If you do not feed starving people you then have dead people. This is the end state we wish to avoid. Setting up a system so that you do not need to keep feeding them yourself is a good idea. It does not negate the need to feed them now to avoid them being dead.
> If you do not feed starving people you then have dead people.
There are going to be dead people no matter what you do. However, we can affect how many dead people there are.
My goal is to minimize the number of dead&starving people. Your strategy produces more dead&starving people than my strategy.
What's your goal?
I know that you think that "now" is different, but it isn't. Applying your strategy in the past produced starving people. Why should we keep doing that? ("this time" isn't different.)
I forgot another point, such programs always result in corruption which steals food money from poor people and gives it to rich ones. Why do you support that? (You don't get to point to the good that would supposedly happen if such corruption didn't happen. It does, so if you support the programs, you're willing to accept the corruption and its consequences.)
I don't think that your desire to feel good about yourself justifies policies that are as harmful as yours are.
My idea; feed them now and change the system so they are fed in the future.
Your idea; change the system so they are fed in the future.
You say that your idea creates fewer dead people (or, we should say since every person alive will die, fewer people dying of starvation) than my idea. I disagree.
"I don't think that your desire to feel good about yourself"
Please, please, do not project your moralising onto me. I don't give a fuck how I feel.
For what it's worth, I find myself suspecting that you have the particularly Western faith (and it is a faith) in the mythical free-market as a solution to all problems of supply. I say this because I don't know if it's true or not, and given that I suspect it is, it's only fair to voice it so you can correct me (or not).
Late edit: You choose not to address our differing strategies, or correct any misapprehension I might have about yours (which, as above, seems to be the same as mine, except that I also feed people now) and instead spout more airy, unspecified junk about how my strategy (which is the same as yours, with the addition of food now as well) is harmful without explaining how. Fine. I didn't really expect an addressing of the facts. It's HN all over. Every problem simply must have a clever "hacky" solution that would read well in the Freakonomics blog and magically make everything better.
Not at all. I've described what happens when the different strategies are implemented. Why should we expect anything different this time? If things are going to work out the same....
> "I don't think that your desire to feel good about yourself" Please, please, do not project your moralising onto me. I don't give a fuck how I feel.
You're right. I don't know why you're advocating policies that have such harmful effects. It was wrong for me to attribute to you a positive motive.
I didn't mention the free market and nothing that I wrote depends on a free market.
However, now that you mention it, I'll point out that poor people in the west are fat, not starving.
> And this is actually a salient point - subsidy and direct-aid programs like this are never meant as a permanent solution to anything. Nobody is dumb enough to believe this. These programs buy time to find a systemic solution - because it's better to keep these people hobbling along while we try to fix the larger systemic issues that perpetuate their poverty, than to simply let them all die while we tinker with the knobs and switches.
> subsidy and direct-aid programs like this are never meant as a permanent solution
How long has this program been in place?
These programs waste resources so they're not available to solve the problem. In addition, their supporters and dependents fight to keep them around and will sabotage efforts to make them unnecessary.
That's why there are few things as long-lasting as temporary govt programs.
If you do not feed starving people you then have dead people. This is the end state we wish to avoid. Setting up a system so that you do not need to keep feeding them yourself is a good idea. It does not negate the need to feed them now to avoid them being dead.