A friend of mine sent me Sarah McLachlan's latest video World on Fire. The interesting caveat was that he stated: "I am not interested in starting a political discussion around it". Isn't the whole point of the video to provoke thought and discussion?
In any case, this is hardly a new concept. Live-Aid and Band Aid are two more examples of musicians asking us to think about starving children in another country. Just last week, the topic of starving children in Ethiopia came up when one of my-coworkers couldn't finish his meal at lunchtime.
"Feeding starving children of another nation" is just one of a long list of "charitable causes" that I will never support, because feeding them doesn't address the root cause of their hunger.
1) The aid that we send is often intercepted by African warlords.
2) If they did get it, they don't want our fancy bio-engineered food, anyway.
3) Starvation is more a result of poverty, than it is a direct result of insufficient food production.
4) It violates the rules of supply and demand. Quite frankly, feeding people might actually make the problem worse.
In many of these countries, the governments and leaders do quite well for themselves. They aren't feeding their own people. Until regime change happens, via external intervention, revolution, or "other" things will never truly improve.
If we really want to change the world, it helps to look at history, so we don't repeat our mistakes. William Easterly's "The Elusive Quest For Growth" is a fantastic book about how even the best intentions don't always result in success.
