Bum Simulator will simulate life as a homeless person

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: tuubiThe right way to control the growth of populations is through education, access to contraceptives and better standards of living. You might not believe it but these have actually proven to be the most effective ways to do it.

I do believe it.
But how is it helping to just cure people of ailments and give them food and clothing and send them to their daily lives again, which will just end up increasing the overpopulation?

That's not the big picture though. None of the organizations I just mentioned do that and call it a day.

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNow, the number of children receiving basic education and health care is exactly what I was talking about earlier. It makes the situation of those people "barely tolerable", instead of "intolerable" which would eventually lead to a change from within.

No. Education is the basic necessity for a community to start on the road to self-sufficiency in today's global society. You might swallow the idiocy even our own government is spouting currently, but inhospitable living conditions do not inspire people to fix things. They just force them to exhaust all their mental and physical energy on the struggle to survive. Pushes them deeper down the rabbit hole so to speak.

That is an absurd theory.
If reality was anything like that, events like the French Revolution or the American War of Indipendence or the Uprising of the former British Indian colonies or other similar events would have never happened.
If the majority of a people's situation becomes dire enough, they revolt in one way or another. Change under such circumstances is inevitable - if no "third party" intervenes.

Just take a closer look at all these incidents and notice the fact that all of these uprisings and revolts have actually been pushed on by people who have had the resources and means to do it. Slaves pretty much never led the efforts to overthrow their slavemasters, and the oppressed poor almost never took control without some symphatetic (or simply power-grabbing) party leading them. The underdog stories are mostly just stories, and the realities behind them are very different.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNow, I might agree with the education part. Education is the surest way to enable someone to find ways out of their misery on their own.
But if you counteract at the same time by providing what the government should provide (health care), you only become part of the government, if you want it or not. And you only slow down the change that you want to bring - it is simply inefficient. I don't disagree with the goals, I disagree with the methods, if you want.
Too much helping, too little "help yourselves, here's how to".
At that point, why not go all the way and become the government? But that would be called colonialism or imperialism and isn't really to en vogue right now.
"What have the Romans ever done for us?!" ;)

Your thinking is still too black-and-white, all-or-nothing to my taste, but hey, at least we're starting to find some common ground. :P

Quoting: TheSHEEEPMaybe the next 30 years will prove me wrong. The last 30 certainly didn't.
Of all the 3rd world countries, only few managed to truly improve their situation. Like India, or China. China even to a point where they will (in due time) likely become the primary world power - if nothing unforeseen happens and their upwards trend continues just as the US' downwards trend does.
And lo and behold - they did it all without interference from any western organisation (other than trading with them).
It is almost as if interference of those companies did not help African countries at all, maybe even the opposite...

I don't see how this shows that relief organizations do more harm than good. All I see is "maybe".

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: tuubiYou can call your arguments logical, but that doesn't necessarily make them so. We're not discussing basic arithmetic here but complex issues. Facts are necessary to make proper judgments.

Everything is based on logic. Except love, hate and morals, maybe ;)
Facts are results, they are not required to predict results, or to discuss theories.
If it was any different, there would never be any theories.

That's not how science works. You make a hypothesis, you test it, then you refine your theory based on the results. And if you're researching something extremely complicated like the issues we're discussing here, you'll do it again, and again, and again... That's because you might not see results until a couple of generations later.

Of course, politicians won't talk about anything that doesn't produce results during their time in office, which makes modern politics inherently short-sighted.

Akon Has Done More for Africans in One Year Than Most Charities Have Done in Decades
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/akon-africans-year-charities-decades/

Quoting: BOYSSSSSAkon Has Done More for Africans in One Year Than Most Charities Have Done in Decades
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/akon-africans-year-charities-decades/

As reported by Akon's charity group. :)

Seems like a successful charity project, but the article reads more like marketing than journalism.

As someone who has helped the homeless, I find the concept to be disgusting.

The homeless, to contradict "Saint" Ronald Reagan, do not "choose to be homeless." A very large number of Americans are one paycheck away from insolvency. A medical bill can leave a whole family insolvent. And the Republicans persist in taking health care away from the poorest, so they can give big tax breaks to the rich. Of course, the rich STILL don't have enough money.

It's pretty easy to ridicule the "least of these" (read Matthew 25) from a warm, comfortable house or apartment. Grow a heart, and do not buy this game.