Charity evil

Let me guess, you're reading Ray Patel's The Value of Nothing- am I correct? Good book, good man.

No, haven't read that one. But it's not hard to come to these conclusions. It only requires the ability to see and think.

Oops! mistyped his name it's Raj Patel. Here is his site and some information about the book. I think you will find him an interesting thinker.

http://rajpatel.org/2009/10/27/the-value-of-nothing/

So no one disputes that some chairity, as it is being done today, is evil?

a lot of yopur charity donations ends up in the wrong hands.
first of all the administrators and staff have to be paid.
next the suppliers of goods and the transporters.
when the maize mal you bought hits the ground in somalia (or somewhere) it is often commandeered by mercenaries to feed the militia.

Yes, we hear about these things from time to time.
So the really important part of our charity wasn't that those who needed the resources actually got them. The important part was that we gave them. If not we would care enough to see to it that they ended up in the right hands.

Also, in a few weeks I'm participating in a concert to raise more funds to Haiti. But if I were to demand my usual fee for this concert it would not be charity; I would be just a leech. And the same goes for anyone between those who give and those it is meant for who get richer off the process. In my opinion, of course.

i'm part of a local organisation that supports a village in east timor.
We ship unwanted products donated by local people we send local volunteers to teach the people how to use the products and we sell some of the product they produce in local stores and help find markets for the product we cannot consumke.
the group are currently rounding up old (working) computers monitors and printers.
coffee and handcrafted scarves and clothing are some of the products they produce.
http://www.mansfield.vic.gov.au/Page/Page.asp?Page_Id=409&h=1&p=1

some years ago a local doctor and family did a stint in West Africa, he wrote to the local paper requesting school children donate their broken coloured pencils and stubs. then sent photos home of the children drawing and writing. the kids in west africa had never seen coloured pencils before.

When the white man came to the Americas, the natives were feeding off EACHOTHER, literally:



You might call that "Diversity"...

In fact that's what I like about Gibson's recent "Apocalypto", i.e. the happy ending where the white honkies arrive on ships and put an end to the cannibalism and devil worship.

In real life, all but the tiniest bit of the wealth which the the advanced Western nations have ever produced has come from native materials, labor, and ingenuity and has been shared with the world in such manner as to benefit the entire world. You still see things like the old hand-cranked Singer sewing machines being shipped out in bulk quantity from Baltimore harbor to the numerous nations which still lack reliable electricity.

I mean one of my favorite movie scenes is the thing in Fiddler on the Roof where the young tailor finally saves enough rubles or whatever to send off to Sears/Roebuck for one of those sewing machines and starts producing twenty times the amount of work any tailor in the Ukraine had ever produced previously.

You really think that guy would figure himself a victim of Western exploitation??

That is simply untrue. The distribution of wealth is not equal. A hungry child in some parts of Africa doesn't get the same attention a hungry child in Norway gets.

And some of the third world countries are in the states they are in because they got raped by imperialists hundreds of years ago. Some conflicts between native tribes in Africa were caused by imperialists who were there seeking profit and power in their homelands.

When europeans sailed around the world planting their flags they put down the foundations of the modern distribution of wealth. Ever since that time trade regulations and restrictions have been in place to ensure that the flow of riches goes only one way.

That's true, but there's no rational way to view that as our fault. In fact there are two ways you could try to fix that problem:

• The Washington/Jefferson/Lincoln/FDR/Eisenhower/Reagan way which is to make American into an example for the world to emulate.
  
• The libtard way which is to OD on guilty pills and then try to reduce America to third world status so as to equalize the world's wealth. That system of course in real life will result in a universal equality of poverty and squalor.
  

Wanna know what actually hold's Africa back? I mean, the dimmest possible view on the topic would be that of a former South African by the name of Kim Du Toit and I don't share Du Toit's complete outlook for the future of Africa but I don't see any of his individual points which would be easy to argue with either. The two biggest things which offer any hope for Africa would be a United States which could serve as an example, and the internet age and its flow of informationl

Du Toit's article:

http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index.php/essays/36/

A United States that could serve as an example you say. But I have heard it said also that if all the peoples of the world were to enjoy the materialistic standards of the US and europe, the whole planet's reserve of natural resources would be depleted within our lifetime.

