negative one, or why poverty isn't history

Maybe I have a negative point of view, but I think our political focus should be on the threats to the possibility of people living good lives. In particular, I fear Islam and environmental devastation, but we shouldn't forget socialist ideology is still up to evil. The obvious socialist evil today is North Korea, but I would like to address the more subtle One Campaign.

The One Campaign which "wants to make poverty history" combines socialism with liberal Christian do-goodism. I suppose it is a moral imperative for some people that every family on this planet have a black walnut dining room set and a big screen HDTV. The question I have for such people is how to create this utopia and what will it cost? If we truly want the most people to get wealthiest the quickest, the clear answer is free markets. Of course, the socialists and liberal Christian do-gooders would not be happy with anyone who points out that fact. Instead, they call for "fair trade", though not even "fair trade" plays much role in their plans to "make poverty history." Their ideologies require their giving to the poor and even those who don't agree with their harebrained ideas to give also. The disastrous consequences of their past givings has proved that "it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35)" in ways not quite intended by Saint Paul. Anyway, wealth is more a set of habits than material possessions. You could give a million dollars to most Americans living in what passes for poverty in the United States. After five or so years of living it up, they'll be living in poverty again. The same is true in most of the world. If we really want to help, we need a way to promote decent values in places of poverty. Now, of course, it is pretty impossible to teach decent values in many places of the world, because there are just so many orphans due to AIDS.

The One Campaign has an answer for that also, we should eliminate not just poverty but also AIDS, and not just AIDS but TB and Malaria also! They also want "fair trade", every child in school, and a genetically engineered tooth fairies to leave money under every child's pillow. This leads to the key weakness of the One Campaign. How much environmental damage is acceptable in the pursuit of their goals? Their answer is as always to ignore that we even face making a decision, which is consistent with their basic ideological belief that humans don't make decisions. Instead, human actions are forced upon them by evil corporations run by reptilian space alien advocates of free trade.

Anyway, let's think through the results of the elimination of disease. There would be huge growth in human population which in turn would have huge impacts on the environment. The environmental concern beloved by Socialist and liberal Christians is the greenhouse gases issue. There are of course other more urgent environmental issues out there, but they love the greenhouse gases issue because most of the blame can be placed on the multi-national corporations managed by the reptilian space aliens. Now, if the greenhouse gases will lead to the Global Warming they warn us about, then their efforts to increase the human population by disease elimination is only going to worsen Global Warming. Admittedly, the nuttier one claim that we just need to consume differently and everything will be ok, but I assume that the saner ones reject that bit of magic. I may be presumptuous in assuming saner ones, but to them I would address the question how much Global Warming is tolerable in the pursuit of the elimination of poverty? I only ask that you make an honest choice, and don't play the silly game that it is not the impoverished consuming the oil. Have you looked at the growth in fossil fuel usage in China recently? As countries become wealthier, huge increases in fossil fuel and/or nuclear fuel use will occur. You can't logically escape answering the question by blaming America's usage of fossil fuels, as habitual as that behavior may be for you.

There are some other little issues for the One Campaign. If we make muslims wealthier, what are they likely to do? More wealth means you can buy more guns and nuclear bombs. Why should we spend the effort to raise people up from poverty only so that they can commit terrorism against us? And it's not just muslims. I would suggest any culture made wealthy artificially is going to have dark habits that the new wealth will merely exacerbate. We do well here in the United States to keep our "pro-life" and animal rights loons under control, and we've had a long time to try to instill civilized behavior into people.