On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 11:51 PM, ashok _ <[email protected]> wrote: > > Someone should do a cost comparison of this "lifestraw" vs > chlorinating water (which is what i have seen working , and what I do > personally if i have to drink filthy water ) -- i think its far > cheaper to chlorinate water and safer -- since the effects of > chlorination last a long while post treatment.
My classical joke on poverty alleviation attempts by the rich will forever be the Reader's Digest cartoon I read as a kid. Sadly not everything can be found on the Internet, least of all a cartoon from the early 1980s. I will describe it instead. It is a single frame cartoon, drawn like so: A rich lady draped in diamonds and fur is waylaid by a beggar as she is about to climb into her Rolls. She ignores the begging bowl, and points in disgust to the ball room she's just exited, the fluttering banner that can be seen in the background proclaims "New Year Charity Ball", and scoffs, "Can't you see I've been dancing on my legs all night for the likes of you?" Similarly poverty alleviation programs that present easy solutions are just a salve to the western ego and conscience. Dare I recall the PlayPump disaster? http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/07/01/the-playpump-what-went-wrong/ I like Žižek's take on this wretched green capitalism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzcfsq1_bt8 If one is serious about eliminating global poverty one can begin to implement the numerous recommendations of the countless global poverty alleviation conferences which have seen some very good broad based government led ideas to end poverty. Not NGO-led but government led - governments are not optional in poverty alleviation. Thomas Pogge makes a very good case for the ethical and moral burden and undeniable culpability of the rich in keeping the poor poor, in his GRD paper from 2001: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan002063.pdf and http://www.hughlafollette.com/eip3/global.resources.dividend.pdf The UN is sitting on very solid proposals worth about a couple of hundred billion dollars at the maximum end that if implemented are broad spectrum solutions for ending poverty, and not just a token promise. It would require the money of course, and more importantly the will of the western governments to implement and enforce the law and order during implementation of the ideas. But naturally, there is no money to be found among the member states, even if the monetary outlay is over a couple of decades - on the other hand three times that number was found to bail out the banks in as many weeks by only a tiny fraction of the member states. The question to ask is - who benefits from eradicating poverty? Not the existing powerful who enjoy the status quo, and would be loathe to see any change to the power balances. So why would they help? Does the west or the non-poor really want a billion mouths emerging from poverty with degrees and qualifications that threaten the living standards of the cushy west? In the modern economy it isn't capital that keeps the status quo, it is the knowledge and soft skills gap that rules supreme. Apple and Google are American companies because no other country today has the capability to educate people as well - as yet. Still these skills are not very capital intensive to acquire - the BRIC countries have shown this by grabbing a lion's share of the lower to middle tiers of the IT and manufacturing industries. Does the world want much of Africa to also enter the fray? Cheeni
