.
They're MINE. You can't have (roughtly) 0.5% more federal taxes from me.
You're welcome to ask for it, but taking some more by force (federal
taxes are backed by force) is immoral. Ends do not justify means.
]
Finally, we can, indeed, choose to do good today, and still prevent evil
tomorrow, if we have the moral courage and vision to do so.
If we turn our faces now from the needy, then proclamations of our
righteousness, and our denunciations of Communism
will ring hollowly in a world that will see no difference
between us. If we wish to claim the moral high ground, then
we must act accordingly.
["we" cannot decide any such thing. Only individuals can make decisions.
Such proclomations do indeed ring hollow. I'm not all that interested
in what the "world" thinks. Let them think as they please, but I for one
am not willing to participate in another Great Boondoggle
(the Great Society used a lot of your rhetoric, but was
staged in the US) simply because
you think "we" should.
]