about charity

[swansont]

8 minutes ago, Itoero said:

I did not agree with you. This what you said:  "This doesn't make sense to me. If people are starving it's because they can't afford food or because food isn't available. If it's the former, then they weren't customers in the first place, so there is no lost business. If it's the latter, then there is no business to be lost "

=>You clearly make a distinction between "they can't afford it" and "food isn't available", which is a simplistic view.

But your counterexample is that it's both. Neither situation gets money to the farmers, which was my point, and something you did not rebut. How does them being fed by others affect the farmers?

[EdEarl]

2 hours ago, EdEarl said:

People who cannot fish, need the fish. People who can fish, need a different kind of help.

It has been a long time, before FDR, since jobs were scarce; nonetheless, it can happen again.

[DrP]

32 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Ah, so the issue is that they are asking you. Which frankly is how you are coming across, what with the name calling and all.

Not really Zaps...  I am happy to give from time to time and have done in the past and probably will do again. The air ambulance service saves many lives each year. I don't think it fair that it is funded by the poor...  (which, by hanging around the CO-OP they are targeting)....  when they could get a fair and negligible contribution from all.

Name calling?  Is that because I called them morons? I don't remember calling them any other names...  I suggested they be moronic because invariably they take umbrage at any suggestion that there is a better way to get funding. This is cognitive dissonance imo because there are clearly better ways to raise the money but any suggestion to such is met with anger and disgust as if I am just apposed to giving my money...  which I am not.

 

[dimreepr]

Itoero, charity isn't just about how much money or food you can give, it's about understanding those in trouble and giving them what they need; that maybe the lonely little old man/lady next door that just needs someone to talk to, or helping the desperate evade their tormentors. We all need to recognise what we can do, not what we are told we should do.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Edited August 23, 2017 by dimreepr

[Itoero]

42 minutes ago, swansont said:

But your counterexample is that it's both. Neither situation gets money to the farmers, which was my point, and something you did not rebut. How does them being fed by others affect the farmers?

Because then farmers lose their sales market. If people have a food supply due to charity then they will not buy local food.

[zapatos]

24 minutes ago, DrP said:

Not really Zaps...  I am happy to give from time to time and have done in the past and probably will do again. The air ambulance service saves many lives each year. I don't think it fair that it is funded by the poor...  (which, by hanging around the CO-OP they are targeting)....  when they could get a fair and negligible contribution from all.

Okay. I'm probably trying to read between the lines which is usually a bad idea.

Quote

Name calling?  Is that because I called them morons? I don't remember calling them any other names...  I suggested they be moronic because invariably they take umbrage at any suggestion that there is a better way to get funding. This is cognitive dissonance imo because there are clearly better ways to raise the money but any suggestion to such is met with anger and disgust as if I am just apposed to giving my money...  which I am not.

Again, I think I've probably misread what you were conveying. My fault. I've also been unhappy with solicitors who were less than polite when asking me for money.

[dimreepr]

29 minutes ago, Itoero said:

Because then farmers lose their sales market. If people have a food supply due to charity then they will not buy local food.

What's not to understand? If they weren't starving, it means they could afford to buy from a local supplier, no charity necessary. 

The fact that they are starving means they have no means to buy food.

Edited August 23, 2017 by dimreepr

[Area54]

@Zapatos. While I do not generally agree with Dr.P's position I feel you are misrepresenting that position and in the process appear to be seeking to demonise him. If I understand his argument correctly it runs like this:

Services such as the Air Ambulance, which are thought to be essential, should be funded by the government (local or national) through tax revenues. Supporting the current apparent disinterest of the government by making a voluntary contribution provides tacit approval of the government position, compromises efforts to persuade the government to change that position and delays, or even prevents, effecting that change. (A side effect of some of the well meaning efforts of volunteer collectors is undue pressure placed on people who can ill afford any contribution.)

This is a moral position, though it is not one I would follow. [I would prefer to press government to take responsibility for such services, while making contributions to such charities as seemed appropriate to me.]  It seems to me that you are both in agreement in the central point - the Air Ambulance is a valuable, perhaps essential service that requires funding from somewhere. Your disagreement is over mechanism. It is counterproductive for either of you to become incensed over mechanism - and both of you seem to be heading in that direction. Just saying.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Itoero said:

Because then farmers lose their sales market. If people have a food supply due to charity then they will not buy local food.

This really isn't a hard concept. You can't lose something you don't have. 

1. If the people have no money, they aren't buying food. The farmer has lost no business.

2. If the farmer has no food, s/he has nothing to sell. S/He has lost no business.

There is no admixture of the two situations where the farmer loses business.

