Playing with the OLPC

Playing with the OLPC

Posted Dec 21, 2006 15:13 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525)
In reply to: Playing with the OLPC by jeff@uclinux.org
Parent article: Playing with the OLPC

bread, bread, bread..., is still this give-a-man-a-fish, and he's fed for one day. Teach him how to fish, and he's fed for the rest of his live.

It's actually much worse: If you just pump in food into poor countries, they'll be poorer and poorer, because poor contries have economies that base on food, and you kill their economy. So apart from countries with civil wars, it is not in the interest of the people there if you give them some bread. Really, it isn't. Don't spend your Xmas gift on that. It doesn't help, it just helps the organizations who organize this thing.

Furthermore, the actual situation in most countries of the world is far better than the typical US citizen imagines. People might need to cook their water before they can savely drink it, and they also need to cook their food before they can savely eat it (i.e. no salads and such like), but the vast majority of people have about enough to eat. There are a few countries, where people are not fed well enough. Funny enough, the US is the worst offender with children not fed as they need it, IIRC, 40% of the US children are overweighted, and therefore suffer physical harm from what they eat. 90% of the world has better (more healthy) food for their children than the US. A bit less than enough is far more healthy than too much.

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