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Re: So, we need a topic...Lets try this?

Posted By: Superfoborg (term1-8.vta.west.net)
Date: 6/6/2003 at 1:47 a.m.

In Response To: Re: So, we need a topic...Lets try this? *PIC* (Archer »–)›)

: I concur with you on mostly everything, but I think this
: is a little unfair. Considering how much we put out in
: foreign aid, how many times we have intervened and
: done a lot of good for the world, we deserve as much
: credit as we do this admonishment. However, I do find
: it interesting that the last State of the Union
: Address had all those things you mentioned in it.

: indeed, I'd expect more bitings of the hand the feeds.

The problem stems from the fact that hand that feeds does so not selflessly but for often nefarious reasons; the analogy would be offering the dog a treat to get it to come to you and then throwing it in a cage or giving it a shot or something.

The foreign aid we give is almost always tied aid, where we tell people to take this money and build bridges, or dams, and so on (ironically the first things we blow up when we attack someone), instead of say, schools, food production facilities (like hydroponics farms, maybe).

Ideally, if I decided how to spend the money, I'd build what I call "Universe-cities" (pronounced like Universities). Big public buildings, eating halls, living quarters, power generators, hydroponics farms... etc, effectively a nearly-self-sustaining arcology. Probably just one of them at first. I'd spend the rest of the money employing people from more prosperous, educated nations to come teach the native people first how to run all the infrastructure businesses within the arcology, the farms and power and such, and as payment they get to live there, eat the food that's grown, and get a general education.

The primary focus of career education at any given universe-city would be something that is a good potential business for improving that country, most likely modern argiculture and civic engineering for all these parched, barren places with so many starving people. They could then go out and found business of their own in the country, employing more of their own native people, spreading the money that they would be generating within their own country to their own workers, and in the process improving the very land itself. Or, they could go on to be new teachers at the arcology. Eventually when more foreign aid is sent, more universe-cities could be built, and possibly employ people coming straight out of the first ones with degrees in some field of education or another, so that the money we funnel in goes straight to the country and not roundabout back to already rich nations and their teachers (not that teachers are rich or anything).

But the problem is, most modern nations don't WANT to do this. We don't want to set off a chain reaction that could make some small backwater Neckistan or Elbonia a self-supporting and rising economic power. Look what happened when America did that to Japan - their businesses now rival or even dominate many American businesses! It's not in Western corporate interests to sponsor such endeavors, and since Western corporate interests fund (or in some cases *coughBUSHcough* coincide with) Western government, Western governments aren't going to do something like this that could threaten their own livelihood.

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