I don't understand comments and attitudes like this. "On a global scale, we have much bigger problems." People starving down the block are no less a problem than people starving on the other side of the world. It's atrocious that human beings have to live in squalor anywhere. There are people who need help everywhere and I do not get why people feel the need to measure one form of suffering against another.
You say "I don't want to downplay this" but then follow with: "we have bigger problems." How much more could you downplay it?
I hypothesize that folks (not necessarily OP) do this, consciously or unconsiously, so they can more easily justify inaction for themselves. "Well I could volunteer on Sunday at the Soup Kitchen but India has it so much worse. How could I/we be so selfish?"
None of these people are starving. They have access to food pantries, soup lines, and other community support. I'm not saying it's a nice life, but people in India and elsewhere are actually starving.
Exactly...and also, suffering from horrible diseases that are all but unknown in the developed world. There are many places where it's impossible to get drinking water that isn't contaminated with your neighbors' feces. I can't even begin to imagine the horror of getting something like lymphatic filariasis, and having no way to prevent it or cure it.
It's really difficult to comprehend how much worse off people have it in the developing world unless you see it firsthand. But it's still a false dichotomy to compare one population against the other as a form of argument. It's not as if we can turn our backs on the homelessness problem in this country because things are worse in the third world.
1) This kind of article is pure propaganda, intended to make money for Business Insider by "raising questions" and selling ad revenue against the pageviews.
2) "We" aren't responsible for the decisions of people who live within a 100 mile radius. If "we" are held responsible for their outcomes, financially and morally responsible, then "we" will also demand control over their lives to a degree you'd find unpalatable. This can be trivially solved by re-institutionalization and a Boston-Bombings-style sweep and cleanup of the camp. It won't be because the idea is to give them (and Business Insider) our money without giving us any control over their behavior or the use of funds.
But they don't talk about quantitative easing or Bernanke's 85B/month in mortgage purchases, which have the express intent of driving up home prices.
One could go on. But the right answer is that we didn't cause this, we're only paying attention to it because of BI's SEO, BI itself isn't going to dedicate its operation to donating money, you aren't going to dedicate your life to helping them, and so on. The right answer is no action on this issue that you heard about today, will forget about tomorrow, and is insoluble anyway.
Refuse to be guilt-tripped by cynical manipulators relying on maudlin sympathy, people who want to draw your attention to an issue, blame it on you, and then charge you (involuntarily via tax) a pretty penny for not solving it. For how many billions have been spent on "the homeless" to date? The result is only to subsidize them and build a permanent caste of homeless caretakers.
The real solution is to reverse de-institutionalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation), but that would be fought tooth and nail by "homeless advocates" who'd see their budgets vanish in a trice. Public homelessness as we know it is subsidized, it is a government-and-NGO-caused phenomenon.
We are talking about human beings. The problem isn't: world hunger. The problem is a 6 year old kid who just doesn't want to feel hungry today. Every one of us commenting here can do something about this, right now.
Waiting until everything is "easier to solve" sounds more like an excuse than anything else. Besides, every little bit helps the grander problem that you allude to so how could it not be helpful on every level? We can make excuses all day about why the problem exists: "Oh man, wait until I can vote again, then the gov't will be fixed and the big problems can be solved." "Once big banks and corruption are under control, then we can start feeding people and offering more services."
These kinds of attitudes that allow our complacency as Americans (or elsewhere for that matter) aren't intelligent as being part of solving some greater problem at the expense of others. These attitudes are part of the problem.
We owe it to ourselves and humanity to get past our own brains, see a problem in front of us, and do something about it.
Waiting until everything is "easier to solve" sounds more like an excuse than anything else.
I never said we should wait until everything is "easier to solve", only that solving big problems make easier problems easier to deal with. This mean we should prioritize the hungriest of individuals in this world, rather than just feeding the local homeless.
Poverty in a place like India, because of its scale and the country's broken social institutions, is a much more uphill battle than poverty in the U.S.
There is a greater relative disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in the US of A than India. (relative poverty) Out of the developed countries the US is easily one of the least unequal (if not the most unequal -- I haven't checked) places. This is, of course, because universal health care is communism and social security is for spongers and the lazy.
In absolute terms there is undoubtedly more extreme poverty in India than the US. Why that is so is not as simple as the country's broken social institutions, we're still talking about the world's largest democracy here. I would imagine the caste system plays a part. Colonialism too.
>In absolute terms there is undoubtedly more extreme poverty in India than the US. Why that is so is not as simple as the country's broken social institutions, we're still talking about the world's largest democracy here. I would imagine the caste system plays a part. Colonialism too.
Wealth disparity is not what Rayiner was talking about. He was talking about social infrastructure. You're actually adding to his point here.
What he meant was that the wealthy class in India have about the same spending power as the middle class in the United States. They are sheltered away from the extreme destitution that is on display everywhere in their country and don't interact with the poor at all. It's perhaps 10x what you'd see from a rich person walking in NYC avoiding a beggar asking for change on the street.
Rapid urbanization and the slow collapse of the caste system has left a vacuum in India's culture that leads to stories like that of the poor woman we saw on Hacker News just last week or so. That is the lack of social infrastructure. Not enough is being done, and not quickly enough, to positively impact the society in a meaningful way. As it is now, India is in a state of culture shock that does nothing to help its economic system.
This is just completely ignorant. The income of someone in American poverty is ten times richer than the average person in India. Visit an Indian slum some day.
That's not triage. Triage is usually solving the problem most likely to fall into an unsolvable state first. Ignoring all of the easily solvable problems in favor of the biggest solvable problem is usually the worst strategy, if none of the problems are about to fall into an unsolvable state.
By "triage" I was referring to the "primitive" variant as explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage (I.e. two paramedics arriving at a scene with twenty wounded patients)
You say "I don't want to downplay this" but then follow with: "we have bigger problems." How much more could you downplay it?
I hypothesize that folks (not necessarily OP) do this, consciously or unconsiously, so they can more easily justify inaction for themselves. "Well I could volunteer on Sunday at the Soup Kitchen but India has it so much worse. How could I/we be so selfish?"