(The Martian by Andy Weir)
(Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card)
I'd argue that this kind of belief is extremely valuable for a country's economics as a whole. In order for the populace to be economically productive (and save 50000 kids from dying of diarrheal diseas) you need to create a safe, reliable, and predictable environment. Governments insuring against events like kids getting lost in caves is the way that they get that.
There is plenty of money and resources out there to save all kids dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases. There is no political will to do that.
I do have a respectful question though - are you, personally, acting to save those 50,000 kids? Is there an effective organization out there that accepts donations for this kind of thing, and if so, are you giving to them?
My thinking is that we're a long way from that point -- there are numerous other, small, sacrifices that can be made.
I'm curious as to what would make you think otherwise?
Sources: https://sites.google.com/a/newmyths.com/nmwebsite/non_fictio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
“Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.” - Startship troopers [1]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2534973-starship-troop...
And since the only people who would be voting would be the ones who were or had done the dying, it's likely a very strong anti-war book, as one would presume only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought.
Pacifists happen to join armies less.
But also, Nazi leadership was on the shit end of the stick when it comes to WWI. That did not prevented them to start WWII. Instead, the experience normalized the violence for them and shaped their believes. On the other side, Stalin was fighter in particularly cruel war too in his formative years. Was not peaceful either.
Lastly and less importantly, people who had done dying don't vote, they are dead. Only people who survived previous war vote. And survivors often internalized values that are help to survive the war. They sometimes have hard time to adjust to peaceful life afterwards. Your presumption that "only absolutely necessary wars would ever be fought" has no basis in reality.
Also, your theory assumes that enlisted soldiers actions are motivated primary by self-preservation and will vote on that. Some are, but many are not. Others are motivated by duty, career progression, pride, social status, honor, professionalism, tradition, salary, wish to prove themselves or simply by liking to be in the army structure. In case of your hypothetical army, many men will join for career in politics and social status reasons. People motivated primary by self preservation wont join your hypothetical army.
This may not have been what Heinlein intended to convey. But I tend not to find an author's advocacy relevant when reading fiction. I see the author as giving me rope to hang myself if I choose, rather than considering that they advocate anything at all. As I read it, militarism so permeated that society that the only possible contrarian point of view would come from the reader. And I thought that was the whole point of the book. It doesn't matter whether that's Heinlein's intent.
If it's true Heinlein just didn't convey the vast majority of Federal Service was non-military, and yet all we have to go on is the exclusively militaristic bent as written, that deficiency might make the book all the better just to have the ensuing ideological battles and discussions that resulted. And this book generated quite a lot of them at the time, and I see it as overwhelmingly beneficial.
A likely metaphor to the non-citizens of Starship Troopers are those who of their own volition do not enter into military service, do not vote, do not participate in government - exist in large numbers in the U.S. Most Americans now do not vote, they're simply along for the ride, and in effect aren't citizens in any meaningful way (other than perhaps they can't be deported - but in Starship Troopers it was a world government so there's no concept of deportation anyway).
Just check the wiki page, he wrote it himself (under Major Themes, Militarism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers
That's militarism.
That book is fiction, fun to read but still made up.
We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Billionaires like Bill Gates. Countless volunteer aid workers with organizations such as MSF.
Fact #1: Since 1960, child deaths have plummeted from 20 million a year to 6 million a year. [1] This was posted quite recently here on HN. Perhaps you missed it.
At the end of the day, the problem of child poverty and the death and suffering it causes is an enormous one but we are making progress on it. Could we do better? Yes. Could we do worse? Oh yes, way way worse.
[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Max-Roser-three-facts...
It’s so easy to forget how nasty Spanish flu, small pox and polio was. My grandfather has stories where they would burn people’s houses/huts with the people alive inside if they had contracted the disease. It was brutal. A curse that would wipe an entire enpire.
... without forgetting the holocaust a year that is still happening.
http://www.newsweek.com/now-good-news-poor-are-getting-riche...
In poor countries children are your retirement savings, so at an individual level having more children is a rational decision. In many cases they aren't having more kids than they can afford--they can't afford not to have more kids. Even at a national level it's not clear that lowering birth rates without additional changes would help a country economically.
So they are probably (well, not probably)... they ARE going to have more kids whether you like it or not.
The question becomes how do we (Western society, which has more resources than we know what to do with) address the issue and try to do good in the world.
Be involved in how your governments and MNC's behave in these countries. These entities are more likely to pay attention when you, as a voter or customer with more disposable income, say something compared to the citizens of poorer countries who have less of a voice.
It's a natural response to the hardship. If the chance that the kid make it is 10%, then make 10 times more kids. That way you have around 100% chance that your lineage makes it through life.
In other words: In a society where 90% of children die and women have 10 births, one third of the mothers will lose all. All assuming the deaths are independent of course.
