Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 exptools 1/6/84; site ihuxl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!ihnp4!ihuxl!pvp
From: pvp@ihuxl.UUCP (Philip Polli)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Starvation: The Rebuttal
Message-ID: <876@ihuxl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Feb-84 17:55:41 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxl.876
Posted: Wed Feb  1 17:55:41 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Feb-84 10:48:08 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 162

As promised, here are the "Oh-Shit-We'll-All-Starve-If-We-Do-That"
arguments for review:
________________________________________________________________________
[1] "Let's say we DO send all the food we have to spare, OK?  So, what happens?
For one year, or two, a lot of people survive (that's good,
no doubt about it).  The number of people also grows.  In several
years, we are OUT of surplus. We stop sending food (surprise!)
and all the people we saved now die.  In fact, many MORE die because
there are now MORE people."

[2] "However, the problems involved in bringing about self-
sufficiency are NOT solvable in 2-5 years, or even in 20."

[3] "I don't believe that feeding these people would solve their problem.
When something is simply given, then there is no incentive to ever
improve "your lot in life".  All that results from feeding hungry
people is more hungry people."

[4] "so SCREW them...keep politics out of it...Let's
	take care of our own first."

[5] "Starvation, unfortunatly, is a fact of life on this planet and the
equal distribution of food will only excerbate the situation.  The
twin problems of starvation and population growth cannot be solved
by taking away from the haves to give to the have nots."

[6] "But if we run out of surplus before the hungry achieve
self-sufficiency, we will have done more harm than good"
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I think I got most of the relevant statements out of the articles.

First, let's recognize that there appears to be general agreement on some
important facts:

	1) No one has argued that we do not have enough food to
	   alleviate hunger in the world, at least in the short term.
	   (say two to ten years)
	2) No one thinks that we do not have the technical ability
	   to distribute the food to the starving, 
	   should we to choose to do so.
	3) No one has argued that letting someone starve is a good thing,
	   in and of itself.
	
The preceding facts indicate that what we have here a moral choice.
We can choose to let people starve today (evil),
or we can choose to feed them today (good).

So why do all these people claim that we must choose today to
let people die?

Arguments [1],[2],and [6] assert that we will soon exhaust
our surplus and then we will all starve together.
In short, we must do evil today to avoid greater evil tomorrow.
This is merely a variant of claiming that the ends justify the means,
that the evil means must be chosen to achieve the good end.
I don't know of any moral or ethical value system that allows
that argument to justify doing evil. In fact, most of the
people whom we rightly regard as the great moral abominations
of our time used this type of reasoning to justify their actions.
(Hence my previous references to Hitler, Stalin, and Amin.)

I suppose if enough people on the net really don't understand
why it is both morally wrong and self corrupting to use evil means
to achieve a good end, I'll end up posting a tutorial
on morality and ethics. But I really hope that they teach at least
that much morality in engineering school these days!

Arguments [3] and [5] raise the issue of whether we will take away
peoples motivation to become self-sufficient by sharing our
surplus with them. Clearly, individuals starving to death today
due to economic or climactic disaster are highly motivated to become
self-sufficient. Their problem is that they do not have the ability
to become self-sufficient before they die. So let's assume instead
that we are referring to an entire country here. Will being
"on the dole" spoil this country? I don't think so.

Please note here that I am not asking for equal sharing of food
between the haves and have-nots. I am not even asking the haves
to cut back on their consumption! I am asking that the developed
nations use their current surplus to provide enough food to struggling
people to keep them alive while we all work on the solutions to their
problems. How can subsistance rations demotivate people or spoil them?

(In passing, let me point out that my reference to Stalin
 does in fact apply to this argument. Stalin clearly believed
 that the famine in central Russia was due to the peasants
 not having sufficient motivation to produce enough food. He
 refused to admit that his reduction of grain prices and attempts
 at forcing peasants into the kolkhoz had caused severe dislocations
 in the production of food. In order to "motivate" the lazy peasants
 to increase their production, he refused to provide them food.
 Predictably, several million peasants starved to death.
 [ cf "Stalin, The Man and his Era", by Adam B. Ulam, Chapter 8,
   The War against the Nation ]
 Today we refuse to admit that people starve because of economic
 dislocations caused by world-wide recession and natural
 calamity. We think that if the under-developed nations were just
 motivated enough, or just kept their birth rate down like we do,
 then they would be just as well off as we are. We cannot see
 that their birth rates are high *because* they starve.
 And so we propose to withhold food from them, just as Stalin did,
 to provide the motivation. And just as predictably, they will die
 because of our actions.)

Argument [4] is at least direct, if nothing else.
"I've got mine, Jack, Screw you."
The main feature of the more lucid versions of this argument seems to be
theassumption that "we" deserve the food that "we" earned,
and "they" don't deserve it because "they" didn't earn it.
As if we went out and developed this country all by ourselves
by the sweat of our brow! What hard work we've all done!

"We" just happened to have been fortunate enough to be born here,
and "they" just happened to have been born there.
For that mistake, we choose to let them die.
We treat mass murderers in this country better!

So enough refutation of the reasons to let people starve.
Are there any positive reasons for us to feed them?

First, someone once talked about the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness". From what I have seen in this discussion,
there are a few people around who think that the right to life is only
applicable to people in developed countries. Perhaps they think it comes
with U.S. citizenship? No, all human beings have the right to life.
If we take their lives from them by withholding the food that would
save them, are we any better than if we simply turned their
country into a "glass parking lot", as somebody recently suggested?
How can we proclaim our respect for human rights if we
do not grant other people their most basic right? Remember
that sins of omission are no less evil than sins of commission.

Second, if you believe that our stockpiles of food will run out in the
not too distant future, then hoarding merely postpones the
fateful day of reckoning. Better to face the problem today,
while we still have some shreds of our self-respect left,
than to wait and watch the rest of the world slowly starve.
The morally acceptable response is to share what we have, and then put
on our thinking caps and get to work finding the new food sources
for all of us. Perhaps we could spend 2 or 3 percent of our defense
budget on solving the world's food supply problems. What would that be,
about 10 billion dollars a year?

Finally, we can, indeed, choose to do good today, and still prevent evil
tomorrow, if we have the moral courage and vision to do so.
If we turn our faces now from the needy, then proclamations of our
righteousness, and our denunciations of Communism
will ring hollowly in a world that will see no difference
between us. If we wish to claim the moral high ground, then
we must act accordingly.

(Gee, I managed to get through another article without calling anybody
 names! Now let's see if people respond to the issues raised here.
 I'll bet they won't, and then I can go back to the more enjoyable
 sport of cheap shots and character assasination!)

	Go Ahead, Make My Day!
	
	Phil Polli
	{ihnp4!}ihuxl!pvp