talkpolitics | The cost of fixing things.

Back in the 80s, I went to a presentation on world poverty being run by a group called The Hunger Project.

One of the arguments being discussed was that poverty was not inevitable. we had , after all, put a man on the moon - so could we not end poverty on Planet Earth?

Think of the cost of giving every child on Earth a decent home with running water, with proper sanitation, and then giving all those children a primary education and then an adequate diet. the cost would run into astronomical figures.

I was actually shown the figure on a screen - a huge number with a whole string of noughts on the end.
" And yet, " the speaker told us " this is what the UK spends every year on chocolate and sweets, its what Europeans spend every month on alcohol, and it's what the USA spends every day on armaments."

Wow!

A more recent figure put it at three trillion US dollars. A trillion = 1,000,000,000,000. It's a thousand billions, and a billion is a thousand millions. That is a lot of money - and yet, I wonder how much that would come to in terms of government spending? Is it an accurate estimate even? It must be added that the money needs to be spent wisely and not funnelled off by corrupt dictators - but what would the cost be of eliminating endemic poverty , and could the world actually raise that amount?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No, that is actually what he said.

He then went and used his own life experience as some attempt of "cred" to show he understood what poverty was like -- and further exposed numerous assumptions on structure, support, and choices available that were cooked into his premise.

Are you actually reading the responses people post to him, or just skimming for keywords?

Yes, I'm actually reading everything. His assumptions aren't cooked into the premise, but you are dismissing the anecdote because you think they are.

So I listed which assumptions were cooked into his premise. How exactly are they *not* cooked into his premise?

He explicitly stated that the solution is to change the systems that people in poverty are operating under. The example he gave is to show how being in such a system in the U.S. allowed for getting out of poverty, even in spite of the uncontrollable external factors. The things you listed aren't assumptions, they're the goals.

It's a massive abuse of the word "choice"
to say people *choose* to be in poverty when
the fundamental infrastructure to enable choices is missing or not even allowed.

The problem is with his word choice. CHOICE indicates that multiple options exist currently. If they don't, then they are NOT choices. Get it?

Now, his argument essentially boils down to:

The people have not risen up to be slaughered by their government, thus they CHOOSE to be poor and abused.

Ignoring who has the weapons in many 3rd world countries; Ignoring the governments can call on help while the citizens usually cannot; Rastillio's comparison of his experience to theirs dont line up by several orders of magnitude.

In other words -- the comparison was bullshit.

So we have an argument of "choice" that abuses the notion of the word; We have false comparisons; And we have a confusion of goals and actual possibilities

I have a GOAL of living in a mansion someday -- but that doesn't mean my not living in one right now was a *choice*. I didnt CHOOSE to *not* live in a mansion. See the difference?

Once again, you fail to understand what's being said and you continue on with what you already believe is being said.

Once again, you fail to address a single point and repeat the same mantra.

"the goal....treat possibility AS reality..."

which boils down to

"Accept his blame of other people, even if reality *doesnt* let them live any other way"

and you haven't given a single reason why we should.

The cost of fixing things.

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Sheesh....so much wrong...

Re: Sheesh....so much wrong...

Re: Sheesh....so much wrong...