I suggested you taking the homeless person into your home, forever, so all his meals are taken care of.

Go and talk to a homeless person on the street, tell them how much you care about them and their suffering, and then tell them that you are not going to do anything specific for them , but are going to "change consumer attitudes " and solve the oil problem, and they will probably tell you to **** off.

How do you intend to change consumer attitudes, how long do you think it will take, what should homeless people ( or other people affected by it) do in the mean time, and do you think charities have a part to play in changing consumer attitudes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FAI_-woNh4

I don't know what you mean. Please clarify.

This is one way to affect positive change.

Everyone wants to solve the problem but not everyone thinks like you. Some people solve the problem by working for the UN while other people volunteer in a soup kitchen. The reason so many people balk at your position is because you posit your solution as superior to all other efforts, you come across arrogant. There is a multitude of orgs and people trying to solve the worlds problems from various angles.

This is oversimplified to the point of being false.

The "meh" issue is people insisting their way is the best way. If you want people to stop doing things their way and start doing things your way you need to convince them.

I am not going to try and convince you of other ways of doing good. If you are stuck on ethical purchasing and consumerism then thats fine. That is one route to affect positive change. At the same time I will affirm the guy working at the local soup kitchen. There is a lot of ways to affect positive change in the world. I just don't think you have hit the gold mine you think you have.

PS. Neeels most recent post has some good points as well.

MB pats himself on the back again. "I'm so much better than those charities."

No. The right question is "What can realistically be done to alleviate the situation?" You've admitted that you don't actually believe consumer demand is likely to change.

So if you don't think that you actually expect the changes to come about, what good are you doing participating in an effort whose long term projection is failure?

Charities are doing something and you're not?

Ok, if we take in, house and feed, every single homeless person in the country, will that end homelessness? I don't think so, because we haven't solved the problems that cause homelessness.

I haven't actually argued that changing consumer attitudes would solve the homelessness problem, you're confusing that with conflict minerals. I have mentioned earlier ITT that I believe education to be a big part of the solution to homelessness.

Homelessness came up as an example of problem that isn't solved by dealing with the consequences, e.g. by feeding and housing the homeless, it's not solving the problem of why there are homeless.

I've addressed this point several times.

I can clarify but I'll only be saying what I've been saying all the way through this thread. The lack of transparency in supply chains combined with rampant an irresponsible consumerism actually creates and helps perpetuate many problems we face and that charities spend vast amounts of time and money dealing with the consequences of. Conflict minerals, sweat shops, child labour, elephant poaching are just a few examples.

We are the cause of many of these problems because we're the ones buying the products.

Yes, only one way, but a hugely effective way. Nothing kills industries faster than a lack of demand. We don't have to change the system, we just have to change how we use it. I thought I'd made it clear though that I'm not proposing that we drop everything else and only focus on what I'm describing, Neeel seems to think that and so do you despite numerous attempts I've made to deny that.

I understand that, I'd feel the same way. Does that make me wrong? Hopefully you're clear on the fact that I'm not proposing this as the only way to deal with problems. But, if suppose we have two people. One works in a soup kitchen feeding the homeless, a very worthy and useful act of kindness. The other goes into that community and by one means or another raises the standard of living, causing that community to produce fewer, or even no, homeless people. Both were necessary in the short term, but which effort was the most effective in the long term? Which approach actually solved the problem? All I'm saying is that we need to do this on the issues I've brought up and we can do it buy choosing how we spend our moeny more wisely, while the charities work on the ground, until they're simply not needed any more.

No, it's not. Many many businesses and industries have failed because the demand for their product vanished, I think you seriously underestimate the power of consumers to cause change. I also wonder if you really understand how much suffering is the direct and indirect result of irresponsible consumerism.

Did you read the Intel article I linked?

No no no, this is just completely misunderstanding my position. I'm really at a loss to explain why though since I've tried several times already and I just don't seem to be getting through. I'm sure that's my fault, I'm willing to keep going on this.

If there are no homeless people, then we have solved the problem of homelessness.....


ok substitute education ( or whatever) for changing consumer attitudes and my point still stands


where? link please

I don't think there is a solution to homelessness. That is, there's nothing that can systematically be done to prevent people from engaging in behaviors that will permanently end homelessness. I think the fact that you believe otherwise makes you incredibly naive about the realities of homelessness, most likely caused by the fact that you've probably never seriously interacted with the homeless.

I feel as though I keep jumping on the end of Aaron's posts on this thread regarding homelessness but I agree strongly with the point he's making.

Congratulations on being smarter, more moral and just more ethical than people who do charity then. They are, after all, only alleviating the guilt of their own excess.

But ok, to stop this idea that you are somehow a victim: What you did in this thread was to wade in and degrade the efforts of people who do charity work with blanket statements questioning their motivations. Too boot it was a derail of rather epic proportions of an interesting subject.

You then proceeded to berate charity for not solving the Iraq war, conflict diamonds and the unethical business model of oil companies, and used this to argue why ethical trade is better. Yet it is painfully obvious to anyone that ethical trade hasn't solved those situations either. So how come it didn't receive the same criticism?

After this you have largely spent the thread denouncing running from your early statements and claimed your claims were never made, briefly interrupted with an e-peen challenge of "what do you do?" whose implied message was fairly obvious.

TD you fool!!!! you are dangerously close to being put on ignore!!! your comments are much too akin to Aaron's invisible sentiments.

Out of curiosity, how many people did buying that phone feed?