[zapatos]

33 minutes ago, Area54 said:

@Zapatos. While I do not generally agree with Dr.P's position I feel you are misrepresenting that position and in the process appear to be seeking to demonise him. If I understand his argument correctly it runs like this:

Services such as the Air Ambulance, which are thought to be essential, should be funded by the government (local or national) through tax revenues. Supporting the current apparent disinterest of the government by making a voluntary contribution provides tacit approval of the government position, compromises efforts to persuade the government to change that position and delays, or even prevents, effecting that change. (A side effect of some of the well meaning efforts of volunteer collectors is undue pressure placed on people who can ill afford any contribution.)

This is a moral position, though it is not one I would follow. [I would prefer to press government to take responsibility for such services, while making contributions to such charities as seemed appropriate to me.]  It seems to me that you are both in agreement in the central point - the Air Ambulance is a valuable, perhaps essential service that requires funding from somewhere. Your disagreement is over mechanism. It is counterproductive for either of you to become incensed over mechanism - and both of you seem to be heading in that direction. Just saying.

In my last post I tried to state that I might be misrepresenting DrP but I guess I failed.

At my second attempt to be clear: I believe I was making assumptions about DrP's motives and probably also tilting the discussion based on my own feelings and not on what DrP said.

I apologize.

[Area54]

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

In my last post I tried to state that I might be misrepresenting DrP but I guess I failed.

At my second attempt to be clear: I believe I was making assumptions about DrP's motives and probably also tilting the discussion based on my own feelings and not on what DrP said.

I apologize.

No, my apologies. I think I failed to notice the second page of posts. At any rate I completely missed your penultimate post. It was clear that you recognised you may have been misunderstanding the niceties of DrP's position.

Edit: subtleties would probably be a better word than nicities.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Area54

[DrP]

3 hours ago, Area54 said:

@Zapatos. While I do not generally agree with Dr.P's position I feel you are misrepresenting that position and in the process appear to be seeking to demonise him. If I understand his argument correctly it runs like this:

Services such as the Air Ambulance, which are thought to be essential, should be funded by the government (local or national) through tax revenues. Supporting the current apparent disinterest of the government by making a voluntary contribution provides tacit approval of the government position, compromises efforts to persuade the government to change that position and delays, or even prevents, effecting that change. (A side effect of some of the well meaning efforts of volunteer collectors is undue pressure placed on people who can ill afford any contribution.)

This is a moral position, though it is not one I would follow. [I would prefer to press government to take responsibility for such services, while making contributions to such charities as seemed appropriate to me.]  It seems to me that you are both in agreement in the central point - the Air Ambulance is a valuable, perhaps essential service that requires funding from somewhere. Your disagreement is over mechanism. It is counterproductive for either of you to become incensed over mechanism - and both of you seem to be heading in that direction. Just saying.

Thanks. I think Zaps gets what I'm saying, even if he doesn't fully agree.  You summed up what I was getting at exactly, although maybe the 'undue pressure placed on people' is a bit over stated. All the collectors i have ever met have seemed nice. A couple have glared at me if I mention that I think their cause should be government funded that is all. lol

I don't think anyone needs to apologize. Maybe I should for the confusion, lol. 

 

PS - on further reflection I will apologize. I will apologize for referring to the collector that glared at me as a moron. It was uncalled for. I do not know them nor them me. Good luck to them all in raising their funds for this excellent cause. 

Edited August 23, 2017 by DrP

[Itoero]

Food aid lowers the price which decreases the profit of local farmers and causes many to stop(on a longer term). This causes food aid dependency. In Haiti for example, decades of inexpensive imports (mostly rice from USA) destroyed local agriculture and left Haitians unable to feed themselves. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865582893/How-food-aid-hurts-developing-economies.html  http://emerald.tufts.edu/~mmcmilla/papers/McMillanDoesFoodAidHarmThePoor.pdf

Many charity is focused on rural regeneration. Rural regeneration often causes rural-urban migration mostly in search of education, work and security. This inhibits the development of rural communities.

India has known a strong economic growth in the last decade yet the level of undernutrition increased. People that had profit from the new economy are the onces in cities with a skillset/good education. The food-insecure people mainly live in rural areas and have low levels of education and therefor have ho profit from the improved economy. This is called a vicious cycle of unfreedom. India has the biggest rural population and the biggest underfed population.http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS https://www.indiafoodbanking.org/hunger

This has nothing to do with charity but India is imo a good country to study the rural-urban relationship which can increase poverty or malnutrition.

Edited August 26, 2017 by Itoero