From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism,bit.listserv.catholic
Subject: Re: What do we really want?
Date: 13 Dec 92 16:33:22 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems

ljh655@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Lubosh @ ANU) once wrote....
>In article <223-PCNews-124beta@ccs.covici.com> John Covici,
>covici@ccs.covici.com writes:
>>                - If You Want to Feed Somalia, -
>>                - You Must Demand Development! -
>Thanks John for your posting. However, to me it seems to be even more
>demanding question for Christians in the more developed countries. Let's
>just try to simplify these things for a while. There is a level of the
>living standard in every country. Some countries are very high, some are
>very low, and some are "below zero" (like Somalia) - it means they can't
>even find anything to eat, and they starve. So what we do is we feed them
>to keep them alive for a little while longer... Or to those who are
>rapidly falling down towards the "zero" level an aid is sent to "hang on"
>for some time... Isn't this just an excuse to enjoy our lives without
>feeling the pain of the others? We don't want our neighbours to be
>starving, but we always want to be better off than they are. Anyway, I
>think the demand of development is the only reasonable one in this time.
>There should be even more than that. Jesus demands more. The righteous
>move from the rich countries would be to find a way to level the living
>standards - to lower their own in order to increase those of the poor
>countries. Unfortunately we can't get everybody to agree with that (I bet
>not even the Christians), so the demand for development is very good. But
>let's also add this time "We want them to develop up to our own level,
>not just to make them feed themselves. We don't want any more poor and
>rich countries anymore, we want to be equal..." Well, it doesn't sound to
>be very probable, because the rich parts of the world do need some other
>countries to be poor in order to stay rich...
>Anyway, just a thought...


Well, from the standpoint of physical economy, it wouldn't do very 
much good to lower the living standards of the rich countries to 
raise those of the very poor countries.  If we did that we'd all be a
lot worse off and there would be no way to build the infrastructure 
projects which are necessary to keep the people of Africa alive.

To build these projects, you have to have the most advanced forms of 
technology -- like nuclear power -- available on an increasing basis. 
 You have to have the industrial capacity and research facilities to 
make such things -- the ability to transport such things to Africa 
and the educated manpower to install and operate such plants while 
people's educational level is brought up to a point where the 
industries can be operated by the people living in those areas.  
There may be some lowering of the standards of living in Western 
countries if this program is carried out because we would not be 
stealing from the Third World countries -- which right now helps to 
slow the rate of collapse of our own economy.

The moral thing to do is to immediately fight for this program.  We 
can bring the continent of Africa up to a decent standard of living 
in 20-30 years or so and regain our own souls as well.



----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com

Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.current-events.somalia