Naive. Again.

Interesting story on CNN this morning about ivory and the rate at which elephants are being killed by poachers to supply the international ivory trade. The demand is particularly high in china (70% of global demand) as it's considered a powerful medicine there and the government is finally engaging the problem, but rather than sending charity workers to Africa, or spending more money trying to combat poachers, they are launching a publicity campaign (involving Chinese basketball star Yao Ming) in an attempt to change public perception of the problem and thereby reduce the demand. No demand, means no poaching. (And I'm sure no one would support continued poaching because of the hardship that poachers will endure once they have no poaching income)

This is a great example of exactly the approach that I've been advocating ITT. Elephant charities may well be doing 'good', and it may be useful in the short term, but the only long term answer to the problem is to change consumer attitudes. We don't need a new iphone every year anymore than we need an ivory ornament in our front room.

China destroys ivory stockpile in 'significant symbolic step towards saving Africa's elephants

Elephant charities may also do the good which results in a change in consumer attitudes. You want to compartmentalize issues in order to simplify them but the problem is your resultant answers are simplistic rather than simple.

Me and my wife served food at our local salvation army on Christmas day. I do have to admit that my wife had to drag me kicking and whining like a child but when the day was over it turned out to be one of the best Christmas's we have had in quite some time. Thanks sweetheart for showing leadership in our family as I should have and I wont soon forget the lesson.

This is true, but I'm not sure how it changes what I'm saying? Changing attitudes wherever the demand actually is, and working on the ground where the effects are being felt, are not the same thing.

Charities have limited funds and exposure and worse, in the case of conflict minerals, while most people can easily get behind the idea of not killing elephants for ivory, the demand for the latest gadget is created by an intense and deeply embedded consumer marketing effort and that is much much harder to counter.

I don't think that's what I'm doing at all. I'm simply addressing the cause of the problems rather than the consequences. Surely that's a more effective and efficient way to solve any problem?

It certainly doesn't hurt that both approaches are being used in the short term but which of the two is going to the more effective overall?

How many Fair Phones have been purchased? How many non-Fair Phones have been purchased. What impact has these purchases had on the issue of conflict minerals?

How many homeless/hungry people have you helped by complaining about the money going to oil companies and wars?

The underlying problems is that you think you're doing something when you're really doing nothing. Your hypothetical large scale systemic change in consumer demand may be very effective if it happens, but that if is critical because in reality those large scale systemic changes won't come about by you talking about it. On the other hand, charities are actually doing something right now, with tangible results in reality.

Making ethical purchases is equivalent to throwing starfish IMO. The purchases I make in my life are a drop in the bucket and will affect negligible substantive change.

Charity and making ethical purchases are both socially responsible. I don't see this as an either or situation but rather "both and". I certainly don't view ethical purchasing as somehow superior or more effective than charity.

i fail to see how education will end homelessness, or how it will improve how it is managed. do you have much of a clue how it is "managed" now?

bush has me on ignore but whatev. he talks too much truf.

An ocean is made up of drops.

I don't think that they're equivalent anyway, that analogy doesn't work. A better analogy is the elephant ivory problem (it's better because it's another actual example, it's not even an anology really). If you buy an ivory ornament, you are supporting the poaching and killing of elephants. That there are charities out there trying to protect elephants is never going to solve the actual problem, which is the demand for ivory, they're just dealing with the consequences. To save elephants from poaching in the long term, we need to change consumer attitudes and buying habits.

I don't see it as 'either or', I see it as having been most efficiently dealt with when we no longer need charities, because they're not the answer to the problem (generally speaking, we would still need some aid organisations).

Ethical purchasing IS superior to charity work because it's solving the problem, not simply dealing with the consequences. Charities that attempt to change consumer attitudes recognise this and are doing something to effect change, not just working on the ground to alleviate symptoms.

You keep repeating this, but it's simply not true. You ignorantly repeat things like this and build your arguments around such claims.

The charities out there that are trying to protect elephants do so by raising awareness and spearheading political activism. By spearheading political activism, they can affect changes in policies. By affecting policies, they are causing larger-scale systemic change. Organizations like these:

http://www.bloodyivory.org/stop-the-ivory-trade

http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/ou...ng-ivory-trade

create outcomes like this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...9a7_story.html

by creating political pressure to create changes.

I think you really ought to think about the difference between "solving the problem" and "contributing a tiny piece of the solution."

The fact that you bought a Fair Phone did not "solve the problem" and it is not "solving the problem" in any meaningful way. You've contributed a tiny piece of the solution. And by tiny, I mean that you may have affected an increase of 0.0000001 "units of change" to the conflict minerals problem.

You can pat yourself on the back all you want, but in reality you've done virtually nothing.

Edit: Incidentally, on the ivory problem, the groups that go out and try to catch/scare poachers (the "alleviate symptoms" people) are probably doing more for the elephants than you have done for the conflict mineral problem.

The naive idealist approach that MB is putting forth creates a picture of "helping" that looks something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB7j3sUWohE

This is a good point and I thought you should see it MB. No one is denying that if everyone stopped buying smart phones, then that would be a solution to at least part of the problem. But it seems like you are simplifying things too much. And as aaron says, you buying a fair phone is not "solving the problem" in any meaningful way.

Yes. Whether our efforts are ethical purchasing or charity we have still contributed very little to affect real change. Charity and making ethical purchases are both socially responsible. Aaron made a good case for why it is a "both and" solution for the ivory. Solving complex issues requires a multi prong plan of attack. Ethical purchasing is great but it is not a "end all be all" solution in itself. Ethical purchasing is one way we can make a small difference in the world.

Ok but do you see why I do think they are equivalent? Ethical purchasing and charity both affect change in miniscule ways. I would classify them both under "starfish efforts".

It could be argued that the activists are providing more of a solution than ethical purchasing. You seem to think charity is somehow synonymous with being ineffective. If the charities are successful in protecting elephants then they have essentially solved the problem at the root (see Aarons post). But again it is a "both and" solution, not just activism.

Many charities help on the ground with consequences AND work toward finding long term solutions. I think at this point it becomes unhelpful to simply group together all charities as idealistic groups that don't solve problems.

I see where you are coming from but dealing with symptoms is still important. Taking tylenol for a headache doesn't necessarily deal with the source of my headache but I still really appreciate a tylenol.

There are so many problems that charities deal with: homelessness, hunger, education, freedom from indentured servitude/slavery, clean drinking water etc. etc.

Ethical purchasing is ONE aspect in this milieu but ethical purchasing is not going to solve all of these problems.

Just in case you missed it. Emphasis mine.
Great example of how a small group of people can affect large scale change. The same handful of people likely wouldn't see this dramatic result by simply not buying ivory ornaments. That is not to say ethical purchasing is unimportant, it is very important.

Posts like that are exactly why I have Aaron on ignore Neeel. I'm not 'patting myself on the back', I'm attempting to propogate my behaviour, as I do in other contexts so that it makes a bigger difference than 0.0000001 'units of change'. (I had a real life conversation with two people this morning who had genuinely never considered the impact their buying habits have on other people, and one of them decided not to upgrade his phone as a result of that conversation. Hopefully he will continue to think about this issue and spread the message.)

As I said to LZ, using his analogy, if you have enough drops (or 0.000001's), it adds up to something real.

Let me make something clear, I'm not arguing that charity is useless or that the need for all charity could be done away with simply by changing consumer habits. I was watching the news this morning, a story about the Sudan, and stopping people from buying minerals, or diamonds, or prawns, or cheap clothes wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to the fact that christian and Muslim militias are killing each other over there and causing great suffering to the local population.

The charities on the ground there are doing great good, and will continue to be required until we finally stop killing each other over these things, and that battle is a long long way from ever being won. Same with politics. But... charities, the need for which only exists because people want to upgrade their iphone every six months? Totally different story.

Everybody in the world stops buying ivory. Where's the need for those charities now?

No I don't, and I can't even turn your analogy into what I'm trying to describe because, in your analogy, the starfish has been stranded, and is only in trouble, because of the tides, and we can't control tides the same way we can influence buying habits. after all, those buying habits were artificially created in the first place weren't they.


But they're not effective are they. On average, one elephant a day is being killed by poaches in the CAR, and those poachers, or new poachers, will continue to kill elephants until the demand for ivroy stops and no one wants to buy it any more.


It is, but curing the disease is more effective. Many of the problems you list there won't ever be solved by charity work, they'll just help perpetuate it by acting as a salve to the conscience of those who are helping to cause it.

so when you try to propogate your behaviour it's good but when charities try to do it it's less effective than changing purchasing habits

seriously go back over this thread and check for inconsistencies

No, it's also good when charities do it. I think I've somehow given the impression that I want to completely do away with charities, or that absolutely nothing they do is worthwhile, and neither are the case.

I don't think I'm being inconsistent, I already said this to you earlier ITT:

It may that I only feel the way I do about some things because I was exposed to something a charity did (in the case of conflict minerals it was actually an Andy McNab book that brought it to my attention). Great, now let's work together to remove the need for that charity to exist at all.

This is what you said to LZ about his analogy.

Yes, because you say things like this:

No, you're really patting yourself on your back. If you were *MERELY* talking up Fair Phones, that would be attempting to propagate your behavior. But you keep saying that what you're doing is even more effective than what other people are doing, and that other people are wasting their efforts for helping in a way that's different from how you're doing it.

But your inability to recognize this is similar to all of your other problems of self-awareness, like your conversations about how you raise your kids and such.

So you get credit for 0.0000003 units of change. One for you and one for each of these other two people. Maybe in the course of your life you'll get credit for HUNDREDS of these conversations, leading up to a total change of 0.0000500. Congratulations.

Classic Booshian oversimplification.

What caused everyone to stop buying ivory? Oh, it was the participation of charities, so if we ever get to that point, they charities are irrelevant "now" because of the work that they did "then." And if you ask them, I'm prettyr sure most of those charities are in the business of putting themselves out of business. That is, they want to get things to a point where they don't need to exist.

The difference is that they understand realisitically how long it takes for these changes to come about, and if they were to NOT do the things they were doing right now, the long-term effects would be worse. If they didn't act, it's more likely that elephants would become distinct before people stopped buying ivory.

Edit: If we simply just kill all the elephants, there would be no demand for ivory because there's no supply. Does that count as solving the problem of consumer demand?

Many of the problems listed are more likely to be solved by charity work than by ethical purchasing. (I should add that I think many of those problems will NEVER be solved.)

I dont know much about it, but its possible that >1 elephants would be killed per day without the charities working? So that is at least some sort of "effective".

I'm not entirely sure where he got his data from, but he's probably quoting some website focusing on the Central African Republic. Here are some more global numbers:

http://www.wildaid.org/elephants

http://www.bornfree.org.uk/animals/a...s/ivory-trade/

(This does not address whether MB's position about the effectiveness of charitable groups is right or wrong. It's just bringing data to the table.)