| Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
| 248 |
Why did we give food away [to poor countries]? Conventional wisdom says it was because we momentarily transcended our normal selfishness. Is that the whole story? It is not. The "we" of the above sentence needs to be subdivided. The farmers who grew the grain did not give it away. They sold it to the government (which then gave it away). Farmers received selfish benefits in two ways: the direct sale of grain, and the economic support to farm prices given by this governmental purchase in an otherwise free market. ... Who else benefited -- in a selfish way? The stockholders and employees of the railroads that moved grain to seaports benefited. So also did freight-boat operators... So also did grain elevator operators. So also did agricultural research scientists who were financially supported in a burgeoning but futile effort "to feed a hungry world." And so also did the large bureaucracy required to keep the ... system working. ... Who *did* make a sacrifice? The citizens generally... paying directly or indirectly through taxes. But each of these many millions lost only a little: whereas each of the million or so gainers gained a great deal. ... Those on the gaining side... made a great deal of money and could afford to spend lavishly to persuade Congress to continue the program. Those on the sacrificing side sacrificed only a little bit per capita and could not afford to spend much protecting their pocketbooks against philanthropic inroads. |
philanthropy charity agriculture hunger starvation poverty international aid |
| 255-6 |
To send food only to a country already populated beyond the carrying capacity of its land is to collaborate in the further destruction of the land and the further impoverishment of its people. |
philanthropy charity agriculture hunger starvation poverty international aid population stabilization |
| 257 |
To the ecologically-minded student of ethics, most traditional ethics looks like mere amiability, focusing as it does on the manifest misery of the present generation to the neglect of the more subtle but equally real needs of a much larger posterity. It is amiability that feeds the Nepalese in one generation and droawns Balngladeshis in another. It is amiability that, contemplating the wretched multitudes of Indians asks, "How can we let them starve?" implying that we, and only we, have the power to end their suffering. Such an assumption surely springs from hubris. |
philanthropy charity agriculture hunger starvation poverty international aid population stabilization |
| 258 |
The economic prejudice that leads to a heavy discounting of the future must be balanced by a recognition that the population of posterity vastly exceeds the population of the living. We know from experience that the environment can be irreversibly damaged and the carrying capacity of a land permanently lowered. Even a little lowering multiplied by an almost limitless posterity should weigh heavily in the scales against the needs of those living, once our charity expands beyond the limits of simple amiability. |
philanthropy charity agriculture hunger starvation poverty international aid population stabilization |