I'm only 25 so I don't know how I'll feel in 10-20 years, but right now this is part of my consideration when thinking about long-term goals and whether I'd want to have kids at some point. I might, so for that eventuality, plan B is to adopt. Plan C is to have one (and only one) kid, which already turns two parents into one descendant, so that's better than nothing.
The only thing I'm worried about is that smart families will do this and the stupid ones produce six. It's in the education and not in the genes... but it's also in the upbringing, and if they're brought up with the mentality of the kind of people who currently get six kids...
We shouldn't turn to ideals in an effort to ignore or abdicate responsibility in dealing with the reality we are given.
Do they die of malnutrition or governmental corruption? I thought it was proven in the 1980's that the problem isn't a lack of food, it's the degenerate political systems blocking aid from reaching those who are dying. At least that's the prevailing narrative on reddit.
1. Food is free for the starving in many places around the world.
2. Where it isn't free, a meal of rice and beans is usually within reach of even the poorest.
3. Where it is out of reach of the poor, it may be due to corruption; ie North Korea redirecting food supplies to the army instead of the public, and withholding it from prison camps.
Don't fixate on the price or you'll miss the forest for the trees.
When a million people died in the Irish potato famine, it wasn't just because the United Kingdom prevented foreign aid from reaching Ireland. Ireland was the breadbasket of the empire - throughout that entire time, it was a net exporter of food.
It is the handiwork of the rapists that beget these children.
These are different disasters. The cave impacted 13 random children. Hunger impacts millions of poor children. One is random, the other more predictable.
There are utilitarian arguments for numbing oneself to tragedy which predictably strikes those without resources while defending those visited by random misfortune. (Note: I am not arguing for this utilitarian calculus. Just describing it.)
Coarsely, what happened to these kids could happen to ours. Starvation, less likely. In-group selection is built into our natures, and that is on display here.
Practically, saving these kids takes a short burst of effort. Their families will pick up the slack thereafter because they have—on average—the resources to do so. Saving children from hunger takes long stretches of coördination, together with efforts to ensure their education (to prevent the problem from repeating in the next generation).
It is cruel, and there is probably a solution. But the analogy between these problems is flawed. With minimal assistance, the cave children will become self-sustaining again. That is not true for the chronically hungry.
We don't want to be humanly. We want to be praised for being humanly.
I need to coin a term for this concept, I see it on every Hacker News thread once it reaches a certain size. It is the attribution of the topic to some nefarious intention of a dude in marketing. Once you start noticing it you can't unsee.
Intel fires their CEO? It's a PR stunt.
Startup abandons Europe due to GDPR? PR STUNT!
AlphaZero beats professionals at Dota 2? You guessed it, it's just PR for oligarchy parent Alphabet.
I see this so often now it's becoming humorous. As if some how this being all about PR explains everything. It doesn't explain anything! Although I'm sure Bill over in marketing loves that he has subsumed the historical role of deity in explaining the unknown.
When you try to get a kid out of a cave there is at least some hope of lasting success.
When you have a small group dying of hunger because of a drought, it is easy to perceive what to do and your ability to realize it. So people are more likely to speak up.
If a drought affects an entire nation, you're at least aware this must be a complicated task. So you're more reluctant to criticize inaction.
That behavior is especially problematic when the solutions are abstract or long-term.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad society found a way to save them, I just wish we took the every day threats to human life more seriously.
What do Thai Navy divers do? If there's no war on, they're probably training. What better training than a live rescue mission? I.e. the wages for those highly skilled Thai teams have probably been paid down already.
Similarly international forces benefit from co-operation because it's something they would want to do anyway: good will, training in co-operation, skills training.
As for volunteers their time is hardly a cost in the same way. But if you're a cave diving medic, the expected utility of using your time to save people in a cave is probably better than working and donating to a charity.
Because for better or worse, that’s not how most money is redistributed.
Failing to save these kids is the case you want to think about - that would be sending the message to the public that if your kid gets lost in the mountains we're not going to save them. Sure this particular "insurance claim" (in this impromptu parlance) was an expensive one, but most of the others aren't, and the thing about insurance is that it is there particularly when the costs are catastrophic.
We can help the 13 because government is not the cause and there is nothing to undo, we cannot help the 3.1 as easily because it would take either removing the government in power to putting the 3.1 in further jeopardy trying to fix it. So the real question becomes, when will the world recognize that some small countries need outside governance to see to the needs of their people. Right now sovereignty is absolute unless the nation in question threatens a neighboring country.
Bill Gates and tens of thousands of aid workers globally. The Chinese Communist Party and businessmen who outsource labor from the overfed first world to the underfed third world are by far the biggest help. Also your aunt who volunteers at the soup kitchen. Often these efforts funded by donations or aid grants (tax money, paid by you and me) from our democratically elected governments.
>We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.
Most of us can comprehend two (or more!) things at once. People are extremely mobilized about ending hunger and we have made strides against this in the last century: https://slides.ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-food-provision/
A few hundred people showed up to the cave for a few weeks. Tens of thousands show up to fight hunger every day.