No, you haven't, any more than if you gave everybody on the planet a good hot meal you'd have solved the problems of global hunger.


It does, but it's not worth addressing again.

Sorry, not prepared to spend time digging out quotes for you. They're there if you care to find them.

All Aaron's post proves is that he hasn't read my posts properly. Very early ITT I said something about 'eliminating homelessness' but only a few posts later said 'I realise that we may never have a society where no one at all is homeless'. The first post was carelessly worded, a lack of specificity....

However, I'd prefer not to engage with Aaron, either directly or indirectly through quotes in other people's posts LZ. Do you have a response to #156? I feel like you're the one person who understands that I don't think ethical consumerism is going to end all of mankind's problems, forever. That's what's most depressing about this thread, not just the lack of support for a strategy that is becoming increasingly recognised as something that is a big part of any permanent solution to certain problems but the number of people who think I'm stupid enough to think that it's a 'fix-all' answer for any problems we care to mention.

How? If there are no homeless people, then what is the problem of homelessness?




lol




lol

No, what is depressing is that ethical trade hasn't solved the issues you used as basis of criticism of charity.

What you do is an age-old dialectic approach which is probably even older than politics. You state bad things about A and good things about B, then you proceed to ignore good things about A and bad things about B.

Here's a typical example: "The problem today is that there are too many cars, and cars excessively pollute. What we should do to resolve the issue is encourage bicycling. Bicycles use far less energy than cars per mile traveled and they hardly pollute local climate."

Congratulations on a successful troll, it took me quite a while before I realised that you were doing it. I kept thinking, 'who is this TD? It's not the same guy who started the 'weak/strong atheism thread''.

Are you indulging yourself ITT? Whatever, I'll answer your points, only because you're not getting away with saying all this without being challenged on it. I'd hate people grunching the thread to think you're telling the truth.

No I didn't, I said that guilt 'is probably the most common reason that people decide to volunteer at that time of year [Christmas], guilt over having so much when others don't.'

Your comment is at best a (blanket?) misunderstanding and at worst just a rather uncharitable strawman. It's like you read that one post and blew a fuse that's stopped you understanding anything I've said since. Chill dude.

Come one, you're fishing a bit too hard here... If you're right, then you're saying that the mods aren't doing their job properly and we both know that's not the case. It's just where the thread evolved.

Or.... perhaps you're degrading the mods by insinuating that they can't spot a derail of 'epic proportions' and questioning their abilities? See what I'm doing there? It's what you've been doing, not a nice tactic is it? Don't do it to me then, let's leave that kind of crap for the Bill O'Reilly's of the world.

I haven't berated anyone TD, do you know what that word means? As for your comment about ethical consumerism, it hasn't solved the illegal ivory trade because it's not in place yet. If it were, there would be no illegal ivory trade. Your comment is a non sequitur.

This is just lol from someone who said to me 'Right now it only sounds like you want to save the world through sitting in your couch'. I'm not even going to bother defending to you the reason that I asked that question.

Fail on two counts. It's not a criticism of charity and how can ethical consumerism have solved these issues when it's still in it's infancy? Most people haven't even heard the phrase or seriously considered the concept. It's kinda like 'sustainability' was 15 years ago when I did my degree, no one knew what it was, now it's a buzzword and quite common to see. Maybe you're not trolling, maybe you really don't understand the issue, I don't know how else to interpret what you're saying to me.

My bad then. Your motivation to show of your own ethical consumerism is probably the reason for your views on charity in this thread.

I'm in the clear now right? I didn't say anything set in stone about your reasons for writing in this thread, after all. It can't possibly be an accusation or criticism.

This is not the first time this criticism has been made of MB.

The problem is that your analysis suggests that ethical consumerism is bound to fail.

---

The most obvious interpretation is that you've made a mistake, but for some reason it never occurs to you that this might be a possibility.

I guess you must have missed this question.

Let's look at the written record starting with your first post and the first few responses it to.

So right out of the gate, you made a factual claim, followed by another factual claim, neither of which has been supported by evidence. Furthermore, you don't think saying to a volunteer, "Come back when you're not feeling guilty" is an insult is approximately 100% of the problem.


LOL -- It's "evolving" when you do it, but when someone else does it, it's "derailing."

But you've admitted that you don't think this is actually going to happen.

That's too bad. I wanted to be highly entertained when you claimed that you were merely pushing dereds to purchase *MORE* responsibly, thereby saving the elephants, helping the homeless, and resolving the issue of conflict minerals.

No, I was referring specifically to post #155 where you said

Implicitly, you're saying that there is a solution to homelessness. This is why I said that I don't believe there is a solution, and that you believe there is one.

It's too bad that you prefer not engage with me. I'll repeat that the stress you feel is probably the cognitive dissonance of you realizing that your positions are wrong, and you hate to admit that you're wrong.

Here's what you said:

You are quite explicitly linking ethical purchasing to homelessness.

I'm loving how much that phrase is being used. In fact TD, this thread has motivated me to try much harder to be a more responsible consumer, to not spend my money on things that cause or perpetuate suffering elsewhere in the world, to think more about where and how things are made and by whom, I'm not doing near enough. None of us are.

And, FYI, if you think that what I've discussed ITT about what I personally do is worthy of being 'shown off' then you have a really long way to go on this issue.

It was a throw away comment, that I said not long after was pure speculation on my part, that started a conversation that evolved into one about Ethical consumerism but has nothing at all to do with Ethical consumerism, or my views on that, and is just detracting from the conversation about that.