Topic: Super cool! - Click once a day to feed someone! - FREE FREE (Read 6731 times)

Erik Bethke · « **on:** February 13, 2004, 07:20:39 am »

Click your mouse and feed someone for FREE

762 · « **Reply #1 on:** February 13, 2004, 08:56:17 am »

Neat.

Sirgod · « **Reply #2 on:** February 13, 2004, 09:17:23 am »

Quote:

Thank you! Your click helps feed the hungry with the value of 1.1 cups of staple food. Please click every day and support the sponsors below who pay for your gift.

that is neat. One click and some one get's 1.1 cups of food. well worth the time it takes.

Stephen

Taldren_Admin · « **Reply #4 on:** February 13, 2004, 11:02:32 am »

This needs to stay stickied.
While you are clicking though...

Help fight breast cancer
if you could take 15 seconds to click on this link and click on the pink box it will help fund mammogram

Lurker · « **Reply #6 on:** February 13, 2004, 01:05:42 pm »

Wow, I'll click this everyday! Good find Erik

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #7 on:** February 13, 2004, 06:24:44 pm »

I wonder which is better. Give someone a cup of food and feed him today or spend more and help build an agricultural infrastructure and feed him forever?

Puddleoguts · « **Reply #8 on:** February 13, 2004, 07:53:27 pm »

Build an agricultural infrastructure (not necessarily on the US model), stabilize the political situation and feed the individual.

If I were the individual, I would prefer the above be done in reverse order.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #9 on:** February 13, 2004, 07:56:49 pm »

We've been donating food for decades...how much longer should we feed these people before we work on infrastructure? And if a given nation cannot support an infrastructure than what's the continued point in supporting a group of people who can never support themselves?

Dash Jones · « **Reply #11 on:** February 14, 2004, 08:24:44 am »

Hmm, this is an easy thing to do each day when coming here...hopefully this can stayed sticky for some time.

Ravok · « **Reply #12 on:** February 15, 2004, 10:20:38 am »

BOTH !!!!!!! The fact that any body on this planet goes hungry is a crime and does not speak well of us as a Civilization or a species.

If we truly cared about each other or this planet we would not be having this conversation.

NannerSlug · « **Reply #14 on:** February 15, 2004, 11:42:56 pm »

its always good to shine a light than curse into the darkness.

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #15 on:** February 16, 2004, 03:47:18 am »

I'm an engineer by trade. I solve problems.

Simply handing someone food isn't any way to solve a hunger problem...it only establishes an artificial method of support for a given population. Without efforts in establishing an effective agricultural infrastructure, including a distribution system for food, we are only encouraging and perpetuating a total dependency by the people we're trying to help. Without the means to feed themselves the people will continue to reproduce and only add to the burden.

Additionally, due to the nature of these 3rd world governments aid organizations must bribe everyone from national leaders to local army officers in order to get vital supplies to the people that need them. Only 2-3% of total aid donated ever reaches the people we're trying to help, and unless we increase the total money spend a hundred times over, won't feed more than a small fraction of the worlds hungry.

How do you think these 3rd world dictators in Nations with no real GDP are able to have Swiss bank accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars? Much of the money is taken from international aid donations or from food aid that was taken and then resold on the black market.

Don't get me wrong. This website is a good idea and an excellent way for the common individual to help the problem. However, I'm looking at the "big picture" and we have to make serious changes in the way we "Aid" developing nations. Simply throwing money at the problem is not going to solve it. We're wasting time, money, and most importantly lives in our current ineffective method.

Erik Bethke · « **Reply #16 on:** February 16, 2004, 04:20:55 am »

Punisher would you care to take the time to take a hungry people of your choice and outline what you feel would be a much more productive long-term solution to the problem instead of merely handing them food?

As an engineer, I too, am most interested in the long-term solutions, but I cannot see the net-good in allowing people to starve to death while people inside the group and outside the group negotiate on a long-term solution.

But perhpas it would be a fruitful discussion to pick a group and lets see where it goes?

-Erik

SL-Punisher · « **Reply #17 on:** February 16, 2004, 05:16:46 am »

I'm not a civil engineer, I deal with the Milstar satellite network not the effective production of food. There are plenty of people with the necessary education and experience who agree with me and are equally frustrated at current ineffective methods of most aid programs. Hell, even the people involved distributing the aid to the hungry are also frustrated at having to fight both the greed and the indifference from the government of the people they're trying to help.

I can hold an opinion as to the solution to the problem without actually taking the next flight out to Africa (Where 4 out of 5 of the worlds poorest nations are). The fact that I'm not talking directly to these people doesn?t invalidate my opinion. Akin to saying that non-proliferation of nuclear arms is a good idea and then having someone quip that I should be quiet unless I'm out there dismantling the suckers.

Now I'm not saying we should stop feeding these people until we get farms and irrigation established. And even if we did given our currently limited effect on the problem wouldn't more people live in the long run if we helped them build the means to feed themselves rather than only making a dent in the hunger problem? What I'm really getting at is a shift in funding --- increasing emphasis on infrastructure rather than spending most of the money on foodstuffs. Finding and exploiting water supplies and using established methods in getting water to where its needed. Modernizing farming technology in combination with genetics to reduce the crops need for water. Building reservoirs to collect and then store rain water during the monsoon season, as much of the rain water is wasted as run off. Establishing grey water (IE toilet/shower/tap) recycling methods to increase the available water supply and reduce waste. Establishing semi-permanent security to protect ongoing projects in areas that are somewhat unstable and to prevent theft. Constructing desalinization plants where applicable to produce more freshwater. Additionally in order to help pay for these projects we could work out favorable trading policies with the nations we're trying to aid.

Of course to really affect the problem 9 out of 10 governments in nations where there are starving people need to be replaced. But I won't get too deep into that

Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. That is more important than anything else. It out weighs short term "band aid" fixes. We have to ask ourselves a question: Do we want to fix the problem or just make ourselves feel better about ourselves? If the vast majority of our aid is being used to enrich the dictators of these nations (Which increases their stranglehold on the people) then we have to ask to what end are we throwing money at the problem? Without infrastructure development how can they ever improve their situation--- how can they join the even 20th century in terms of an average individuals access to water, electricity, medical care, education, and food?

The cost associated with all this infrastructure is staggering in the short term, but we have to weigh that against the ongoing and infinite cost of handing them finished foodstuffs rather then giving them the means to feed themselves. In the end it may sound harsh to equate the problem to numbers on a balance sheet, but it's what we have to do in order to find effective means to solve the problem, or in the very least make a much bigger dent in it. Some might say I don't have a heart when taking this approach, to that I would respond that you usually have to use both a heart and a brain to solve serious problems.

Erik Bethke · « **Reply #18 on:** February 16, 2004, 05:43:48 am »

Punisher,

Thanks for the long post.

It is hard with a text message to imply body language - but I was most specifically trying to encourage you to speak and not to silence you...

I forgot to add, that in the likely event that you do not have a well-thought out outline for a hungry handy of your own creation, perhaps you ran across someone else's ideas on infrastructure that you felt was good...??

A darker thought, a thought that I have harbored for a while 16 or so years now - since I found out that the Reagan Administration cancelled funding for family planning (ostensionably sp? so as to not fund abortion) but also cutoff the distribution of condoms! to teh developing nations from Federal Funds.... is that I suspect that somebody in the western power infrastructure did some power calculus and figured out that condoms in Africa are not in the interest of the western nations. Nor do I think a hunger-free world is in the interest of the western powers. Who knows, maybe deep in the bowels of Rand there are some really smart guys who ran the numbers and could look ahead at the offshoring problem and competition from foreign markets and decided to keep the game unfair as long as possible.

Well that is what I am thinking now. In other words if it was in the interests of the megacorps to free the world from hunger - everyone would would be fed.

So to address the infrastructure issue Punisher, I think we somehow have to arrange that the western powers from the rich class and the middle class (or perhaps just the rich class - I was indulging in a moment of political generosity towards the power of the middle) perceive that it is in their manifest (read short-term) interest (read mo money) to have the hunger on the planet go away.

What do you think Punisher?

-Erik

JMM · « **Reply #19 on:** February 16, 2004, 10:16:38 am »

I was at the hotel in El Paso Friday night watching an interesting program on the U.S. and the U.N. Seems the U.N. is the one bent on sovereignity over the world and money and resources, and in the late nineties guess who tried to do the right thing? A Texan named Ron Paul! We need to pull out of the U.N. and use our resources to help build our infrastructure and support the building of other nations so that they may become self sufficient on their own. Most underdeveloped nations in East Africa just need one thing, water, give the people what they need to feed and house themselves, and sooner or later they will see the tyranny they were living under for so many years and rebel and perhaps have a democracy or republic.

http://www.uhuh.com/laws/hr1146ih.htm

http://www.geocities.com/domesticdecay/documents/hr1146.html

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Topic: Super cool! - Click once a day to feed someone! - FREE FREE (Read 6731 times) var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};

Erik Bethke

762

Sirgod

Toasty0

Taldren_Admin

Sethan

Lurker

SL-Punisher

Puddleoguts

SL-Punisher

Sethan

Dash Jones

Ravok

Lurker

NannerSlug

SL-Punisher

Erik Bethke

SL-Punisher

Erik Bethke

JMM

Topic: Super cool! - Click once a day to feed someone! - FREE FREE (Read 6731 times)