Making inflated claims is routine in the world of sales, where it’s called puffery. But we wouldn’t want to be misled about hunger.
We should never mistake a mask for a face. Science cannot cure poverty. Poverty is a part political, part economic problem. Any fix will require helping the poor, so a real solution is unlikely without a change in Ayn-Rand style morality which makes altruism a vice. Another problem is ideology – including the laissez-faire nonsense that if you let everyone do what they want, everybody’s lot will be improved. Still another block is the belief that public assistance weakens people. It might be prudent for scientists to check with politicians before offering incredible fix-its.
So it’s with interest that I picked up the special issue of the Scientific American (September 2005) with its cover story “Ending Poverty”(7) by Jeffrey Sachs, a UN advisor. Sachs shows how urgent the situation is: one-sixth of our planet’s population is trying to live on less than $1 a day. Compared with the overflowing wealth of other world regions, you might think this unfair. But Sachs is not writing morality or values; I combed his writing, and nowhere in the article is the word justice. Sachs is dedicated to science and his prose is saturated with technical points, graphs and statistics. His proposals for ending poverty are mechanical. He thinks most of the world’s extreme poverty can be abolished by 2015 if rich nations deliver new technology and pony up (his term) money.
Now it turns out we’re already donating $2 - 4 Billion a year to sub Saharan Africa alone (the hardest hit region). But little of that money gets to the actual victims. Much of the donations winds up in the pockets of consultants, or gets diverted by corruption. (Apparently if you let everybody do what they want, some people steal.) So Sachs says it’s going to take more money – at the rate of $160 Billion a year, and more transparent local governance.
Is this a scientific solution? Or is this the familiar cycle of free market capitalism creating plunging inequalities, then finding a new way to redistribute the wealth?
Hunger is painful, sometimes agonizing. It does not strengthen character. It is demoralizing, dispiriting and disorienting; the victim develops misshapen ideas, hopes and fears. It is a disaster. It festers in official misdirection and political disinterest. And it is encouraged by exploitation and greed. Technology is promising what it can’t deliver. A politician’s promise is not to be taken seriously because it is like a rainbow, it has no back, no weight. But we trust our scientists. This is one place we don’t want to grow credibility gaps.
Sachs is promoting his plans for the abolition of chronic hunger in the rest of the world in ten years. Meanwhile, in the most technological, scientific, transparent and wealthy country in the world, the United States, by our own statistics, homelessness is spreading, and poverty is mounting year to year. And hunger is growing like gangbusters.
Notes
1. Nord, M., Andrtews, M., Carlson, S. Household Food Security in the United States, 2004. United States Department of Agriculture report ERS-ERR-11, October 2005. 2. New York Times Almanac 2004. NY: Peguin Reference, 2003. Section: US Agriculture.p. 304 3. Bartholemew, D. “Hungry in the Valley: 10% of area’s population at risk of not getting enough to eat.” Los Angeles Daily News, 7 June 2005, p. 1. This article reports on the Center for Health Policy Research study conducted by UCLA released in 2005, and other sources. 4. U.S. Food assistance (domestic). The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000. Mawah, NJ. Primedia Reference Inc, 2000. 5. Havemann, J., and Alonso-Valdevar, R. “US poverty rate rises again in 2004.” Los Angeles Times 31 August 2005 p. A 13. This article reports some recent US Census Bureau statistics, and other sources. 6. Bresnahan, M. “Lakers turn to hire power.” Los Angeles Times 15 June 2005 p. A1. 7. Sachs, J.D. “Can extreme poverty be eliminated?” Scientific American, 2005, 293, 56-65.(Special issue, September).
Author: Julian Edney teaches college in Los Angeles. His book Greed: A treatise expands on these themes. He can be contacted through his website.
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