Merlocke

In the light of the tax systems I've shown folks:

The Prime Minister has extended charitable donations towards anything people give towards the Tsunami victims to January 11th. If anyone out there wants to donate - give money to the Red Cross. If you're a Vancity bank customer - your donation will be matched by VanCity - alongside the Canadian Government. I seem to like anything with leverage :P be it FX Trading - or Tax planning. On that note however - you don't get to claim anything extra - but we help the other countries that much more. Anything you give before the deadline can be used in last year's tax return.

My team at Wealth Creation Strategies is currently working on methods to help ship food and medicine to help as much as we can - but every little bit helps.

__________________
-=[ Merlocke ]=-

Yakk

Just so you know:
The Canadian Government 'matching funds' comes out of already-allocated funds for disaster relief. While it is possible that the Government would increase their allocation if there was alot of giving, as it is worded all the 'matching funds' does is redirect aid from the general pool.

Now, at first glance it looks sort of underhanded -- not 'really' matching funds. But, this is actually really useful. It allows the government to use the people to determine what charities deserve funding, and how much. Otherwise, such a decision would be politically loaded, slow and corruptable. When you give money to a charity, you also give a vote that this charity should be recieving government support.

Private institutions who are matching funds seem to work slightly differently in theory -- althought, I doubt they do in practice. The two or three retail joins I've seen that have been matching donations have guaranteed a minimium 50,000$ donation of 'matching funds', and been willing to give up to a maximium of 100,000$ if they recieve that many donations. Which means theoretically your donation could actually have matching funds that would otherwise not have been used for disaster relief.

At this point, the total amount of money pledged for this disaster comes to 4 billion dollars. I personally intend to direct my charity money elsewhere at this point -- 4 billion dollars might actually be 'enough' for this disaster, and almost certainly 'enough' in the short term (actually transporting resources/aid there is the short-term problem, funds doesn't seem to be yet). The other disasters in the world (droubt, overpopulation, AIDs, war, etc) might give a better marginal suffering and death reduction. Sad that such calculus has to be done. =/

I'm trying to decide, right now, between a planned-parenthood type organization or an oxfam type organization.

__________________
Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

JJRousseau

Umm, Yakk, I believe the Libertarians are looking for donors

But I agree. The Asian Tsunami was so horrific (and so made such good news), it is easy to forget the other parts of the world that live in similar conditions year round.

My idea for planned parenting? Every male is given a reversible vasectomy at birth and is not allowed to procreate until passing a personal suitability test. Too drastic?

Yakk

I respect Libertarian beliefs -- their party should prove it's usefulness by generating sufficient profit to operate. My intervention in the market in favour of a Libertarian party would be an insult to their belief system! ;-)

The Asian Tsunami did occur to places where they are well on their way to prosperity. Helping them recover from this disaster should result in them being able to both carry themselves, and help others, in a pretty short term, with a decent success rate. The problem is simple -- repair the tsunami damage, prevent epidemics.

Other areas of the world have larger problems whose solution is harder. How do you solve political/tribal instability? Resources worth more than people? (The Diamond-wars) Boom-bust weather that causes periodic starvation? Large families being the only at all safe retirement security?

Looking at it through the lens of the old saying 'give a man a fish, feed him for a day -- teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime': I have the feeling that all we have to do in the Asian Tsunami crisis is to 'give them a fish', and they'll get back to fishing on their own, once they recover from the blow. That solution won't work everywhere -- we'd have to both provide fish, and learn how to teach them to fish, to prevent the suffering effectively.

A few problems.
One, in the event of technical collapse, you just wiped out everyone within a generation.
Second, giving a government eugenic control over humanity isn't something most people would be comfortable with.
Third, reversible vasectomies have a pretty high risk of not working -- some methods have problems in the 'reversible' portion, others in the 'vasectomy' portion.
Forth, the areas of the world under the worst population pressure have very little in the form of safe, stable and fair government, or large numbers of doctors who have time to waste doing vasectomies or vasectomy reversals.
Fifth, demographic collapses have certain economic problems: the USA's "pig in the python" problem would be far far worse in a society that actually had problems feeding it's people with it's current workforce.

Really, simply providing cheap and availiable birth control to the developing world would be a huge step forward. And right now, the theocracy in the US have reduced and/or cut funding to the organizations that provide birth control information, material and advice in the 3rd world (part of their anti-abortion policies).

Organizations like Oxfam, I think, attempt to provide development assistance to communities, rather than just aid. A single well can make all the difference in the world to 100s of people.

Another interesting idea (which I really don't know how to fund) is the micro-loan banks that are operating in India (and possibly elsewhere) right now. Basically, they provide people with microscopic loans (not grants) that allow them to bootstrap themselves out of poverty. The example I was described was a lady who wove chairs. She was paid a few cents per chair to make chairs from materials someone else provided. The loan of less than 1$ allowed her to buy her own materials and sell her own chairs, increasing her profit per chair by 10 times or more.

This works better in nations who aren't at the bottom of the barrel, but every stable and rich nation is another victory, and every step a triumph over poverty and suffering.

__________________
Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

JJRousseau

Apologies to Merlocke for thread hi-jacking

It's not the third world to which I refer. It's the parents who raise their children and their guard dogs in the same drug infested house. Or the parents who raise their children to wear white sheets over their heads.

mingusfingers

Hasn't the UN already said that they don't need any more money for this?

__________________
Still Looking