It is impossible to raise each nation in the world to US standards. The way things are going now we will run out of resources. That is inevitable unless we find new ways to utilize potential sources we cannot make use of as of now.

And the western way of life already serves as an example. An example inspiring people who come here from third world countries to work for their own benefit, so they too can own expensive cars and indulge in all kinds of materialistic passtimes.
Of all human impulses, selfishness is the one with the highest reward in our societies. If a person owns 48 billion we look up to him and envy him.

I dont think that Charity is evil, but it is a calming method which gets in the way of dealing with the real issues. We have made a hash of civilization, a huge chunk of our brother and sister humans live in conditions and lives that are clearly unacceptable. We "help" them with charity primarily so that we can feel better,so we can rationalize that something is being done, that the crap lives of all of these humans are on the way to getting better.

They are not. if we owned up to reality we might do something to change.

I agree.
But I think that charity helps keep the status quo. We won't own up to reality so long as we can pay our way out of feeling guilty. And the people who get a crust of bread every now and then don't complain because to their way of thinking they are lucky to get even that. They don't know about anything else.

That turns out to be bullshit.

Here's the basic answer to every sort of claim like that one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager

There is NOTHING which we will need going into the future which we are in the slightest danger of running out of.

NOHING?

... on a global scale?

I don't mean to offend any Americans out there but the American government dont seem to care about the environment or anyone else for that matter they feed off of other countries and think its ok, but they should get off their fat asses and do some thing about what they our doing to OUR planet that we ALL have to responsiblity for and look after our fellow human beings

Cyr, the charity is given by charity organisations " I don’t necessarily agree with the manner of giving, but they aren’t the ones that are keeping poor countries poor " that would be a combination of multinational corporations, western governments, banks including the IMF and World Banks, corruption in their own countries, and poor education.

In relation to the quotes - the Western world does in fact exert undue influence on their state of poverty. The third world owes the west over $3.2 trillion dollars. If you consider in many countries the average worker earns only a few dollars a day (compared to our average of say $200 dollars per day), you can begin to see the actual size of the debt...and we’re still lending more to them.

Then there are their resources which are mined by western countries, and very little of it actually ever makes it back to the country that owns the resources. I’ve seen one estimate that, in the end, only 3-4% makes it back. If I remember right, that went along the lines of : 75% to the company, of the remaining 25% 2/3’rds goes to servicing debt, of the remaingi 1/3 of 25% (so about 8%) ½ goes to providing the infrustructure necessary for the oil well.

Then there is the way that multi-nationals make nations bid for their companies to locate there, and the bidding is usually by way of tax concessions (you’ll see when they want to build very large refineries and the like " they do this in western nations too now)...but these poor nations still have to provide infrastructure so they still have to tax their own companies " which means their own companies have to compete against more efficient methods paying less tax, so the local companies fall over.

Then the IMF/World Bank, when nations default, demand ‘restructuring’, which to the world bank/IMF means ‘opening your markets up’, but it’s a fact that none of the current developed nations managed to develop without protection to vital components of their economies.

Then there are the roles that 'tax havens' play in world trade, and the amount of tax multi-nationals pay.

That’s a very summarised version of how it all works. If you want to understand it better, you’re going to have to start reading about foreign policy and economics.

Books I liked were, pulitzer prize winner “A Legacy of Ashes : the history of the CIA” (written from CIA records and interviews with former operatives), ‘A game as old as empire’ (written by multiple authors, each accounting their own actions), ‘Confessions of an Economic Hitman’ (which by the way, sounds like a conspiracy theory, except there’s documentary evidence that the author is who is says he is, and can verify much of what he wrote about), A Clash of Fundamentalism by Tariq Ali (should have a ME viewpoint " he comes across at intelligent but with a great hatred for the US, but some points he makes are quite valid), Inside Al-Qeida (the founding of Al-Qeida), All the Shahs Men (written by a NYT journalist), and The State of Africa.

They make interesting reading purely because once you've read enough books, you realise that people from all over the world, western and eastern, are saying the same things...and once it's been properly explained to you how it works., and it actually forms a easy to see, logical pattern.

Very intelligent, I'v been telling the people at my old philosophy forum the very same thing, and they'r unable to grasp this simple reality. They simply can't comprehend that charity is prolonging their suffering and undermining their economy.