Now off to the Gulag!
https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/obesity-a-bigger-problem-t...
if you actually pay attention to border patrol, you will see that these kids have left horrible conditions and many are not separated from parents but from strangers using them to get in or for drug smuggling. some dont even have any parents or family with them.
ICE also saves the most lives on the border
These aren't the ones that the uproar is about. The uproar is about the children who have been separated from their parents, not the children being held in foster care or holding facilities in general. The 3000 separated from parents is a number from HHS Secretary Azar. The Trump administration updated that number to 2342 children separated from 2206 parents.
it happens to families everyday that are citizens too
not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before, no reason for the uproar
Largely, because the Administration has taken active steps to prevent lawful asylum applications.
> and the kids will be reunited later if they are real family
Maybe, sometimes, after the recent court order requiring that; most recently prior to that the kids were being used as hostages to force parents to sign voluntary deportation agreements and give up asylum claims; during and prior to that children were deported separately from their parents and vice versa in a number of cases. And, in any cases, there was no tracking of any kind to facilitate reunification.
> not a big deal and the kids are still doing better than before
No, they often aren't; especially for the younger children, being forcibly separated from their parents is itself an enormous trauma that will damage their development (social/emotional especially for life.)
Somehow, they handled it just fine and at lower cost without family separation before. If so, why separate them except due to racism? They are now having trouble reuniting families weeks later because of improper tracking.
thinking that its racism is just you jumping to emotional conclusions
there are no problems reuniting families when they are actually families, it is when kids are alone or abused as drug mules that they have to work harder to find where to put them
they still leave horrible conditions so why arent you upset over how bad the other countries are?
Before Trump’s zero tolerance policy, when criminal charges for illegal crossing were essentially never pursued on their own and families with children targeted for deportation without criminal charges were also (since the court order limiting the use of immigration detention for children) not subjected to immigration detention specifically to avoid separation, and where active steps weren't taken to force entrants seeking asylum to enter illegally by preventing access at ports of entry, which is what actually pushed most of the families subjected to Trump's zero tolerance policy into the system in the first place.
> there are no problems reuniting families when they are actually families
Yes, in fact, there are, in the present situation.
> it is when kids are alone
Unaccompanied minors have been a particular problem at times in the past, but that's not the current issue.
> or abused as drug mules
That happens, but, again, is not the source of the current crisis.
> they still leave horrible conditions so why arent you upset over how bad the other countries are?
Most people upset about this administration’s blatant and indefensible mistreatment and hostage taking with regard to asylum seekers are, also, unhappy with the conditions in the countries that they are fleeing. Which is actually a big reason why they are upset at the Administration’s further tormenting them when they are trying to flee, and actively preventing them from lawfully seeking asylum.
No, they don't, even before the Trump Administration policy changes that have produced the recent issues. You are confusing ICE with the Border Patrol. They aren't the same thing.
This does nothing, but underplay the significance of the holocaust.
During the first World War, they renamed New Berlin to Kitchener here in Canada. They may as well have named it Hitlerville. The scale of evil wasn't as horrible as the Holocaust, but it was pretty damn awful. It's true what they say, that the victors write the history books. So few people know about that story.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_concentration_camps
Anyone using the phrase and then insisting that the literal meaning was intended is thoroughly disingenuous. That speaker or writer is deliberately using the loaded term in order to troll the intended audience with a crystal clear Nazi reference.
If it evokes the use of the concept you dislike, rethink your moral stance on it. Not the phrasing of the concept.
The word for non-murderous concentration camps is "internment".
"It's different when we do it."
"Historically incorrect" is just a way of saying "presently correct". For instance "sensibility" is not a historically correct way of referring to a rational disposition. Historically, it meant what we today call "sensitivity".
Fuck historically correct; I live today, not in history.
It is not a euphimism; everyone knows that it refers to starvation and horrific murder and aren't using that word for the sake of masking this.
It's quite well known that "concentration camp" is not the correct term for the Nazi extermination camps.
All that remains is the small detail of convincing the public at large that they are using the word wrong.
It's simply under-developed and has not become industrialized. When American or European children were dying at higher rates it wasn't because their parents were selfish. It reflected the rate of development of the continent.
Hunger was an issue after World War II in most of Europe, and the US came to their aid. The hunger there was not due to parents being selfish either.
If there is no food to spare, then all the money in the world won't solve the problem. If there is food to spare and people let children starve to death, then people are evil. (edit: there technically exists a third potential that there is absolutely no means of delivering food, but at that point, any discussion is pointless)
EDIT: I suppose this idea makes people uncomfortable because it implies that those same people might be evil even though they don't see themselves as evil. We all want the world to be a better place, but we don't want to be inconvenienced. Rather than do something, we give a few dollars in hopes of absolution. Writing posts about starving kids is easy. Moving 100LB bags of food 12 hours a day in Sudan is much harder. "Be the change you want to see in the world"
(Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein)